Champion Bulldogs: Thousands celebrate Dawgs with parade, ceremony Players and coaches for the Mississippi State University baseball team ride on fire trucks through the streets of Starkville on Friday afternoon in a parade celebrating their winning of the College World Series. Thousands of fans lined the streets and followed the team to Dudy Noble Field for a celebration. Chris Jenkins/Special to The Dispatch
Like a storm, it had been building all day.
By 3:30 p.m. Friday, as Mississippi State fans scurried to purchase their national championship hats, T-shirts, caps and more at Maroon & Company apparel store before the start of the evening’s festivities, clerks and managers were laboring to keep the checkout lines moving as customers stood in line six or seven deep.
Controversial plans to build homes next to the site that inspired CS Lewis to create the magical kingdom of Narnia sparked a row that has gone on for almost five years in Oxford and caused an outcry nationally and internationally. Now the application to build nine flats with 22 parking spaces and an access road alongside the CS Lewis Nature Reserve in Risinghurst has been withdrawn. But campaigners only cautiously welcomed news that charitable trust the Wychwood Foundation had dropped proposals, which had been recommended for refusal, shortly before the city council’s east area planning committee meeting. Leading opponent Cara Langford, who grew up in Risinghurst, collected almost 6,000 signatories for one petition and through an associate in the US nearly 2,000 for another.