Macon Middle School baseball has returned to the mountaintop.
Having won the Blue Ridge Athletic Conference in 2023, the team nearly repeated last year, losing the championship game to Rugby in extra innings. In routing the Raiders on McConnell Field May 7, Macon took revenge for their second BRAC title in three years.
“We won it the first year, then we lost in the last inning by one run last year, and then we won this year – all of it against Rugby,” said third-year head coach Randy Phillips. “We were up by like seven last year and then we just ran out of pitching, and they ended up tying it in the last inning and went to extra innings and won it. It was a good game.”
In Phillips’ three years at the helm, Macon has been a consistent contender, battling the Raiders for BRAC supremacy. With a veteran group returning this spring, the Panthers again had the talent to contend.
“We had a good solid group of returning eighth graders that came back in, so I figured we’d be good,” said Phillips. “I didn’t figure we’d hit as well as we did last year, but I thought we’d pitch better, and that’s kind of how it turned out. We won a few more games with pitching and defense this year than we did with hitting even though our bats came alive at the end of the year. … They won their basketball championship, and football too, and I think one of their motivators was to try to win all three of those sports’ championships.”
As the BRAC’s best group of all-around male athletes, the Panthers entered the spring season with a full head of steam. Aside from a few hiccups, they continued their dominant year.
“I think we were 14-2 … we did well,” said Phillips of Macon’s record this regular season. “We lost to Bethel [Waynesville] on a walk-off home run in extra innings, and then we lost to a team out of South Carolina, West Oak [Westminster], 5-3. But, we got revenge on them the next time we played them – we beat them 17-4.”
After another strong regular season, the Panthers rolled into the BRAC Tournament, routing Polk County 10-0 in Round 1 and beating Brevard in a hard-fought semifinal 8-5. In the conference title game at McConnell Field, they met Rugby for the first time since the previous year.
“I thought it was gonna be a high-scoring game because I don’t think they had quite the pitching, but they hit the ball and scored a lot of runs this year,” said Phillips. “Graham [Cantrell] gave up two runs in the first, and I was like, ‘Uh-oh, here we go,’ but he didn’t give up a run after that, so he shut them down.”
After Rugby’s big first frame, Macon’s bats caught fire, scoring seven runs in the first, three in the third and three more in the fifth. Up 13-2 in the fifth, the Panthers won via the 10-run mercy rule.
“They were super-excited,” said Phillips of his players. “It’s always nice when they get to celebrate at their home field, and all the parents came down to hang out with them and stuff, so that was pretty neat.”
With their third BRAC title of the year in hand, Macon’s eighth-graders should boost Franklin High School’s program next year, which was heavy on underclassmen this spring. While next year’s middle school squad will also be green, the Panthers should continue to contend for years to come.
“We’ll have four or five eighth graders coming back, so we’re gonna to have a young team next year,” said Phillips. “The [roster] is gonna be filled by either new eighth graders or a big group of incoming seventh graders that are a pretty decent team – they’ve been playing a lot together for a while. I didn’t keep any sixth graders this year, so a lot of those guys are going to have to step up and play right away.”