Faith Academy football beats San Marcos Hill Country
CAPTION: Faith Academy junior Graham McGraw catches the game-winning touchdown to complete the comeback against San Marcos Hill Country. Photo by Stennis Shotts
The Faith Academy of Marble Falls football team defeated San Marcos Hill Country 51-50 Sept. 4 for the Flames’ first win of the season.
Trailing 50-45 with under two minutes left in the contest, the Rams needed only to run out the clock because the Flames (1-2) were out of timeouts.
On third down the Rams quarterback threw the ball to a receiver that was caught, but he was out of bounds in “the back of the end zone,” Flames head coach Jay Silvers said.
On fourth down, the quarterback connected with the receiver.
“Our guy didn’t back up into the coverage like he was supposed to,” Silvers said. “And they threw the pass to a wide open receiver, but it hit him in the hands and fell out. The fourth down play – we just got lucky.”
Faith took over and the drive ended when Landon Silvers found Graham McGraw on a 28-yard touchdown pass with nine seconds left in the contest.
“Graham caught one pass early in the game, but they double covered him,” the coach said. “And you could hear them calling ‘double-double.’ Wherever he went, they followed him because they knew he was our fastest receiver. And so they had one guy across and one guy sitting back a little deeper, so they made it hard to get him.”
On this particular touchdown, the younger Silvers forced the defense to adjust to him.
“Because the way Landon was rolling out all night — and he torched him all night long — they left Graham alone,” Jay Silvers said. “And he ran across the back of the end zone, and Landon threw it from left to right and Graham caught it for the win.”
Landon Silvers had 25 rushes for 323 yards and four touchdown and completed 14 of 21 passes for 141 yards and three touchdowns. Hudson Tatum had two rushes for 10 yards and a score and seven receptions for 68 yards and a touchdowns, while McGraw had two catches for 31 yards and a score, Cooper Hansard caught two passes for 14 yards and a touchdown.
“We just felt like they didn’t match up offensively for our speed — what we have on offense — but they have some really good players around that side,” the coach said. “We fought with them all night long. It was kind of back and forth.”
Price Rosemond had eight tackles and an interception, while Quinton Merlick had eight tackles and two assisted tackles, Egan Barnes had six tackles, Madden Kinnee had four tackles and two assisted tackles, and Landon Silvers had three tackles, one assisted tackle and a sack.
While Faith was playing its third game of the season, Hill Country’s first contest, which was against the New Braunfels Thunder Aug. 28, was cancelled because of a line of thuderstorms. So the Rams were playing in their first game of 2026 with new offensive starters, particularly at the skill spots.
Just how big were those two Hill Country offensive plays?
“Based off my math, which I was doing on my play sheet, if we stopped them, we would have only about 15 seconds to try to score,” Silvers said. “But we had about a minute (and) eight (seconds). We can do a lot of stuff in one minute, and so they gave us that minute, and we took advantage of it. We were only down by five going into that last drive, so we knew we had to score a touchdown.
The Rams earned a 9-3 record last season and won the District 6, Division III championship of the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools of which Faith also is a member. Hill Country won a couple of playoff games to reach the state semifinals.
“The Hill Country team from San Marcos is a very good team,” Jay Silvers said. “They went pretty deep in the playoffs last year. A lot of their guys returned, so we knew that they have a lot of talent on that field. They are a very good team. They have a lot of good skilled athletes out there. We just trusted in our boys – they fought the whole time, they never gave up. They picked each other up when something bad would happened and they’d get after it again.”
Faith travels to play at Fredericksburg Heritage at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 11. The Eagles (2-0) defeated The Christian School at Castle Hills 64-20 Sept. 4 and San Marcos Academy 54-6 Aug. 28.
In the third quarter, the Rams led by a couple of touchdowns, but the Faith defense “shut them down in the fourth quarter.”
“We held them to zero points in the fourth quarter,” the coach said. “And our offense scored a touchdown, got the one point so that brought us within five, and then with nine seconds left, we scored that other touchdown.”
CAPTION: Faith Academy defender Egan Barnes (6) grabs the jersey of the San Marcos Hill Country ball carrier and refuses to let go. Photo by Stennis Shotts
