Panther JV men’s soccer seemed to improve as the season wore on.
Between an extremely rigorous schedule and an unusually high rate of injury, the JV Panthers had a more difficult season than most. Despite their myriad challenges, they played their best in their biggest games.
“I think we were 4-1-3 [in the Mountain Seven Conference],” said head coach Adam Tallent. “West Henderson dropped their JV team right after [Hurricane Helene], so we ended up missing two games. I was going over the stats today on my lunch break, and I’m like, ‘Well this team lost and that team lost …’ if we had those two wins or they take those two away, to me we would be the conference champions.”
Along with 5-1-3 North Henderson, who beat West 7-0 and dealt Franklin their only conference loss 2-1, the Panthers finished as one of the Mountain Seven’s top teams. In the first half of their season however, success was far from a foregone conclusion.
“I kept telling the guys, ‘It’ll get better,’” said Tallent. “They were infighting and arguing and picking on each other because we were losing, but we were losing to the Rabun Gaps and Ashevilles. … Not that I didn’t expect them to win, but if they lost I wasn’t mad because you’re playing against top teams at a high level.”
Throughout his and Tallent’s seven years leading Panther soccer, varsity head coach Matt Kolodzik has sought out tough early-season foes, in order to prepare both teams for conference games down the stretch. Versus a murderer’s row of the region’s best programs, including Rabun Gap, Asheville, Hendersonville, Enka and A.C. Reynolds, Franklin earned four losses and three draws in their first seven games. Entering their Mountain Seven schedule, the team’s problems were compounded.
“Everybody was healthy during the harder games when you’re playing the Rabun Gaps and the Hendersonvilles and teams like that … but it was almost like we got to right before conference, and it was like three [injuries] in one week,” he said. “It was tough, and when we started getting into conference we had less guys, but the guys really, really stepped up. They came out and started winning games and really putting stuff together as short-handed as we were, and it was pretty amazing.”
Despite seven of their 19 players missing time, Franklin turned their season’s winless first half on its head, claiming four of their last seven games and tying two. In helping prevent the team from fracturing, Tallent credited his players for not losing hope.
“I don’t know. I mean, it was something inside them – it had to have been,” he said of what kept the team together. “They just bought into what we were doing. You have a good game and you win, and then, ‘Hey, I see it – I see it working.’ The kids we had in certain spots were doing really good, so it just blended all together.”
“I told them one time, it’s like baking a cake. You get a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and when you’re done, boom – you see what’s in front of you, and you’re like ‘Dang, that’s good.’”