It’s been a good three years for Macon Middle School softball.
After an unbeaten campaign in 2022 and a second-straight title last year, the Panthers entered this season as clear Blue Ridge Athletic Conference contenders. With their third-straight BRAC title under a third different head coach, Macon turned a dominant two-year run into a dynasty.
“I was originally not going to do anything in the spring because I just recently got married May 18, so I knew I was going to be very, very, very busy with wedding planning,” said Brooke Watson Southard, who also coached MMS volleyball to conference titles the past two years. “But, the former coach [Sarah Carpenter] stepped down – she had a baby, and she just felt like she wanted to be a mom before a coach, which I completely understand. Mark and Zach [MMS principal Mark Sutton and MMS athletic director Zach Tallent] were scrambling around – this was maybe like two weeks before tryouts were supposed to start – and I just happened to step into their office. They looked at me and asked if I would do it, and I said, ‘Well, give me 24 hours to think on it.’”
While Southard played many years of softball growing up including two for Franklin High School, her main area of expertise is in volleyball, where she’s accrued a 33-1 record in her first two years as Macon head coach. Initially skeptical of taking the job, she was ultimately reassured by a strong coaching staff.
“They came back with two assistant coaches and a volunteer coach, and when I heard who was gonna be helping me out I said, ‘Well, that sounds like a plan,’” said Southard. “Like I told them, and the parents too, the title of ‘head coach’ or ‘assistant coach’ wasn’t a thing for us. We were all one, we all called the shots, and I cannot express how well I felt our coaching staff did. The communication was phenomenal with all of us.”
With experienced assistants Stacy Raby and Rylee Corbin, and Carpenter returning to help the team on a volunteer basis, Southard’s staff had all the softball savvy they needed this year. Combined with a power-hitting lineup and highly-touted pitcher Suzanna Cabe, the team had all the ingredients for success this year.
“We played 14 regular season games, and then we had three final games, so that put us at 15-2,” said Southard “We actually lost to Waynesville twice – we played them over there the first go-round, and we were up 9-2. This was like the fourth inning, so we got ahead of ourselves and started subbing because we thought it was gonna be a run rule. … We did not have the best defense that game, so Waynesville came back and beat us 12-9. … The following week Waynesville came to us, and they beat us again. That was a very, very, very close ball game. What did it for them was, they ended up hitting two out of the park and I think we lost 6-8.”
With narrow losses to Waynesville serving as their first seven-inning games (they had won every other contest to that point by way of the “mercy” rule, wherein umpires end the game early if a team takes a big enough lead), the Panthers rolled into the BRAC playoffs as a clear title favorite. After beating Rugby in the conference semifinal, they traveled to Waynesville for the championship game.
“We came out and hit the ball, we played great defense, and our sixth-grader, Molly Moeller, hit her very first over-the-fence home run,” said Southard of their third meeting with the Mountaineers. “Up next in the same exact inning was Chloe Lambert, and [she hit] about her third over-the-fence home run. … After that, we were killing the ball. The odds were definitely not in our favor with losing twice to them, but we showed up and showed out, and we wanted it more. We had a couple innings that were struggles, but the girls pushed through, they played great defense, their bats were hot, and you really couldn’t ask for more for a championship game.”
In blowing out their rivals 14-7 just four days before Southard’s wedding, the Panthers took the monkey off their backs in the biggest game of the season. The win improved Southard’s overall record between volleyball and softball to 48-3, and gave the team a chance at a fourth-straight BRAC title next year.
“We had a very young team this year and I believe we’ll be losing six or seven [eighth-graders], but we had a very large sixth-grade group,” she said. “We will definitely, 110% miss our eighth-graders, but I do have to say that our replacements look just as good. … I feel like softball will probably be very strong for a few years.”