All Smiles: Parkview Baptist’s non-stop engine Macey Theriot part of two state titles last week
by: William Weathers // GeauxPreps.com Contributor
The ear-to-ear grin was the introduction to Macey Theriot’s personality. Naturally bubbly, and full of energy, she exudes a persona of delight that earned her the nickname “Smiley” amongst her friends when she was younger.
Then those closest to her noticed the smile had turned upside down. The bigger the steps in her soccer journey from recreational to club teams that traveled out of state, she began shouldering a burden on her slight frame resulting in a change in her disposition.
“That’s when things started to get serious,” Theriot said of her soccer career which began at the age of 12. “I had hardships and things put me down. God brought me through that for a reason. I was able to see why people aren’t happy, why they get jealous and sad, and why people would be mean. Because they’re facing hardships, and they don’t know how to get out of them.
“Now that I’m way passed it and I’m at this awesome school, so many opportunities have opened up,” Theriot said. “It’s my personal mission to make everyone happy. Not only do I want them to be happy, but I want them to be proud of themselves.”
Theriot, who celebrated her 18th birthday on Monday, is as glowing as ever both on the athletic field and off. The Parkview Baptist senior completed a rare feature of playing a part in two of her team’s state championships over a four-day span last week.
Parkview Baptist extended its streak in Division III soccer with a third straight state crown – a 2-0 victory over arch-rival University High – in which Theriot earned the Outstanding Player award on the strength of two goals. She then teamed up with the Lady Eagles’ four-member indoor track team to win the LHSAA’s Division II state meet on Saturday.
“It’s crazy,” Theriot said of the week that included two state championships and a debutante ball the same night of the track meet. “What it means was the end. I’m a senior. Soccer and indoor track ended and just being in high school is ending. The relationships and memories are going away. It was a week of reflection. Time is passing.”
Parkview found itself on a mission entering last Wednesday’s state final at Southeastern Louisiana’s Strawberry Stadium against U-High. The Lady Eagles (25-2-0) had lost a 1-0 match to the Lady Cubs for the district title to provide plenty of ammunition.
Theriot, the team’s second-leading scorer, put Parkview up 1-0 in the 32-minute on a goal from 30 yards out that crept under the goalie and over the goal line.
The Lady Eagles maintained their one-goal margin through halftime when coach Raphael Nunes, sensing his team needed to separate themselves, called Theriot over to the sideline with 16 minutes left.
“She’s such a people pleaser, passing the ball here and there,” Nunes said of Theriot. “I told her she needed to be selfish. I told her I knew that it’s hard, but I needed her to be selfish. I need her to take a shot.”
Less than a minute later Theriot received a pass from her sister Georgia and took another shot from distance – covering more than 30 yards – that found the back of the net in the 66th minute.
“That was special,” Nunes said.
Macey Theriot said that sophomore Ella Kate Johnston told her there was enough space to turn and attack the goal. Her brace was more than enough for the Lady Eagles to wrap up a third consecutive state championship and equal the Division III record for consecutive titles.
“Part of any success I have is attributed to my coaches and teammates because I’m the type of player that likes feedback, understanding what they see versus what I feel,” she said. “A lot of times my perspective is clouded from all of the energy I’m feeling. Sometimes I’ll ask what I’m doing wrong, and it will be a little breakthrough moment for me.”
While the game’s Outstanding Performer honor appeared to be anti-climactic Theriot was taken aback and spread the wealth to her teammates.
“That was so crazy to me,” said Theriot, who also won a state championship in outdoor track and cross country in 2024. “Georgia worked really hard on the wing. There was one girl she shut down the whole game. Ansley Bernhard put her life on the line, on the back line. The way they played I thought they could have gotten an award, too, if they had more. It was really an honor to receive that award.
“I knew I had a lot of energy,” she said. “I didn’t know if I was the person that created anything special in that game. I just wanted the team to feel motivated and to win. It was good to see all of the hard work that I’ve put in come to fruition.”
