Panther JV football overcame tough circumstances this year.
Amid renovations to the Panther Pit, the team was forced to hit the road, playing their “home” games in Carr Hooper Stadium at Smoky Mountain High School. Despite their nomadic campaign, they turned in their fourth straight winning season.
“It was very tiring never having a home game,” said JV head coach Landon Potter. “Being on the other sideline at Smoky was weird. It was a very odd feeling – it almost didn’t feel real at first, and we had to kind of settle in to that. It definitely had its challenges, and we played at Smoky and lost, but other than that in our true road games – the ones we didn’t play at Smoky – we were undefeated, JV and varsity this year. I think you have to be really mentally tough to go in and win that many away games, so I think this group did a really good job staying focused.”
Between travel, an early bye week and never truly having a home crowd, Panther coaches always knew this fall would be a tough slog. When the team convened for their first preseason practices however, Potter knew they had what it took to go the distance.
“With this group of kids I felt like the competitiveness was what really stood out during summer workouts,” said the third-year head coach. “There were a lot of guys that were competing for a lot of spots. We had a quarterback competition all summer, and the line and linebackers and everybody was competing for all these spots and really pushing each other. I felt like we didn’t have that ‘X-factor’ that we did on past teams, but we had a lot of people to get the ball to and contribute, so it made us really excited early in the season for that.”
After sharpening iron with iron, the team dove into the regular season, winning their first four games by a combined 73 points. As the campaign progressed however, the team had to battle a different foe.
“I’ll never use it as an excuse, but I wish we would have stayed healthier. … We lost a lot of guys for a lot of games,” said Potter. “Our front seven was all backups at one point – all the [defensive] line and our linebackers were not the first-string guy we’d started – so we dealt with that. I think this group has been so successful in middle school and stuff that when they did get a taste of adversity, we kind of had to learn how to respond to that. I think that was our biggest growing pain this year because all they’ve ever done is win.”
Already without several sophomores who moved up to varsity as underclassmen, Franklin’s JV squad underwent even more attrition this year. Nevertheless, they earned their most wins since 2022.
“I think the game at Brevard, we knew going in that they were very good, and they’d been really good the year before,” said Potter of the team’s signature win. “That really felt like a championship game – it was just very hard-nosed, and you had to earn every yard. It was super low-scoring – I think it ended up being 14-6 – and after that I really thought that we had a chance to run the table this year. Our JV’s haven’t beaten Pisgah since like 2016 I think, so that was a big one, but I think that Brevard game was a high point for us this year. And then the last game against West Henderson, West was very talented, but we just played our absolute best.”
Despite narrow losses to Pisgah (14-7) and Smoky (14-12), Franklin boasted one of the region’s best teams, outscoring their foes by 141 points en route to an 8-2 record overall. While a talented group of sophomores will join their classmates on varsity next year, Potter believes that the team’s future remains bright.
“Usually a super-young varsity team means we may not lose some of those guys – there’s four or five off the top of my head that I think would be ready to play at that level next year, but I’m selfishly hoping we get to keep them down,” he said. “I think we have a lot of key pieces coming back. I think we’re losing a lot of leadership like Trey Dockery – he got hurt the second game of the season and missed the rest of the year, but he was still at every practice, he was a captain all the way through the season, he was coaching up our younger tight end and stuff. So, we’ll be looking for some leadership next year, but I think a lot of our key contributors will be back.”