Faith Academy boys basketball starts important month

CAPTION: Junior forward Seattle Hampton has been doing much of the important work in the lane to give the Flames more muscle. Photo by Stennis Shotts

The Faith Academy of Marble Falls boys basketball team finished its own Thanksgiving Classic Nov. 25 with a win against Austin Regents and an 82-50 loss to Texas Lions Academy.

“It was great,” head coach Zakk Revelle said of the tournament. “Everything went on time, so that was good. And great competition on both days. All the teams seemed as if they felt like they got something out of it. We felt like we got a lot out of it. We were only supposed to play two games. We played three, but we were happy with the results. We would have loved to have gone 3-0 but at the same time, we felt like that we learned and we got a lot of valuable playing time.” 

The Flames now turn their attention to using the final month of the pre-district schedule to their advantage.

That begins with a home game against Austin St. Andrews Tuesday, Dec. 2, with the junior varsity playing at 5 p.m. and the varsity to follow at 6:30 p.m. and end the week by participating in the HTeaO Hoops Classic hosted by Marble Falls High School.

The Flames begin play in pool four against Georgetown East View at 10:30 a.m. and Magnolia at 7:30 p.m. both on Thursday, Dec. 4. Their record in pool play determines who and what time they’ll play Friday, Dec. 5. They’ll finish the tournament Saturday, Dec. 6.

Then Faith returns to play the Mustangs inside Max Copeland Gym Tuesday, Dec. 9.

“Because of that, (Marble Falls head coach John Berkman and I) both decided that we would both be the two teams that took the four-game (tournament) schedules,” Revelle said. “Because of the number of teams, there’s going to be two teams that only got to play four games instead of five, and so I was totally cool with it.”

Now that the Faith football team’s season has come to a close, the basketball program welcomes back junior Wade Dillard and sophomore Quinton Merlick.

“(They’re) the two notable ones who played varsity minutes last year,” the coach said. “They do the two things we preach the most – defense and rebounding. You could have checked (the scorebook) last year and you wouldn’t have caught this. When we beat Lago Vista last year (62-50), a huge part of the was unsung hero Quinton. As a freshman, he guarded Henry Sisemore, who is now playing at East Tennessee State.”

Sisemore led the Vikings with 17 points, but was one of three players to score for the Vikings in the losing effort.

“Henry was their best player and Quinton took on that challenge,” Revelle said.

He summed up Dillard’s contributions in five words.

“Wade is just a gamer,” the coach said. “Wade doesn’t just lead in basketball. He leads in football, he leads in baseball. He’ll be all-district in every sport and he may even get all-state honors. He’s going to really help us on the rebounding front. A lot of pressure has fallen on Seattle Hampton to get rebounds. Dillard was such a good rebounder for us last year and brought a lot of toughness. We feel like we’re going to start to win some more rebounding battles.”

While teams play to win, Revelle noted using this final month before the start of District 4-3A play in the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools properly remains the objective.

“We just don’t look at Ws and Ls as wins and losses – it’s just wisdom and learning,” he said. “Our last non-district game is on Dec. 30. No game in 2025 matters to us (in terms of) making the playoffs or not. So we’re really focused right now on trying to get everybody right now ready.”  

CAPTION: Faith Academy senior center Judah Phillips continues to make his presence felt in the paint. Photo by Stennis Shotts