The future looks bright for Panther football.
Amid a tough season for the varsity team, Franklin’s JV squad showed plenty of promise, compiling a 7-2 record overall and going 5-2 in the Mountain Seven Conference. Recently, head coach Josh Brooks discussed his team’s strong finish to the season.
“I could brag on a lot of those guys. It was a big team effort,” he said. “At the high school level, all you can ask for is a chance, and we had a chance in every game. We missed some opportunities against Pisgah and West Henderson, but other than that ... We had a win at Asheville High, we beat Smoky two times, we beat an 8-1 T.C. [Roberson] team that won that conference, so it was a very solid year.”
In playing close games with several top WNC programs, the JV Panthers proved they have the talent to contend for a Mountain Seven title in the coming years. After months of grueling work both on and off the field, Brooks said it’s not surprising to see their determination translate to results.
“Starting all the way back in the summer, we had more JVs not miss a practice than our varsity, and their attitude in the weight room was tremendous and has continued to be tremendous,” he said. “I’m not surprised at all after watching them play last year, getting to know them, watching them work and hearing my brother Jay brag on them in the weight room. There’s no secrets – there’s a process you’ve got to go through, and there’s no shortcuts. ... They’ve got a chance to be one of the strongest groups that we’ve ever coached here, if they continue to do things the right way.”
After hundreds of hours in the weight room, in the film room and on the field, the JV Panthers had a strong foundation from which to build on this year. The team was so fundamentally sound in fact, that Brooks had no qualms pressing them into service against Franklin’s toughest varsity opponents.
“All year, I never hesitated to put one of those guys in the game,” he said of the several young players that saw varsity action in relief of injured starters. “They never looked out of place, they weren’t timid, they actually were excited – I may should have used them a little bit more than I did. I’m really proud of them, and a lot of that action was after playing games on Thursday nights, so they were very durable.”
As injuries piled up for the varsity team, especially late in the season, multiple young Panthers performed a difficult task without seeming to skip a beat. After a strong two years at the middle school and JV levels, Brooks credited the entire program for getting the players ready to play.
“There’s no doubt that the last two years on middle school and JV – and it’s not 100% correlational, because not every kid that plays middle school and JV ends up playing varsity – but if you go back over the history of our program, the teams that had really good JV years and really good middle school years have almost always transitioned to good varsity years,” he said. “[With] these last two JV teams and the last two middle school teams, it lays itself out for us to have some really quality years, and I would be very disappointed if it doesn’t go that way.”
With a combined 31-3 record over the past two seasons between JV and the middle school team under Nathan Raby, Franklin should have plenty of varsity talent for years to come. While success in future years is far from guaranteed, Brooks says the Panthers should at least have some solid blocks on which to build.
“All those guys that played JV this year, all summer next year I know they’re gonna be competing to see if they can be on our varsity,” he said. “That’s what we want them to do and that’s what they should do, and it should be fun to watch and see how all that pans out. Some of those guys, they’ve got a chance to possibly be a varsity player – a varsity starter. There’s a lot of work between now and then, and there’s no need to talk a lot about it because there’s a lot that has to be done, but I’m really excited to see what they’ll do between now and then.”