It’s been a good two years for Macon Middle School boys track and field.
After winning the Blue Ridge Athletic Conference last year, the Panthers entered 2025 as the program to beat. With an unbeaten season from the boys and a top-three finish from the girls, Macon earned their second straight BRAC title.
“Luckily I knew Coach Coleman [Tallent], and I kind of got linked up with him the first year and started helping him out,” said first-year head coach Josiah Brendel. “He wanted to kind of take a step back this year, so I ended up taking over the head coach part, and he still helped me as an assistant, too.”
As a former assistant on last year’s conference champion team, Brendel was the obvious choice to take over the program this spring. But while the Franklin High School graduate knew his team would have plenty of talent, the path to a second straight conference title is never easy.
“It’s funny ... We were just talking about it today, and we were saying how the last two years we thought we didn’t really stand a chance of actually competing for conference,” said Brendel. “But both years the boys ended up winning, so that’s been pretty crazy. We definitely saw potential – I always see potential in the kids – it’s a matter of getting that full team win. It’s a whole lot different with track in general – it’s a lot more widespread when it comes to points and everything like that.”
Because track meets involve scores of athletes and more than a dozen events, their results are nearly impossible to predict. From the start of the regular season however, Macon proved they’re the class of the conference.
“It was definitely a full team effort. We had some really, really good sprinters, and some kids that stepped up that we didn’t even see [coming],” said Brendel. “We do time trials each week for each meet that we go to, so we take the top three most of the time for each event because that’s usually our conference limit. But, it was definitely one of the most competitive seasons we’ve had. Everybody was so neck-and-neck in comparison to each other, so it made it harder on us, but at the same time it was a little bit more enjoyable because a lot more kids got to go to the meets.”
With more talent than they were even allowed to enter into most meets [in order to limit the time and logistics involved], the Panthers were forced to compete with each other as well as opponents. While these intrasquad qualifiers made for a difficult season day-to-day, they created a crucible in which an even stronger team was forged.
“Going into the first meet, we didn’t even know how we were really going to do. I just told them, ‘Let’s go out and do what we can,’” said Brendel. “Both girls and boys dominated the first meet, and we dominated the second meet, so it was fun. The only time the girls lost was when we went up against the whole conference. ... The boys actually went completely undefeated – we never lost a meet with the boys.”
In five regular-season meets including their first at home in several years following the recent completion of the new MMS track, the Panthers were one of the BRAC’s best programs. With five meet wins from the boys and four from the girls under their belts, they traveled to Apple Valley Middle School in Hendersonville for the conference championships.
“They usually do live results throughout the entire meet, and this year I guess the results were not updating, so we were completely blind – we had no idea where we’d placed or what we were looking at,” said Brendel. “Last year we knew that we were down by five points going into the final event, and we ended up winning the last event and got it for the boys. ... We were kind of worried there for a little bit because it looked like it was a lot closer than we thought, and then the final result popped out and the boys actually won by 27 points.”
After a diving finish by Trey Dockery in last year’s 4x400-meter relay, the conference meet’s only drama came this time from the Panthers’ uncertainty. With a second straight boys BRAC title and a third-place finish from the girls, Brendel credited his team for overcoming adversity, and says they should keep on rolling next year.
“We had a lot of injuries throughout the season, but it never fazed anybody. Somebody else stepped up and took their place and did just as good, so it was awesome,” he said. “Surprisingly, we have a ton returning. ... We’re losing a good bit, but I think we’re going to be fine. We’ve got a lot of kids that are coming up that are doing really well, too.”