Faith Academy football uses bye week for district prep
CAPTION: Faith Academy head coach Jay Silvers welcomes one of the standouts to his sideline, sophomore Landon Silvers, his son. Landon is one of several Flames who are excelling in the offensive and defensive schemes has led to a 6-1 record. Photo by Stennis Shotts
The Faith Academy of Marble Falls football team enjoyed a well-earned bye Friday, Oct. 17 right before starting Division II, District 4 of the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools.
Faith (6-1) will board a bus for the first time this season Friday, Oct. 24, when they visit San Marcos Academy (1-5). Then they’ll host Bulverde Bracken (1-5) Friday, Oct. 31, and San Antonio Lutheran (5-2) Friday, Nov. 7. Kickoffs are at 7 p.m.
Faith is the defending district champion after squeaking out a 40-33 win against San Marcos Academy, a 68-62 victory at Bracken, and a 58-7 blowout against Lutheran in 2024.
As part of the bye week, head coach Jay Silvers, who is in his second year in the role after being the program’s defensive coordinator for at least four years, was reviewing game film and his play sheet.
“I just really want to go over the schemes that San Marcos runs, and then, of course, offensively, just make sure we nail down some stuff,” he said. “I introduced things throughout the different games, but I never really put them back-to-back. We have our core plays that we run, but I have things that I worked on during these seven games that we played, and so I’m going to go back through them and see which ones I really want to keep in there and which ones I want to toss and maybe add new stuff.”
The Flames earned wins against Leander Founders Classical (6-1) 70-48 Oct. 10, Medina (6-1) 76-55 Oct. 3, Giddings Lodestar Southwest (0-5) 45-0 Sept. 26, Barksdale Nueces Canyon (2-5) 56-6 Sept. 19, Austin Valor North (3-2) 83-13 Sept. 5, and Sugar Land Logos Prep (2-4) 52-41 Aug. 28. The only loss was the rival Fredericksburg Heritage (5-1) 54-46 Sept. 12.
Silvers said he isn’t surprised by the pre-district record.
“No,” he said. “I mean, my thought was with the guys, the athletes that I knew that we had on the field, I felt like we would either be 7-0 or 6-1. And that’s just my honest assessment of what I had on my team. After that first game, that really kind of solidified we’re going to make a run. I knew Heritage was going to be probably our biggest battle. And I knew Logos Prep was going to give us a challenge. I did not know what Medina was going to have. And I did not know that Founders had a pretty good team.”
Both Medina and Founders Classical entered their contests against Faith with undefeated records and left Marble Falls with their first losses of the season. Though Heritage beat Faith, the Eagles’ lone loss was to Founders Oct. 3, a week before facing the Flames.
Faith has played every 2025 game in its home venue of Britton Field. Silvers said that’s been a blessing, adding there are various reasons for why. One is because there aren’t set rules stipulating TAPPS members must have a home-and-home agreement with non-district opponents. Silvers also had to find opponents for open dates.
“I was like, ‘I’m just looking for games, I need some home games, and we’re willing to travel within reason,'” he recalled stating. “And a lot of teams that contacted me were like, ‘Hey we’ll come to y’all. We heard y’all have a great facility. So we’ll come there if you want, and we’ll just play the one game.’ I’m not gonna say no to that. It just worked out in our favor with a lot of these teams. Now I did agree to a home-and-home with Founders, so we’ll go play in Leander next year with them. And then I’m going to try to get a couple of these teams that we played this year, we’ll travel next year. But it’ll probably be more split 50-50. We’ve traveled a lot in the last two years, and so it’s nice this year for the guys and the teams that are willing to come play us to come to our facilities and for us to not have to travel as much this year.”
Overall, Silvers couldn’t be happier with the team’s progress. He and defensive coordinator Garrett Cole, who also is in his second year with the program, have witnessed a group of Flames who are hungry and willing to pay the price of preparation for success.
“There’s some people that are friends with friends on our football team. And they’re like, ‘Yeah, they’re just a good team,'” the coach said. “And so I had an idea about them, but I did think by the end of this non-district swing that we had, I thought we were going to be either 7-0 or 6-1 or at worst 5-2. I felt like with what I knew about our team, and the guys that we have offensively and then even on the defensive side, I felt like we were going to be in a pretty good spot by the time we were done with our non-district schedule.”
