Several Marble Falls baseball players selected all-district

CAPTION: Senior Canon Cochran’s ability to impact a game was obvious at pitcher, at catcher, at the plate and on the base paths. Staff photos by Jennifer Fierro

After another stellar season in which the Marble Falls High School baseball team won 24 games, including 11 in District 24-4A play, meant many Mustangs caught the eyes of the numerous district head coaches for all-district honors.

Named first team all-district are seniors Canon Cochran and Atreyu Machacek, juniors Grant Carter and John Alan Whittle, and sophomore Crawford Mattox.

“We had a lot of success because of those guys,” head coach Tyler Porter said. “Again, you need six through nine, you need your third and fourth outfielders, don’t get me wrong. But those five guys are in the top four offensively and are what really drove us to where we were last year. And then only losing one of them from the top four makes me feel pretty good.”

Second team honors went to sophomore Cade Briseno and junior Casey Layton.

“Good fit for them, they did a great job this year,” Porter said. “We needed some guys who hadn’t given us consistency yet to step up and be consistent, and both of those guys did. They both did over district play.”

Layton served as the team’s designated hitter and came back after a car accident around the start of the season. He hit .300 on the year.

“He’s a great story with all the stuff he went through,” the coach said.

Briseno, as a freshman (in 2025) “was kind of forced into some service maybe quicker than he needed to be and didn’t respond too well last year. But this year he really found consistency. He’s become a guy we can really lean on going into next year,” Porter said.

CAPTION: Junior Casey Layton overcame plenty in 2026 to be a solid contributor to the Mustangs’ success.

Honorable mention was freshman Landon White to go with his Newcomer of the Year award from the Marble Falls program.

“The comment I made there is really he hit his way to that award,” Porter said. “He hit, I think, .355 on the year. He probably hit over .300 in district. But I would be lying to you if I tried to quote it, but it was something like .355 on the year, which was solid, which was great. But what he didn’t really get to do, and he’ll have a chance to later, is kind of show off what he can do on the mound. Even knowing him as a sixth, seventh- and eighth-grader coming to (Mustang baseball) camp, and his arm always impressed me more than his (hitting) stats and his numbers this year. When he pitched, he basically averaged a strikeout and a half for the innings that he threw. So if he threw 12 innings, he had 18 strikeouts, something like that. But he has good swing. He’s a young kid, we have to dial in the command, but he’ll get there. And he’s going to be pretty good. And then you see physically as he fills out, he’ll continue to get better. He gained 15 to 20 pounds in muscle this year.”

Porter indicated coaches brought players’ statistics to the meeting to assist in the selections.

“Really you have to look at objectively if you can as a coach and just head-to-head when you put them (against) one thing to another, generally there are kids, who had some better numbers,” he said. “There were a couple of things I wish our kids could have gotten, but I’m not upset about it like you are in some years.”

The Mustangs posted a 24-7 overall record and 11-3 in district play with two losses to Salado and one to Burnet. It’s the first time in two decades a Marble Falls team has won 20 games in a season. One of the setbacks to Salado was 2-1 at home. The difference was an unearned run at the beginning of the contest. Still the Eagles won bi-district and area series in the Class 4A Division II playoffs. After beating Hamshire Fannett 10-1 in first game of the third round, the Longhorns won game two 4-1 and game three 4-3.

“I think they were the best team in the district,” Porter said of Salado. “I definitely think the gap closed. Last year I would have said they were probably head and shoulders (better); this year, not so much. We lost that one game 2-1 that I don’t complain much about, but that’s one that I felt like could have gone a different way. They were the best team but not the same gap.”

CAPTION: Senior Atreyu Machacek returned to the lineup for the bi-district series against Gatesville and made it count.