It was a good year for Panther JV hoops.
Throughout the Mountain Eight season, Franklin boasted two of the conference’s best teams, winning boys and girls regular-season conference titles. After a tournament title from the boys and a runner-up finish from the girls, both teams’ coaches recently recounted their campaigns.
Boys
In the team’s first year under new head coach Jack Gloyne, Franklin’s JV boys exceeded expectations. With a 20-2 record and a Mountain Eight Conference title, the Panthers came just nine points shy of a perfect season.
“The first thing, which I like, was their decision-making in different situations on offense and defense,” said Gloyne of the team’s improvement this year. “The second thing is that they embraced what we were trying to coach. Sometimes half the battle is just getting them all to grasp what we want and believe in what we want, and I think all those boys believed in the system that we had, and the expectations and desires that we had as a team. It finally all fell into place in the last month of the season, and it makes it a lot easier.”
Having moved to Franklin in 2024 after a decade at Cherokee, Gloyne spent his first year with the Panthers as a varsity assistant, bringing him a hard-nosed, team-first mentality. Taking over the JV team this year, Gloyne sought to remake the team in his own image, and the results spoke for themselves.
Following a five-point season-opening loss to North Buncombe, Franklin ripped off 16 straight wins, finishing with the Mountain Eight’s best record at 13-1. While some teenage boys might have rested on their laurels, Gloyne credited his team for maintaining focus throughout the year.
“You can tell a championship team from a second- or third-place team: the difference is that at the end of the year at practice, they’re going just as hard as if they were at the first day of practice, acting like they were trying to make the team,” he said. “They’re giving you that same energy and outstanding effort at the first, and then towards the end at the last practices of the season. I’ve had teams that, you get them about halfway and say we’re 8-8, they don’t have that same energy, and I think the boys’ maturity just kept them [focused].”
Finishing their regular season with a record of 18-2, Franklin entered the Mountain Eight Tournament as the conference’s #1 seed, routing Brevard in Round 1 to advance to the final. In a championship clash versus Pisgah, they played one of their best games of the year.
“By halftime, I already felt real good. They bought into the man-to-man defense and the press, and using their own physical ability and mental strength,” said Gloyne of Franklin’s 64-41 win. “They just accumulated everything into that one point, which was probably one of our better ballgames, too. Of course, at the end of the year that’s when you want your best to come forward, which they did. You also have to have everybody on the same page, which they were. Everything just sort of fell into place like it normally does when you’ve got a championship team, or potentially a championship team – of course you never know until you play the game.”
“Me and my grandson, we’ve had 10 of these teams I think, going back to Cherokee,” said Gloyne of his grandson and assistant coach, Logan Teesateskie, who co-captained the Braves’ 2015-16 team that reached the 1A state quarterfinals and shattered a state record for 3-pointers in a single season (330). “This was probably the most mature basketball team that we’ve had.”
Girls
For a decade, fans of Bekah Brooks’ teams have come to expect success, watching them play in nine straight conference finals and winning five. With another strong regular season, they made it an even 10.
“I have good expectations for them – I want us at the top of the conference, I want to win a conference championship, I want to win a tournament championship,” said Brooks. “But ultimately, you just really want to see them get better – make our program better, make themselves better, whatever that looks like. A lot of people may not really get to see that whole package because they don’t see them every day like I do, but hopefully this season they’ve been able to see how much better they’ve gotten just in their play, and their chemistry has been awesome.”
Despite having several freshmen that did not play for Macon Middle School, an eclectic mix of athletes hit the ground running nevertheless, ending their regular season with the M8’s best record at 12-2. From there they advanced to the Mountain Eight Conference tournament, routing North Henderson in Round 1 to advance to the final. The night before their clash with perennial rival Pisgah however, the team’s game plan was rendered obsolete.
“Pisgah, to me, didn’t get to see our whole team, because the day before – and this was after our practice, where we’d already spent an hour and a half preparing for the next day – we got told that the two fifth-quarter people had to pick [which team to play for],” said Brooks. “So now I’ve got to look at two young girls – one a freshman, one a sophomore – and we as coaches have about a minute and a half before we let go of our team the night before the championship, and we’ve got to pick one. … I think it was literally at 5:05, because we got done at 5 and we got the message before we went in and talked to the team. … And so basically our whole game plan went out the window with personnel, and we had a quick little bit there before the game to try to fix that.”
Per the state’s “five quarter” rule, which was adopted in 2022 to help smaller schools fill out their rosters, freshmen and sophomores can play up to five quarters per day between varsity and JV. These five quarters are considered equal to a single game, provided that players don’t play in more than 24 “games” per regular season and no more than four “games” per week.
Throughout the season, freshman Alyssa Awtrey and sophomore Kyelynn Hervey took advantage of the rule, serving as leaders for the JV team and key substitutes on varsity. Because the rule does not apply to conference tournaments however, Awtrey and Hervey could only play for one team or the other. With less than a day to prepare for the loss of perhaps their best player, Franklin lost the final 27-16.
“They handled it well, but it sucks for Alyssa because [JV] is where she started,” said Brooks. “That’s her team, and then she got pulled from that with a chance to win a championship in both [varsity and JV], and Kyelynn as well.”
Despite the championship loss, this winter will go down as another strong year for the Panthers. In coaching the team to an incredible 10th straight conference final, Brooks was quick to deflect credit for the achievement.
“This was one of the most fun teams I’ve gotten to coach because I never had to worry about the girls, I never had to worry about the dynamic of the team – they got along,” she said. “When we did end up losing the other night, we talked about all the hard things the bad things, [but] the most fun part to them was that they truly felt like a family. If that’s what we got out of this season – [even without] being a conference champ and winning the tournament – if they really felt like they were a part of something special, then I feel like I did my job.”