Macon Middle School softball has created a dynasty.
For the past three years they’ve controlled the Blue Ridge Athletic Conference, racking up three straight titles and an unbeaten season. With another thrilling championship win on their home field, the Panthers extended their streak to four in a row.
“I never want to say that we’ve got it, we’re championship all the way – I don’t want to be too cocky, I guess is the word for it,” said head coach Brooke Southard of the start of her second year. “But I did know that we had several returners, and several of our returners played travel ball as well, so they were playing ball year-round. With that I was pretty confident that if we didn’t go to the championship, we would definitely go very far in the playoffs with the skill level that we had from last year going into this year.”
With the same core of players from last year’s 15-2 campaign, Southard knew this year’s team would again have the talent to compete. From their first practices this preseason, their lineup began to fall into place.
“I knew pitching-wise we would be OK. … Yes, I lost Suzanna [Cabe], but I didn’t freak out too much knowing that I did have others behind Suzanna for this year,” said Southard. “Our outfield and infield I knew were very strong as well because, like I said, those girls play travel ball year-round. The only one that I was very, very nervous about was our second base. I had nobody who really played second base, so I took Kyleigh Winchester, who was a catcher and a pitcher, and I made her into my second baseman, and she did really well in that position.”
Despite losing Suzanna Cabe, who set a Franklin High School record with 181 strikeouts this spring, MMS had all the defense they needed for another strong season. With a deep pitching rotation featuring Alyssa Awtrey, Molly Moeller, Payton Manos, Palmer Tallent and Winchester, the Panthers turned their talent into results, winning all but one regular-season game.
“It was always something when we ended up playing Smoky Mountain,” said Southard. “They first started out coming over here and a horrible thunderstorm came, so we were rain-delayed for like two hours. They finally called the game and we said we’d reschedule it later, so our first time actually playing them was over there at Smoky. We only had one umpire over there – it was not their best game – but we ended up winning 10-4.”
“So then they came back over here for the makeup game from the rain delay, and I guess you could say we were humbled. We lost 7-9 that game – they came back and beat us in the sixth or seventh inning. … I think we maybe just had the mentality of, ‘Oh, we’ve already beaten them once; we’re probably OK.’ We were humbled after that, but I will say that it lit a fire in my girls, and we carried it on.”
Aside from their lone loss to Smoky, the Panthers ran roughshod over the BRAC, finishing their regular season at 13-1. Following playoff wins over Flat Rock and Brevard, Macon rematched a familiar foe.
“Whenever we found out that we were playing Smoky Mountain, we were ready for revenge,” said Southard of hosting the BRAC title game May 7. “We normally pitched Alyssa Awtrey – she was like our ‘A’ pitcher this year – but we obviously had already played them twice, and they kind of knew what we had. During that rain delay I went over and talked with their coach, and he kept telling me how he knew how good Molly Moeller was, he knew how determined she was, and it was almost like they were scared of Molly. So, I looked at [assistant coaches Stacy Raby and Rylee Corbin] and I said, ‘Let’s throw them for a loop.’ I said, ‘Let’s throw Molly out,’ … and she pitched the entire game for us.”
Following two high-scoring regular-season shootouts, both teams engaged in a pitcher’s duel in the conference final, playing the first 2 ½ innings without a run. In the bottom of the third Karlie Beck drew a leadoff walk, moved to second on a Moeller bunt single and to third on a groundball out. From there she scored on a ball put in play by Emmy Moffitt, and Moeller protected Macon’s one-run lead from there.
“That championship game, only scoring one run – holy cow,” said Southard. “It has amazed me because we’d beaten people by 10, 12, 15, 17 … but to see that one run in the championship game, I was nervous. I was freaking out a little bit – it was a little too close for comfort. … I remember looking in the dugout, and Stacy was like, ‘We’re good!’ She was chill, she was fine, she was good, and me and Rylee Corbin were looking at each other like, ‘What do we do?’”
With the narrowest of leads entering the top of the fourth, Moeller stayed cool under the highest pressure of the year, guiding Macon through four more nail-biting innings for the win. The result improved Macon’s record to 31-3 in Southard’s first two years at the helm. But despite her fifth straight BRAC title overall, including two in softball and three in volleyball, the skipper said her team was reminded that life is bigger than sports.
“That is a very tough question – I’m going to have to go with our very first game,” said Southard of the team’s most memorable moment this season. “We hosted Flat Rock and the coach had literally like 30 girls on his team, and we asked him – me, Stacy and Rylee – we asked him, ‘Why in the world have you kept so many?’ And so he explained to us how he had several sisters on the team that he felt like he couldn’t cut, and then he went into a deeper story about how one of the sisters ended up having a type of bone cancer in her left leg, and the day after we played that game she was fixing to go have her leg removed and start chemo.”
“I can’t remember exactly what type of cancer it was, but for awareness it was the color yellow, so Flat Rock were wearing yellow accessories – yellow headbands, yellow bows. It was so funny that that particular game, I just happened to look into my filing cabinet and I noticed that I still had a bunch of yellow ribbons from back in the fall when we were honoring the different teams in our conference [after] the hurricane. … We cut it up into little pieces, and all season we wore yellow ribbons on our cleats in honor of that little girl. … We played them in the first round of the playoffs and she had made it through surgery, she’d made it through her first round of chemo, and her mom, her sister and the coaches were so blown away at the love and support we’d shown them.”