It’s been a good start to the season for Panther JV football.
Coming off a 9-1 season in 2022, this year’s team has gotten off to a similar start, winning four of their first five games with four more left to play. Between veterans from last year’s team and an impressive group of freshmen, Brooks says it’s easy to see why this year’s team has been successful.
“I think there is a correlation between the success in middle school moving to JVs,” said JV head coach Josh Brooks of this year’s freshmen. “Those guys were very successful last year in all sports, and there’s a lot of multi-sport athletes, so they’re very used to winning. Their attitude, their work ethic, their commitment to the summer workouts this year were unbelievable. A very high percentage of those guys made it to every single workout [and had] almost no nonsense in the weight room, so they were already laying a foundation for being successful. I think they’ve got that expectation of themselves.”
Behind every touchdown scored in the fall, there are many hours of hard work and sweat in the summer, when teams prepare for the mental and physical grind of the season. After an 8-0 campaign and a Blue Ridge Athletic Conference title under Nathan Raby last year, Brooks credits Macon Middle School’s staff for preparing their players for the high school level.
“The middle school staff does an excellent job of creating a foundation early on for the things that we’re going to be doing on JVs and varsity,” he said. “We coach all those guys together, and Coach [Landon] Potter has taken the lead with our JV team. He’s done an outstanding job calling the plays on offense and coordinating our defense, so he’s taken on a big role and done a really good job. But again, that foundation is set with our middle school staff and they’ve done a really good job with getting that initiated in the seventh and eighth grade.”
With more than 40 players on the roster, up slightly from recent years, the JV Panthers have had no shortage of talent in 2023. While Brooks’ staff carefully scouts the MMS team every season, he said there are always certain players that can surprise you.
“Overall, it’s a very deep lineman class. There’s a lot of linemen, both offensively and defensively,” he said. “So much that we haven’t had to play anybody both ways on the O-line or D-line, and so that offers us a lot of depth. As far as pleasant surprises, number one would be Zavion Ensley at running back. Zavion has done a really good job, and then we moved Noah Jones from defensive back to linebacker, and Noah has been our leading tackler so far. He’s just made a lot of plays in there playing linebacker, and he seems to have found his home.”
With strong seasons by Ensley and Jones added to an already talented roster, the JV Panthers have looked like one of the Mountain Seven’s better teams, led by a ball-hawking secondary that’s already picked off 10 passes this season. In beating the likes of Smoky Mountain, Asheville, East Henderson and Tuscola, Brooks said this year’s group has gained valuable experience for varsity.
“Here, some teams have multiple middle schools that feed into their high school. We only have one, so the fact that they’re already together every day really helps that,” he said. “The high school setting is different, the fact that we work out so much in the summer is different, but obviously these guys jumped right in there. As I mentioned, they haven’t missed hardly any days at all, and the fact that they were so successful last year breeds more success. They expect to do well – it’s just that simple.”