Theriot was inundated with congratulatory messages from friends and family. Her father Ryan, a former LSU and Major League Baseball standout, believed her notoriety was about to reach an apex.
“He said Macey, ‘I think you’re going to go famous,’” Theriot said of her dad. “There were a lot of people reaching out to me and I appreciated it so much. There were people messaging my dad. A lot of the girls I’ve played with reached out. It was like a full-circle moment.”
‘One of a kind’
Such a moment came into focus for Theriot who thought back to when supporters predicted the conclusion of her high school soccer career with impeccable accuracy.
Years ago, when she was chasing her passion and climbing through the ranks of club soccer, Theriot vividly remembered being told that she would have a starring role in the biggest game of her career.
Call it a premonition, but the voices in her inner circle were right.
“They were saying they were going to watch me play one day and win an awesome award,” she said. “They were saying that in my last game, I was going to be awesome. Back then I was like, ‘Right, I’m going to be awesome. Let’s go.’ Now, was I awesome? Everyone’s coming back and telling me good job. It’s kind of emotional for me.”
Theriot finished the season with 18 goals and 17 assists, increasing her two-year totals to 35 goals and 29 assists, but statistics don’t begin to tell the whole story of Theriot’s value to the team.
Leadership is part of the role she’s played, a feisty 5-foot dynamo that knows only one speed in anything she does.
“Macey’s the most uplifting person on the team,” Nunes said. “She may be the most uplifting person I’ve ever met in my life. She will find a way to compliment the girls, find a way to compliment the coaches, find a way to compliment the referees. She’s such a people pleaser.”
During his halftime speech to the team in the state championship, Nunes was trying to encourage his team to find another gear to distance itself from its district rivals.
Nearing the end of his talk to the team, Theriot asked Nunes for a word with the team.
Her biggest objective?
“Girls we’ve got to be nice to the referee,” Nunes said of Theriot. “He’s such a nice guy, let’s be nice to him. We don’t have to yell at him. He’s going to make mistakes. Let’s not get against him.”
The moral of the story was that Theriot wanted to make sure her teammates understood they were likely to receive a call with a greater amount of respect for authority.
Theriot sees herself as someone who can positively effect change, someone who not only leads by example but puts her own words into action.
“I want them to know that not everyone is doing what they’re doing,” she said. “They’re pushing themselves past the normal limit and so they should be proud of themselves. With all the work we put in during soccer, I think everyone should be giving themselves a pat on the back, whether they played for the full 80 minutes, or just a few of them. Everyone played a part in something bigger. It’s not just about themselves; it’s about something bigger. I want them to feel influenced for the better.”
Nunes said Theriot is more than just a speedy player who puts pressure on another team’s back line. Because she’s a scoring threat, she readily opens space for teammates and can deliver the timely pass that leads to a goal.
Her other attributes such as an unbridled passion for the game with maximum effort also resonate with her teammates.
“She’s a person that’s a rule follower, works hard in practice and in the game,” Nunes said. “She brings so much enjoyment to the team, that positivity. She has something we can’t teach … the energy and she has it.
“We had to tell her to slow down a bit like in the semifinals (2-1 win over Sacred Heart of New Orleans) when she got a yellow card,” Nunes said. “If she fouls somebody in the game, she’ll tell them she’s sorry and that she didn’t mean to do that. She’s a nice person with a lot of energy that so’s difficult to find. She’s one of a kind.”
Developing a passion for running
By today’s standards, Theroit’s foray into soccer was late after initially playing softball. She said he excelled at shortstop and center fielder and was an astute hitter after first wanting to join the baseball team like her brother at Dunham.
She was hooked on soccer where she could roam and kick a ball and enjoy time around warm teammates.
Her dad, an excellent soccer player at Broadmoor High she said, found a place for her on the Flying Squirrels recreational team.
