A recap of Macon’s best spring sports moments

And so the dog days of summer begin.

As far as professional sports go, summer is a great time. You have the NBA Finals and the Stanley Cup Finals, both of which were thrilling this year. There’s baseball nearly every day, and the trade deadline to boot.

But high school and college sports have their inverse hibernations in the summer. Aside from football workouts and the occasional bit of recruiting news, things sort of grind to a halt until school starts back up in August — we’re left to pine for high school football as the sun beats down on us.

It won’t be as hard this year, because we have a simply incredible season of spring sports to look back on.

Plenty of teams had some unforgettable moments, many of them coming as spring turned into summer and championship dreams turned into realities. Here’s a recap of some of the best games, moments and memories from the spring.

Honorable mentions: Henley’s hot streak, coach hirings and more

It wouldn’t really be a list of “favorite so-and-sos” unless there were some honorable mentions, right?

There’s always too many great things for lists like this, so we need a few extra slots.

Russell Henley had a fantastic spring, representing Macon well on golf’s biggest stage. The Stratford grad had the best Masters performance of his career, then followed it up soon after with a clutch comeback victory at the Charles Schwab Challenge.

Macon had its fair share of tennis championships this spring. Katelynn Jackson dominated the girls individual bracket for FPD to win the 4A girls championship, while Noah Perry and Ethan Lashley took home the boys doubles trophy. 

And then there were the coaching hires — not really “moments,” per se, but important spring items that sent some considerable reverberations through Macon’s sports community. 

Mount de Sales brought back Robert Slocum as its football coach, setting up some truly legendary rematches with Tattnall head coach Barney Hester. The Trojans coach added a well-known name to his staff as well, bringing former rival Mark Farriba into the Tattnall fold this spring. 

Mount de Sales also added a notable alum on the basketball side of things, too, hiring skilled former player Michael Walton as its next head coach. 

That’s only scratching the surface, too — Todd Whetsel arrived at CFCA, ACE hired the legendary Kurt Green to lead its girls basketball program, and multiple Bibb County schools found new football coaches.

There will be lots of new faces, and returning ones, to keep track of this fall.

No. 3: ACE girls soccer falls to Model in the semifinals

I know, I know. Why on earth would we want to remember a gut-wrenching, nail-biting loss in the penultimate round of the playoffs, a loss that made an entire team collapse to the turf when the final horn sounded?

Watching the Gryphons lose 1-0 to Model for a second straight season was not easy for fans. It was a hard-fought game — fittingly so, considering the insane amount of work the ACE girls put in to reach the semifinals for a second year in a row.

But that’s just it. Without games like these, the tearjerkers and heartbreakers, there would not be the triumphant comebacks or heartfelt championship victories. To happy-cry, we must sad-cry… if that makes sense.

So yes, the loss was hard to watch. Even tougher to observe were the crushed reactions afterward. It was an afternoon of big feelings at ACE’s Perkins Field. But it was only so wrought with emotion because of the bond that team had. So many of the squad’s seniors had played together since sixth grade, and head coach Robby Jones had worked with them for almost as long.

The loss itself is not a great moment — but the deflating nature of it, no matter how difficult, symbolizes many relationships that cannot be sullied by one bitter ending. That’s why it has a place on this list.

No. 2: FPD baseball finally climbs the mountaintop

Oh, how tempting it was to put this in the top spot. Ironically, the only reason it’s not there is because of how thoroughly dominant FPD was on the diamond this season.

The Vikings came into the 2026 campaign looking to avenge two consecutive losses in the state championship, both of which were against Brookstone. They cruised through their schedule, only losing one regular season game against Veterans en route to the No. 1 seed in the GIAA Class 4A bracket.

The playoffs didn’t change much. Aside from a stumble in Game 2 of its first playoff series, FPD kept its composure and trounced opponents on the way to the championship. 

The Vikings faced off against rival Straftord in the championship series, but the toughest opponent they faced was the pouring rain. After FPD beat Stratford 7-0 behind a great Conner Strandmark pitching effort, delays halted things a few times before Game 2 could begin. The Vikings were unfazed, beating Stratford 9-2 behind homers from Strandmark and star shortstop Keon Johnson to hoist the trophy.

Almost as entertaining as watching those home runs leave the yard — they were the last homers those two seniors would ever hit as Vikings — was watching the FPD gloves sail into the air when they made the final out. 

It was a long time coming for the Vikings and head coach Greg Moore. The normally stoic skipper, who has been at FPD for decades and coached a variety of sports, showed some emotion after the victory. Johnson compared the title win to finally scaling Mount Everest.

All in all, it was an almost cinematic victory. But, somehow, an even better movie involving Stratford and FPD played out earlier that same week in late May.

No. 1: Stratford girls topple FPD in soccer championship

If you kept track of spring sports this year, you might have known this was coming.

This game had some of the highest expectations of any playoff game I can remember. The Stratford girls had a perfect 19-0 record coming in, including two wins over FPD. But the Vikings had taken the Eagles to penalties in one of those games and were 15-2 themselves coming in.

Then there was the rain. The Class 4A championship at Stratford was originally scheduled for earlier in the evening, but torrential downpours sent the schedule on the fritz and the match did not begin until 9:30 p.m.

This also meant an uncanny haze of fog settled in over the grass and, of course, that the field was a mess. Michael Lough accurately quipped that some of the players looked like the NFL players of the old days as shown in documentaries, slogging through the muck with their muddied uniforms.

Despite the late start, there was a great crowd for both sides. The FPD fans got to celebrate almost instantly when the Vikings scored a goal within the game’s first two minutes. Stratford was down for much of the first half but tied it right before the break at 1-1.

The second half was similarly chaotic. FPD scored early to take the lead, but Stratford managed to tie it with about 15 minutes left. Then, with about three minutes to play, it looked like the Eagles secured the win with a clutch goal from Maddie Biesterfield.

But FPD star and Auburn commit Bowen Matthews scored an incredible header with less than one minute left, shocking the Stratford crowd and sending it to overtime. The Eagles went on to win an all-timer with an OT goal by Emma Lizotte.

Ordinarilly, a great championship has off-the-field stories that make it even more memorable, but that’s what made this championship between two rivals so great — the match itself was simply top-notch.

Somehow, a game with so much hype managed to live up to those lofty expectations and become the best showdown of the spring.