Faith Academy football sees strength and conditioning gains
CAPTION: Jackson Zarob takes a quick glance to see how much of a lead he has over Zach Houy during a chase drill. Staff photos by Jennifer Fierro
The Faith Academy of Marble Falls football program is finishing a productive start to the summer.
The Flames have been participating in their strength-and-conditioning program for the last several weeks, and head coach Jay Silvers said the gains can be plainly seen.
“I would say pretty much everyone has come unless they’re going to camps or a family vacation,” he said. “And that may be one or two kids who are out. I have about 24 or 25 on the team right now. I think we have about 20 or 21 every day.”
Coaches have created platoons. Each one has at least one senior.
“It’s really helped I believe in the camaraderie of the groups,” Silvers said. “They’re working well together, they work through the lifts. There’s always things they can improve on and stuff like that. But I would say 99 percent of the time, they’re just building each other up, working with each other, clapping each other on. It’s been different this year watching these guys interact.”
Silvers, who has been on staff for at least the last six years, has observed many of his players and coached some since they were in elementary school.
“These guys have all played together since they were in the fifth grade,” he said. “And so now to see them as juniors and seniors, they rely on each other, they pick up each other, they encourage one another, they’re having fun in the competitions. There’s no negative that I’m seeing out there, and so that’s been the biggest thing for us is just being a family and supporting each other and taking care of one another.”
Early on, the underclassmen simply didn’t have the speed to keep up with several of the veterans, particularly those who are all-state athletes known for their ability to speed away from opponents.
“The freshmen have done a great job of keeping up now,” the coach said. “They’ve seen it from the stands or maybe they’ve been on the sideline before helping us but when you’re actually out there on the field and you’re seeing how fast these athletes are – it was a shell shock at first just how fast everything moves at this level. They have done a really good job of just sticking to it, trusting the coaches and just ‘Hey, you’re going to figure this out, it’s going to take a second, and you will be all right.’ Our seniors and juniors and sophomores have done a really good job of just taking them under their wings and just building them up and telling them you’re going to get this.”
The staff plans on doing testing in the next few days “to see how much they’ve gained in a month of workouts,” Silvers said.
“The strength part, we’ll get a better idea next week when we do our maxes again, just to see are we getting some good growth,” he said. “I am seeing a lot better, a lot more weight being thrown on. And so that’s been nice to see and seeing the kids push each other and the ones that thought they couldn’t do a certain weight (now) can do the weight. I feel like we’re moving in the right direction from what I’m seeing.”
