PREP UPDATE: Macon East wins volleyball title; Lowndes falls short; Brew Tech flag football wins two
Macon East volleyball receives the state championship trophy after the win over Abbeville Christian on Tuesday. (Tim Gayle)
COMBINED REPORTS
Macon East and Abbeville Christian had battled through the second, third and fourth sets of the Alabama Independent School Association finals with very little separation on the scoreboard at the Multiplex at Cramton Bowl on Tuesday afternoon.
“They’re a very good team,” Macon East Academy coach Codi Berry said. “They have two really good athletes in the middle. If you let them unleash that beast, they will so our talk the last couple of weeks has been practicing to get ready for a team like that. How do we control the chaos? How do we control points that don’t go our way? The majority of the time today we were down by several points at some point in every set and our mentality was to keep our composure and keep chipping away.”
During a timeout with Macon East clinging to a one-point lead in the fourth set, Berry called together her six starters and told them to block out all distractions, eliminate all the self-induced errors and play like a defending state champion.
“She pulled us in there and said we’ve got to have a game plan, we’ve got to know what we’re going to do next with this ball,” senior libero Megan Hardy said. “We all chipped in and said a key point about what needed to happen. We need to get this serve over, we need to stay composed, get a good pass, get a good set, get the ball down. We knew if we would just do our job on our side of the court, we would get it finished. And we did.”
Macon East didn’t allow another point, scoring the last six points in the set to grab a 25-18 victory and the Class A state volleyball championship over the Generals.
For the Knights, it was their second consecutive state championship after sweeping South Choctaw in three sets a year ago.
“It’s definitely a surreal feeling, coming back and doing it again,” Hardy said. “Last year was my first. It felt amazing. Coming back and doing it again this year, it feels even better.”
Four of the Knights’ five losses this season were to Class AA finalists Lowndes and Southern, but despite losing three seniors from last year’s squad, the 2026 Knights had five seniors that had won a state championship and knew what it took to do it again.
“We had every bit of faith in us,” Hardy said. “We have a big class of seniors and we wanted to finish it out, not just for us but the people below us, that we had their back and could do it again. We wanted to go out with a big bang.”
Hardy, along with Addie Longcrier, Gavin Spencer, Gracie Strickland and Kelsey Smith, kept the Knights headed in the right direction.
“We’ve had this same key group for three or four years and it’s been a team that we’ve been trying to build and work on since this senior class was in the ninth grade,” Berry said. “They lost their JV state championship in the ninth grade to Abbeville and it’s always been something in the back of their mind. We knew going into it several years ago we would be very good, it was just finding the right personnel and making sure the right chemistry was there.
“This year, having five seniors, they know what it takes to win and they know what it takes to win in this environment, so they were prepared for that and they stepped right into it.”
Macon East won the first set 25-18, then dropped the second one 27-25. The Knights rallied to win the third set 25-22, then grabbed the title with a 25-18 win, their second after winning seven of eight championships in 2011-18.
But it took a few words of encouragement from Berry in the fourth set to keep the Knights on a steady course for a championship.
“I told them I loved them and we were going to make this happen no matter what,” Berry said. “Maybe to calm down a little bit. We’ll have to keep the rest of those words in our brains for now.”
Hardy was named to the all-tournament team, along with teammates Kelsey Smith and Ajah Tuggle, Abbeville’s Amari George and Anna Blankenship, South Choctaw’s Dixie Perry and Hooper’s Jenna Conway.
It was Perry’s second consecutive all-tournament selection after losing in the finals to Macon East last year and in the semifinals to Abbeville Christian this year.
Lowndes Academy’s Catie Brown with the shot at the net in the Lady Rebels battle with Southern Academy in the Class AA finals at the Cramton Bowl Multiplex on Tuesday. (Tim Gayle)
Lowndes Academy falls to Southern in AA finals
For the second consecutive year, the Lowndes Academy Rebels came up short in their battle with Southern Academy in the Class AA finals of the Alabama Independent School Association state volleyball tournament at the Multiplex at Cramton Bowl on Tuesday.
And Tuesday’s battle followed a similar theme from 2025, when Southern dropped the first set, then won the next three to capture their first state championship since 2019. This year, Lowndes won the first set (25-17) and the third set (25-16), but Southern rallied with wins in the second set (25-21) and the fourth set (25-20) to force a fifth and deciding set.
In that set, Southern jumped out to a 10-2 lead before Lowndes staged a fierce rally that fell short, 15-12.
It was Lowndes’ first loss to an AISA school this season. A loss to Ezekial was the only blemish for the Rebels (24-2) before Southern’s rally.
“We had a fantastic season,” said Lowndes coach McCall Burkett. “We have five seniors and most of them have played together since they were in elementary school. They worked really hard, had a lot of fun and were a very talented group of girls this year. Watching them play together was so fun.”
Last year, the Rebels had just one senior and returned a group poised for a bigger finish this year -- Abby Lovell, Kinlee Dismukes, Catie Wallace Self, Sarah Beth Murchison and Catie Brown. The same obstacle remained in the Rebels’ path, however, as Southern and 6-foot-4 senior Abby Sluder proved too much to overcome.
“We had a game plan to basically not let her have the third touch,” Burkett said. “We served the ball and placed it in places where she would end up setting, getting the second touch. That way, somebody else hit it.”
The Rebels fell behind early in each of the last two sets, trailing 4-0 in the fifth set and then falling behind 10-2, creating too big of a deficit to overcome.
“We’re a little lax (sometimes after winning a set), then we always pick it up,” Burkett said. “With really good teams like this, you can’t do that.”
Joining Sluder on the all-tournament team were teammates Mallory Newton and Mary Elizaeth Kyser, Lowndes’ Self and Lovell, Jackson Academy’s Lola Carlisle and Chambers Academy’s Cate Allen.
Sluder, Newton and Self made the all-tournament team for the second consecutive year.
FLAG FOOTBALL
Brew Tech 20, Parker 14
Brew Tech 40, Selma 12
The Lady Rams took the final two games of the regular season on Tuesday at Cramton Bowl.
In the win over Parker, Kaymarria Bandy, Heleyna Pennic and Skylar Haywood each scored on touchdown passes from Tessa Wilburn to earn the win. Pennic’s touchdown came after a pitch from Bandy for the 60-yard score.
Haywood scored three times in the win over Selma with one coming on an interception and return for 23 yards. She also scored on a 5-yard run and a 35-yard reception from Wilburn.
Bandy, Reese Woody, Apollona Wesley also had scores in the second game.
Brew Tech will learn of their Class 1A-5A first-round opponent next week.