Marble Falls defensive end Bielfeldt signs with Cisco College

CAPTION: Marble Falls senior defensive end Kaleb Bielfeldt (center) holds his National Letter of Intent after he signed it to play at Cisco College during a signing ceremony as his parents, Kara (left) and Karl “Beef” Bielfeldt, look on. Courtesy photo

Marble Falls High School senior defensive end Kaleb Bielfeldt made his commitment to Cisco College official Feb. 4 by signing his National Letter of Intent.

“The area is something I’m familiar with,” he said. “It’s kind of that small town feel. The coaches are turning it into a program to be reckoned with for the past three years. They’ve been in the top four in their conference, the Southwest Junior College Football Conference. The guys there are committed to their program, and so that makes it an easy choice.”

Another reason he wanted to play there comes back his recruitment.

“We can debate about facilities,” he said. “At the end of the day, if you don’t have the culture, whether you have facilities or not, it’s not going to work. So that message definitely was a big driving force for why I committed.”

Bielfeldt joked that his favorite part of playing defensive end is “taking the quarterback’s head every day is kind of fun.”

“It’s the physicality of it,” he said. “Football’s already a brutal game, and there’s definitely been some changes in the rule books on how the game’s played that, you know, irritate me a little bit because it takes the physicality out of it. But the line positions are really just ‘Mano y Mano.’ So that’s been my thing. How much longer can I go than the tackle can before I see him blink and then I have him for the rest of the night? And then how quickly can I get that quarterback or that running back on happy feet cause once they’re on happy feet, they’re not thinking about anything else.”

Few people understand physicality better than Bielfeldt, whose father is defensive line coach Karl “Beef” Bielfeldt. The younger “Beef,” whose mother is Kara Bielfeldt, pointed out that sharing the journey with his dad and seeing how his performances and that of the line and the team affects the coach brings a mix of emotions.

“I have my own opinions and sometimes, with two minds that want to win that bad, it can lead to a bit of an argument,” he said. “But overall, it’s awesome. I get to spend basically my work with him. And I get to have that direct connection of this is what we do.”

Bielfeldt earned the Trench Warfare Belt in back-to-back seasons. It’s a belt lineman compete for weekly during the season. The recipient gets the belt based on votes by the coaches. In 2025, the defensive end won the belt four times. At the end of the season, the lineman who has won it the most gets to keep it.

The belt illustrates his reason for what he wants to accomplish in contests.

“I just want to be the one force in the game that changes how the other team plays,” he said. “I spend probably 25 to 30 hours a week looking at film constantly trying to see what the guy across from me is going to play. How do they set up in certain formations to run certain plays? Can I pick something off, that if they do it during a game that I know exactly where they’re going and I can stop it dead in its tracks, which then obviously forces offensive coordinators and the team to rethink how they want to approach.”  

The defensive end had 59 tackles, six sacks, 27 hurries, an interception and a pass deflection all in 2025. In his three years playing varsity football, which includes the one year at Leander, he tallied 151 tackles, 13 sacks, 54 hurries, two fumble recoveries, three pass deflections and an interception.

Because he’ll spend two years at Cisco, he’ll be a general studies major then transfer to major in agricultural business and management to eventually become a ranch manager in Texas.

Though he has only spent two football seasons as a Mustang, Bielfeldt has learned plenty while wearing the purple and gold.

“Granted we didn’t make the playoffs,” he said. “I was on fire the rest of the season to see how could I help the rest of the guys get better? And that changed my mindset from having to do it all by myself to trying to figure out how to put (my teammates) in position to where they could do their own part to help.”