Let me do my best impression of a wrestling ring announcer here.

(Clearing throat)...

The winner - and neeeeeeeewwwwwwwww - champion of the inaugural Mudsock Trophy is...Hamilton Southeastern.

The Royals defeated school district partner and Hamilton County rival Fishers for the traveling trophy on Tueday, when the HSE baseball team came back from an eight run deficit in the fourth inning to top Fishers, 14-11.

The Mudsock Trophy, a foot-tall muddy bronze sock, is in homage to the somewhat derisive term for towns that sat in bogs. "It all had to do with any time we'd get a lot of ran, your socks would get covered in mud because the ground would get soaked," Larry Reynolds told HSSTM writer Tom Hayes last fall.

Reynolds, who later created a hound dog cartoon character he coined "Mudsocks," gave his blessing on the creation of the trophy.

Hamilton Southeastern athletic director Jim Self said last fall that this was meant to be more about the community than it is about the kids. "We want this to be a positive rivalry," Self said.

The reason for gearing the Mudsocks trophy around the community was simple. When Fishers opened three years ago, the students of HSE were split, so most of the students at the schools have grown up together, playing sports together and attending class together.

It was only natural that a rivalry would be born.

"These are kids and families who have grown up together and have played in the same youth leagues," said Self. "This is a tremendous positive for this community."

Fishers athletic director Jon Miles agreed. "It's not very often that a community gets split up into two schools," he said, pointing to the rivalry that emerged between Lawrence North and Lawrence Central over 30 years ago when the Lawrence township school split in two.

The idea, brought to Miles by legendary Fishers residents Dub and Jeanne Clark, was to do something along the line of the Old Oaken bucket, shared by Purdue University and Indiana University each year in football, but to do it in all sports at the high school level.

Individual trophies are awarded to the winner the first time the schools square off in each of the 19 sports played.

The Mudsock's first year was a good one. HSE won 10 of the 19 events - it all came down to the aforementioned baseball game on Tuesday. Ironically, Fishers would defeat HSE on Wednesday night, the final game of a home and home series this year.

"We are doing this to help bring the community together and to give the community a sense of pride that two schools can compete hard against each other, but at the end of the day, we can root for each other and be happy with each other's successes," said Self.

In year one, it was mission accomplished.