The seed was firmly planted.
Theriot’s fondness for soccer was only matched by an increasing aptitude that resulted in making the transition to club soccer to face stiffer competition.
Her mother – Johnnah – had a background in track and cross country at Catholic High in New Iberia and worked to shape parts of Macey’s game.
“My mom saw things that I could improve on,” she said. “She was starting to become my coach a little bit. For a while it was me listening to her coaching. Then I started to understand soccer more myself, moved on to bigger teams, and when she told me things I’d say, ‘Mom, I know better. I’m right. We would have little fights that a coach and an athlete would have.
“The bond with my mom was definitely different from any bond that I will have,” she said. “I wanted to listen to her, and I also wanted to talk back. She held me to a certain standard that I don’t think anyone was held to. After practice, we would go practice some more at Burbank Soccer Complex.”
Theriot’s persistence took her to Traction Sports Performance during the COVID-19 pandemic to endlessly dribble soccer balls around cones. She wanted to improve her speed and pace and touches on the ball, drills that her mother emphasized.
Her father provided timely motivational pep talks, she said.
“If I got out of line, or needed some motivation, he knew when to step in,” she said. “He would also give me talks, but I didn’t want to be involved in the talking back moments.”
Soccer had taken Theriot from the competitive fields at Burbank and regionally across the south and to Dunham before transferring to Parkview Baptist along with her sister Georgia.
Because of the commitment she made to the game to improve, Macey began looking at the sport through a different lens. She viewed her love of soccer as the path toward college and continuing her career.
“Soccer is what I had devoted myself to and wherever that option took me, I was going to go,” she said.
Running as a sport wasn’t necessarily something Theriot was enamored with. Especially if there wasn’t a soccer ball to chase down, she didn’t see much reward in it.
“Since I was younger, I was always told that I needed to go run track,” Theriot said. “I didn’t want to because who likes running? The only time I liked running was when there was a soccer ball to get to.”
Kate Cramer, the assistant soccer coach at Parkview whose two daughters Lucy and Molly are outstanding distance runners and are also on the soccer team, helped to change the mindset of Theriot who didn’t see much of a future in track.
Not only did Theriot finish as the Class 3A state runner-up in the 300 hurdles (45.72 seconds), but she was part of the Lady Eagles’ Class 3A state outdoor title in 2024.
“It wasn’t part of my original plan, but it was my idea,” Theriot said of running track. “My mom ran track and has a lot of experience. She understood what coach Kate was doing and knew there was some potential there. It started to become serious. I was nervous at first about track and when I become nervous, I don’t want to practice, I don’t want to be involved.
“I would ask my mom, ‘Why are you bringing me to this track meet, I don’t want to go?” Theriot said. “One thing I love about my mom, she would turn my defiance into motivation and the will to run. I started winning these track meets and told my mom I was really starting to like this.”
Theriot was also part of this year’s Parkview Baptist cross country team, fueled by the Cramer sisters, which won a Division III state championship. Theriot improved her time so dramatically, that she wound up fifth (19:53.3) overall.
“I wasn’t sure running for three miles was fun,” Theriot said. “I went from 22 minutes to 19 minutes. When I was in 50th place (regular season) I had no motivation, but my mom and coach Kate were the guiding hands there. They were the key pieces there to my success.
“They picked me up and told me where to put my focus,” Theriot said. “That’s where mom comes into play in my athletic career. She picked me up when I was down and put me back on track. My dad was there to re-direct me and to motivate me to get me going.”
Athletic career on track
Theriot, a 3.9 student, began a shift in her thought process about the future when her older brother enrolled at LSU.
Suddenly, leaving home to pursue a soccer career, paled in comparison to the comfort of staying at home. She remembered the angst involved in going to sleepovers when she was younger and thought of leaving her parents.
“I loved my parents so much,” Theriot said. “Leaving would have definitely been a problem. I wouldn’t have left for too long.”
