It’s been a good two seasons for Macon Middle School men’s soccer.
After an unbeaten season and a Blue Ridge Athletic Conference title last fall, Sam Vargas’s team entered 2023 with a full head of steam. With a 12-1 record, the team returned to the BRAC Championship, where they beat Polk in an epic penalty-kick thriller.
“Last year’s team knew they were gonna win a championship – they just knew it from the very beginning,” said Vargas of his 2022 squad. “They had lost the year before in a close [match], and so last year they really wanted it. Before that season started, there was an expectation of, ‘We’re gonna go all the way.’ This year’s team was one of the youngest teams in the conference – I can’t remember exactly, but I think we had eight or nine rostered sixth-graders – so you have the expectation of, ‘Well, we’ll be a good team in the future, but what can we build on now?’”
After losing key eighth-graders to graduation like Kevin Torres, Malik Walker, Cameron Lyons, Sebastian Miranda and Ken Modlin this spring, the 2023 Panthers certainly had big shoes to fill. Starting with their early practices this summer however, Vargas knew the team would be special.
“There was a practice in the middle of the summer, and I remember we had trained really well and seen some talent kind of emerge from different players stepping up in different ways,” he said. “My assistant coach [Bryan Wilkinson] wasn’t there; he was at his house, and I texted him and said, ‘Hey coach, just so you know, we’re gonna win the championship this year.’ I didn’t tell the team that until the day of the championship game, but we both kind of identified that in early summer.”
Despite their status as one of BRAC’s youngest teams, Macon’s play in offseason workouts inspired supreme confidence, looking championship-ready in all areas of the pitch. From the start of the regular season, they gave Vargas little reason to doubt his prediction.
“The year before we were undefeated all the way, but this year we were 12-1 and took a midseason loss to Smoky Mountain 1-0 at their place,” he said. “That was really a time when the team kind of set the tone for themselves. They didn’t want to lose again, so they kind of defined it for themselves. You could feel the energy in the room and the practices, and they began to pick it up – more bantering, more scrapping, better players stepping up. We avenged that loss to Smoky Mountain on eighth-grade night, beating them 3-2 at our place, so that was a good victory for us going into the playoffs.”
With just one blemish on their record, the Panthers entered the BRAC Tournament with a full head of steam, earning a first-round bye as the top-seeded team in the conference. After beating Apple Valley 7-2 in the Quarterfinals and Flat Rock 3-1 in the semis, they hosted Polk in the BRAC title match Oct. 23.
There, Macon got on the board early, when in the 13th minute Polk’s goalkeeper let a shot roll through his legs and into the goal.
The Panthers largely kept possession from there, forcing Polk to defend their side of the pitch for long stretches. With 30 seconds left in the half, the Wolverines gave Macon a scare, hitting the crossbar with a well-placed shot that bounced straight down just inches from the goal line. Panther defenders cleared the ball from danger however, maintaining their 1-0 lead until halftime.
Polk doubled their efforts after the half, pushing several attacks toward Macon’s goal but encountering stiff resistance from goalkeeper Drew Hodges. With 14 minutes to play however, the Wolverines finally broke through, finding the net off a throw-in deep inside the Panther half to tie the match 1-1.
Polk kept their foot on the gas in the final minutes, hitting the crossbar again with 10:30 to play and firing another good-looking shot just a minute later. Hodges denied the chance with an impressive save to his left however, helping his team maintain the tie to the end of regulation.
The dead heat continued into extra time, where neither team were able to score in two additional five-minute periods. With the score still tied, the teams were forced to decide the match in the most nerve-wracking exercise in soccer: a penalty shootout.
“I actually told [Wilkinson] after – I said, ‘Coach, I ran out of speeches,” said Vargas of keeping his team motivated through the marathon match. “I just remember telling the guys, ‘It’s time to grow up. You’ve got to earn your stripes right here. You want to leave a legacy of some kind? You’ve got to battle and earn your stripes.’ I may have been too hard on them, but I told them, ‘Get that frown off your face and put your head up, because we’re gonna win this game.’”
After several minutes of stoppage for both teams to catch their breath, both sides’ five best kick-takers took the pitch along with both goalkeepers. After beating the odds to save two of Polk’s first four kicks, Hodges came through for his team once again, saving the Wildcats’ final attempt to keep the shootout tied 2-2.
With 10 penalties in the books, the match entered sudden death, with each team needing to score and keep the other out of the net. For four more rounds, the white-knuckle match only grew more suspenseful, as the two sides matched one another step-for-step.
Finally, in the 10th round of kicks, Sam Antoine strode confidently to the penalty spot and buried a shot in the left side of the net, putting Macon ahead 6-5. Needing one more stop to give his team the win, Hodges then capped the match of a lifetime, making a beautiful save to his left to clinch the title and send the crowd into pandemonium.
“‘Thank you, Jesus,’” said Hodges after the match on his thoughts immediately following the save. “I just thought of my family, and how much they cared about me to bring me here to all the games. I’m just thankful. I don’t know how else to say it … I’m speechless.”
“Drew came out for the team in sixth grade and didn’t make the squad, but was a really good kid, and I wanted to keep him in the program as a manager,” said Vargas. “He had hopes of being one of our keepers his seventh-grade year, and he came to try out and we had two or three keepers show up that hadn’t played with us before. They were just older and better, and so Drew didn’t make the team in seventh grade. I think his mom said he was ready to quit, but he kept his head high, trained and earned the moment, and so for him to have that kind of moment will make him a keeper for life. … Drew is such a naturally calm spirit, a gentle spirit, a good kid from a good family. I’ve been really hard on him this year asking him to step up and lead, and he did it when it mattered, so I couldn’t be more proud of him.”
After perhaps the greatest contest of any sport in recent MMS/FHS history, the team’s season will be etched in stone in the annals of Panther athletics. More so than success on the pitch however, Vargas says he wants his team to be successful in life.
“We used the word early on in the preseason – we had a lot of great individual players – but we kept using the word ‘relational,’” he said. “They’ve got to learn to play relationally, and you learn to play relationally when you grow off the pitch. A lot of these guys are playing travel ball together, a lot of them are hanging out with each other outside of the sport, they’re going to each other’s houses, hanging out, playing soccer after practice … over time, those things build the team relationally. When you win, it’s just cherries on top – it just makes it that much sweeter.”