Faith Academy to start summer strength and conditioning

CAPTION: Jay Silvers is returning as the head coach of the Faith Academy Flames for his third season. Staff photos by Jennifer Fierro

The Faith Academy of Marble Falls athletic department is hosting its summer strength and conditioning program beginning at 8 a.m. Tuesday, June 2.

The Flames will end each session at 10 a.m. and will train Tuesday-Thursday.

“Three days of good, hard work,” football head coach Jay Silvers said.

He noted every football player participated in track during the spring to get faster and jump higher, resulting in a jump on the strength and conditioning. Silvers deliberately chose to give the athletes two weeks off before starting the summer program, pointing out the track season didn’t end until May 9.

“They’re always doing some lifting and a lot of conditioning work there,” he said. “And (track head coach Steve) McCannon and (assistant coach Cedric) Griffin do a great job at the running stuff. And so we have been doing the offseason stuff.”

The Flames will have weight lifting sessions as well as agility and conditioning training. The agility and conditioning will happen on Faith’s Britton Field where the athletes will participate in drills designed to make them quicker, stop and restart fast. They’ll also do sport-specific work aimed at sharpening the skills they already have.

The ability to do that and keep their balance is at the core of playing six-man football.

“They’ll work fundamentals – catching, being able to shuffle the feet, tackling drills just on the dummies and light stuff that’s not impact too much,” he said. “We’re not in pads, we’re not going to be typically in helmets or anything like that. It’s just working on fundamentals, learning how to get our shoulders in the right spot and feet in the right spot for our defensive stuff. And then just working our route recognitions and routes with offense.”

The coach noted the Flames held steady on their strength sessions throughout the offseason.

“Some of them stayed pretty similar to where they were at, no gain,” he said. “Most of them were no gain. If they didn’t gain, nobody really dropped down. The ones that run track — Egan Barnes, Graham McGraw, Landon Silvers (his son) — they’re pretty big in the track stuff. They do a lot of conditioning, so they did really well on their speed tests. And in the lifting tests, they had some gains in some areas and then just kind of stayed stagnant in a couple of areas, which was to be expected. So we’ll increase that here during the summer.”

Silvers pointed out the importance of adding muscle especially from squats and bench press.

“With the legs and the arms, we’re going full speed, non-stop,” he said. “We don’t really have what we would call linemen, where you have to dip down. But you have to be able to stay on your feet, and the squats help us help them with their quickness. It helps in the speed, but it also helps with their ability to not get tackled so easily. And then, of course, arm strength and just being able to get tackles and latch on and not let go. And on the offensive side, just being able to push and break off tackles and so for us, everybody has to be somewhat strong, because anybody can get the ball at any time. So we just want to make sure that we have good gains and good strength in those two core areas.”

While graduation means that other Flames will have opportunities to show what they can do, the coach refused to use the ‘R’ word.

“It’s not a rebuild, not the way I look at it,” he said. “It’s more like a reload – just put the next guy in offensively. We had three seniors on there, but the bulk of the offense — I would say almost 50 percent, maybe a little less was Andrew Houy — but Landon was the other 50 percent. And I have Wade Dillard. He did a great job last year. He’s going to be included in the offense a lot more. He’s a lot bigger, stronger, and he’s getting some speed on him.”

CAPTION: Defensive coordinator Garrett Cole speaks to Price Rosamond (left), Madden Kinnee, Egan Barnes and Quinton Merlick during a timeout last year. Those players are expected to play significant roles for the Flames again in 2026.