The same roots were starting to take hold in Theriot’s mind. Conversations of staying home to run track at LSU, where her dad was a baseball star and mother a cheerleader, began to gain traction.
Theriot noticed LSU coaches at Parkview Baptist’s cross-country meets in the fall. She also had a knack for running the 300 hurdles, and she and Georgia, along with the Cramer sisters, won the 4×800 relay in last week’s Division II state indoor championship. Macey Theriot was fourth in the 400 meters (59.60).
“I love the hurdles,” she said. “I almost run faster in a 300-meter sprint with hurdles than without which is mind-blowing. I can get from Point A to B very fast. It’s like running to a soccer ball. I also like the steeplechase. Obstacles excite me. It reminds me of soccer and stepping over slide tackles and going for the ball. The hurdles encompass everything that I love to do. I love to run; I love to jump and avoid things. Just being athletic is fun for me.”
Theriot understood that by staying home, she could be attentive to her brother and provide support for her sister once she got past the emotional attachment of never playing soccer again.
“I was so confused,” she said. “Before it was, ‘Can I run track. Should I keep pushing for soccer? My dad said, ‘You need to keep working on everything because you never know where an opportunity will come from’. I was working on each side of the totem pole and finally, I got an answer. My dad was like you’re going to be able to run track there. It still hasn’t hit me. … Running track at LSU. I’m going to be a sprinter. Are you kidding me? I’m so small.”
Nunes explained that a reduction in eight roster spots at the Division I level, coupled with the advent of the NCAA transfer portal, has narrowed the scope for such players as Theriot to play at the highest level. But he remained confident in her ability to thrive as an outside back.
“In my opinion, she could have gone to play at any big D1 school because of the intensity and spirit that she has,” he said. “I still have coaches wanting Macey. She would help any college out there.”
A month before National Signing Day, Theriot said her father called with the news she’d been waiting for.
Theriot was beyond ecstatic that she would run track for LSU.
“I said are you kidding me?” she said. “My dad played baseball there and my mom cheered there. It’s like getting to fulfill a legacy and I also get to lead the way for my sister. It not only meant a lot to me but also to my family by staying home and also completing something for them.”
The big day finally arrived on Jan. 9 when Theriot, surrounded by family, officially signed with LSU … to run track.
“My parents didn’t want to push a sport on me,” Theriot said. “I guess because they had so much experience with sports in general, they wanted me to go where I wanted to go.”
There were a little over two months remaining in the two simultaneous seasons for Theriot to strive for two more state championships and enjoy being with her teammates.
The Lady Eagles soccer team mowed down their postseason competition, outscoring their foes 25-1, to return to the state championship game in Hammond.
Theriot said the hours leading up to the final game included prayer, bonding, and a pre-game meal followed by a 2-0 victory – courtesy of the two goals she scored.
She received Outstanding Player honors, and three days later, entered the Carl Maddox Fieldhouse where she and her sister ran the first two legs of the team’s victorious 4×800 relay that the two Cramer sisters successfully brought home to victory.
The night wasn’t finished until enjoying a social setting where the state championship indoor track trophy made an appearance.
There’s little downtime in the life of an athlete such as Theriot.
Parkview Baptist is headed to Boston (March 13-16) for the New Balance National Indoor Championships followed by another indoor meet two weeks later in California. Work will have begun on the start of the outdoor track season when the Lady Eagles will chase to another state championship in May.
In between, after the national meet in Boston, the entire Parkview soccer team will meet in Orlando for a trip to Disneyworld filled with fun and fellowship.
“Finishing my career on this team was amazing,” Theriot said. “This team has a bond like no other. Almost all of the girls love each other as sisters literally and figuratively.
“That’s what matters to me most in life,” Theriot said. “I want people to be influenced for the better. I want them to be happy people, and I want them to see and say, ‘Can I change my behavior so that I can also be so uplifting to others?’ I’m back to smiley.”