Vidalia — The smell of catfish will be wafting through the air today as Vidalia hosts its annual tournament.

The tournament, renamed the Catfish Classic this year, is in its 20th season and will feature Cathedral, Jena, Oak Hill and Trinity, along with the hosting Vikings.

“We have a good supporter that donates catfish every year,” Vidalia baseball coach Johnny Hoffpauir said. “Mike Greer has been cooking the catfish for 15 years. It’s just become a thing — everybody comes to watch baseball and eat catfish and French fries — so it’s just an appropriate name for it.”

Hoffpauir said the tournament could also be called the Bad Weather Classic.

Last year’s tournament saw rain and even some snow, and it seems every year sees some sort of bad weather for the three days of games.

“We’ve had everything from snow to sleet to rain — we actually had a dust storm one year,” Hoffpauir said. “It just seems like during this weekend in March, you’d better keep an eye on the weather.”

This year promises to be no different. Rain is in the forecast for the entire weekend, including thunderstorms on Saturday.

“You know, why break tradition?” Hoffpauir said. “It’s gotten to be a local joke around here.”

Plus, the tournament dates are difficult to move, with other teams committed to other tournaments for the rest of March, so the Vikings just make the best of the situation every year.

While the Classic usually plays six or eight teams, this year there will only be five.

“That’s going to allow us to work a little better around the weather,” Hoffpauir said. “With eight teams it was hard to get all the games in, but we can move things around easier with five teams.”

Vidalia will start the Classic against Jena at 5 p.m. today. Cathedral will play two games Friday, against Oak Hill at 4:30 p.m. and Trinity at 6:30 p.m.

That second matchup will be the first ever between the two local teams.

“It might be more important to the kids, but to me it’s just another game getting us ready for the district schedule,” Cathedral coach Craig Beesley said. “The kids probably talk about it more than I will think about it. I have a feeling it will mean more to the fans and to the other students.”

Four of the five teams are scheduled to play three games each, but Cathedral volunteered to play a fourth game.

Beesley said he chose to play four because a lot of his pitchers needed to get in work this weekend.

Saturday’s games will start at 9:30 a.m., and all five teams are scheduled to play.

“We’re not going by a bracket format,” Hoffpauir said. “It’s a round-robin tournament. Nobody cares who wins. It’s a chance early in the year for everyone to play baseball early in the season.”