After setting program milestones, Tamara Bolston-Williams and the Central girls basketball team are looking for more

Tamara Bolston-Williams remembers the first time the Central girls basketball team won a region championship.

No, not the first time they won a region trophy while she was the coach. It was the first time in school history, period — and Central is not a particularly new school.

“I was an assistant under coach (Sheila) Toombs when that happened in 2017,” Bolston-Williams said. “That’s a feeling I’ll never forget. We made history.”

The Charger girls, who had not made a major impact in Macon’s rich tapestry of basketball history, had broken through. But when Toombs announced her somewhat surprising retirement the next year, Bolston-Williams suspected there was more room for the girls team to grow.

“It made us hungry, and more dedicated,” she said. “To see the reaction of those kids, when we won the region, everything they worked for paid off.”

She was correct — maybe even more so than she anticipated. The Central girls program has soared to new heights in the past seven seasons under her leadership. The Sweet 16, Elite Eight and Final Four arrived in succession as the program grew.

Now Macon’s best girl’s basketball team is trying to put the finishing touches on their meteoric rise and find a path to the championship game. But with so many teams competing across the state, the road to the title matchup is not always the clearest one.

“To take that next step, we have to keep building, but that consists of learning from the past,” she said. “That’s what I talked to my team about after that Final Four loss.”

Building a new power

Learning from the past begins with looking back at Bolston-Williams’ time at CHS. She’s been teaching there for nearly a decade, but was hesitant to coach.

“I was really focused on building a family when I first arrived,” she said. “I played basketball at Baldwin County, which is pretty serious, so some people mentioned coaching. But I ended up just taking an assistant job for observation, just watching the young ladies play.”

She liked what she saw, the passion for the game and the girls who left everything out on the floor. That emotion paid off in Bolston-Williams’ second year as an assistant when the Chargers won that first region championship.

A year later, Bolston-Williams and many other Central figureheads and devotees were surprised when Toombs announced her retirement. Now that she’d seen it from the inside, Bolston-Williams took the job.

Seven years later, the team looks poised to continue a string of dominance unprecedented in school history. Bolston-Williams leaned into the passion of the players, though not everything clicked.

“We didn’t take off immediately,” Bolston-Williams said. “The COVID years were kind of an awakening for our staff. We wanted to change the culture. So I took over as volleyball coach, and a lot of the girls played that, too, which gave us way more time in the gym, they started conditioning early.”

The coach also installed a new slate of practice opponents — the Chargers started facing teams from 5A, 6A and even 7A classifications. A defining moment in the team’s growth came when Central competed against Buford, a veritable athletic superpower in Georgia.

“Coach Gene Durden is there, and he’s a real pro,” Bolston-Williams said. “After the game he came to me and he said ‘Y’all have a very tough team, and a great work ethic. I look forward to seeing you deep in the playoffs.’ Even now he always makes a point to shake my hand and ask about my players, how they are in life. It says a lot how our program has made an impression.”

Seeing Buford’s depth, their schemes, upped the Chargers’ game, according to Bolston-Williams.

Accolades started rolling in around in quicker succession after the pandemic. After a 2021 playoff appearance, the 2021-22 season brought a region runner-up finish and the team’s first Elite Eight appearance. Then came the notorious 28-2 season, a region championship and another Elite Eight.

The Chargers won the region again in 2023-24, then made the Final Four. The trip to the state semifinals was a great moment for not only Central but Bibb County, as many from the Macon area traveled to Milledgeville to cheer on the Chargers.

“It really shows how the community cares about basketball and supporting everybody,” Bolston-Williams said. “We go to other teams’ games all the time, and we had a good crowd over there despite the drive. It helped us play even better.”

As touted as the achievement was, however, that Final Four loss, a back-and-forth 45-38 defeat that came against Josey in March, hurt. There’s no way around it.

Processing a loss

Bolston-Williams and her team had one key way of tackling a heartbreaking season-ending stumble: sticking together.

“All you can do is process those emotions together,” Bolston-Williams said. “We all go through it the best way we can. But you have to remember, you made it to the Final Four. Once you look back on those other games, you realize how much you accomplished.”

The team shed tears in the Georgia College locker room. They shed tears on the bus. Some even sobbed as the Chargers watched the film later on. But in between those down moments, Bolston-Williams reminded them of all they had done in the regular season.

“Before we watched film from that one, we watched other games. I talked to them about how incredible it was they went that far. They have to remember that,” she said. “You obviously can’t just bask in it forever, you have to improve, right, but you can’t forget it either. You get so caught up in the loss that you don’t give yourself enough credit.”

The Chargers were also missing two key players to injury, Bolston-Williams said. 

Now Central will try to build back to that point. It will be tough with seniors graduating, but the team isn’t without standout players to fill those gaps.

“Jazlyn Johnson, Frances Anyakudo and Ca’Liyah Moss are all big time contributors for us, and they’ll be stronger next year,” Bolston-Williams said. “They were a big part of our success, even before they were seniors, and they’ll grow even more.”

Moss, in particular, is motivated, according to Bolston-Williams. She’s also a drum major in Central’s Sugarbear Band.

“To do that at the same time, I know she’s driven. That’s why I trust her on this team to contribute and be a leader,” Bolston-Williams said of Moss.

Johnson and Anyakudo earned All-Region honors last year. The team will also face a new region in the 2024-25 season.

“It will be bigger, more physical,” the head coach said. “We’ll have to adjust to that and find what play style fits us best.”

The goal this year is clear, regardless of new opponents and rosters: take the next step and appear in a championship game, hopefully winning it.

“The biggest thing I learned from that Final Four run? When we had to go on the road for the quarterfinals. The team hated losing the coin toss for home field, so they felt sort of defeated going on the road to Columbia High School,” Bolston-Williams said.

The coach described how her team took a big lead, but the Eagles clawed their way back in a stomach-dropping comeback. It looked like Central, faced with the Columbia team’s onslaught and their fans supporting them, had blown it.

“But they pulled it together in a way that made me really proud. They took the lead right back and won that game,” Bolston-Williams said. “That was when they realized we were for real. We were in awe on that bus ride back from Atlanta.”

That was the big lesson, one Bolston-Williams and the team will take into this year — always remember the victories, even if the season ends with a loss.

“You don’t get to always sit and enjoy those victories, but on that bus ride? We basked in it,” she said. “That’s what we have to do. And hopefully we go even bigger this season.”