Marble Falls baseball says ‘thank you’ to Scearces, field

fter the Marble Falls High School baseball team wrapped up its regular season against Jarrell April 24, about 50 alumni gathered behind the pitcher’s mound as former head coach Ronnie Scearce threw “one last pitch” to his brother, Mike Scearce, who was in charge of the stadium’s field maintenance for more than a decade.

The “one last pitch” was to honor three decades of Mustang baseball at a facility that has served as a source of community pride for those who worked tirelessly to build it. Next season, Mustang baseball will move into its new home, which is expected to be ready by the 2027 season.

But the new facility won’t take away from the meaning of the one it is replacing, which is far more than a place that had wonderful memories, created lasting relationships and friendships, and served as a different source of pride because of what residents had to do to build it.

Ronnie and Celeste Scearce joined the Marble Falls Independent School District in 1981. Mrs. Scearce was a history teacher at Marble Falls Junior High and coach Scearce taught history and coached football and baseball at the high school.

By the mid 1980s, residents were having conversations about a bond to build a new high school. Once that bond passed a new high school opened at its current location in January 1988.

And the athletic department was about to enter an extraordinary period though few may have been able to predict it. 

David Denney was hired as the football head coach in 1989. Randall Alford was the offensive coordinator and Scearce was the defensive coordinator. 

The trio guided the football program to some incredible finishes with one that still stands as the best in school history – the Class 3A state semifinals in 1992. Those Mustangs won the first of three district team titles that school year with the others coming in basketball and baseball. 

During that period, the Marble Falls sports teams that required an outdoor venue had to travel back into the heart of the city. Back then, the football team still played its games at what is now Pony Stadium on Pony Circle Drive. The varsity team and the junior varsity team, which served as the scout team, however, practiced on a field that is now the home of the current Mustang Stadium.

But the practice field for the freshmen was located down a small hill about 50 yards from the field house. 

“From what I remember just an open space that they would mow,” 1994 graduate Brad Harman said. “It wasn’t even real level, but they would mow it and give us a place to practice freshman football and all the varsity coaches during our period would come down there and be with us for that 45 minutes of the athletic period. And then they would have to leave and go back up the hill to be with the varsity and junior varsity football practice. I don’t really even know how to explain (the field), except just an open space of grass and weeds that they would mow for us to practice freshman football.”

At that time, it was common for the Mustangs to be playing December football, so when the spring semester began after the Christmas holiday, athletes returned their football gear and received their caps and baseball gear to begin preparations for the upcoming season.

But there was an issue. The only baseball park for the Mustangs was located near the football stadium on what became and is currently the Marble Falls Middle School campus.

And though football was starting an incredible run of success, Scearce had guided three different baseball teams to regional championships by the end of the 1980s. Back then, teams played a one-game, winner-take-all contest unlike today where most prefer to play a best-of-three series.

So each spring in the early 1990s, baseball players either caught a ride with a teammate who had a driver’s license or a bus ride for practice at that field.

“Once we moved up to the high school, it kind of became a pain to bus the kids back andforth Just to go to practice,” Scearce said. “Mike Fletcher was my assistant at that time and we got to talking.”

Those conversations revolved around constructing a baseball park at the new high school and the two zeroed in on the freshman football team’s practice field as the site.

“The school board at that time finally said, ‘If you want that field, you have this much money. Y’all build it,'” Scearce said. 

Total amount, according to published reports, was $65,000. 

Scearce noted that the eight 60-foot lights were in the neighborhood of $20,000 “alone.” By contrast the lights at the old field stood 38 feet.

So the athletic department had to request community members to donate materials and muscle. 

“People in the community donated, companies in the community donated dirt and stuff like that,” Scearce said.

One very important donor was Richard “Pop” Scearce, the coach’s dad, who was a maintenance operator for George Despain. 

“They did all the leveling on the field,” the coach said. 

Another was Terry Becker the father of Matt Becker, who was a masonry, and “did the dugout steps” and Fletcher and Chuck Starcich painted the outfield wall.

Ronnie Scearce smiled as he recalled the various volunteers and the work they did. Some were experts, others learned on the spot. 

“They had more paint on them than the wall itself. We called them the purple people eaters,” he said. “It was a trip seeing my dad, myself and other people just trying to lay those bricks but it gone done. We did it step by step and did it ourselves. As I look back on it, I’m going, ‘They wouldn’t let you do that today.’ But yeah pretty much all volunteer work on that field. There were a lot of late nights I will say that about building that field.”

CAPTION: Former Marble Falls Independent School District Board of Trustee Richard Giesecke (front row, left), retired MFISD educator John Klein (second row, center left) with Ronnie (wearing the white T-shirt) and Mike Scearce watching the Mustangs get another home victory. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro

Of course one big group of volunteers were the Mustangs themselves, especially the class of 1993.

“They had a burning desire to win and they worked extremely hard,” Scearce said. “Work was not a big issue to them. They knew that hard work paid off, and so that was a unique group as far as getting the extra work in and in fact, a lot of those kids on that team were out on the field hauling dirt or whatever. Most of those played multiple sports at that time, too.”

Celeste Scearce made sandwiches and iced tea, serving the refreshments under the oak tree behind the first base dugout. 

“They said the pay is good with all the sandwiches and iced tea you can drink and eat,” coach Scearce said.

The field was ready for the 1993 season and those Mustangs capped a great sports year by winning district titles in football, basketball and baseball.

“It just sparked so much excitement,” 1994 graduate Brad Harman said. 

Other great moments followed. The 2004 team also won the district title and had several talented players who played on the next level with pitcher Bryan Price being the most successful. Price was named the District 27-4A Most Valuable Player in 2004 and 2005 and played at Rice University before being drafted 45th overall in the 2008 Major League Baseball Draft by the Boston Red Sox. He played in the Cleveland Indians organization. 

Harman, who is the Abilene High baseball head coach, recalled his time as a Mustang with great affection, noting that he was a member of the 1993 team that was the first to play on the new field. And it meant even more because he and his teammates knew what residents had to do to construct that park.

“I just remember the excitement of the possibility of being able to have a field on campus,” he said. “A lot of people helped in different ways from donating time and labor to materials, but I just remember the excitement of being able to have this possibility and a bunch of kids and their parents just coming together to make this happen.

By 2005 a home clubhouse was added to the dugout to meet the need of a program that kept drawing players. Before the clubhouse, baseball players continued dressing in locker rooms at the field house, which had lockers the middle of the walkway so each player had a space that was his.

“I don’t know that a lot people realize, but the (Burnet County jail) prisoners are the ones that did all the lockers,” Scearce said of the new clubhouse. “They built them on site at the jail and then brought them down here. Again it was a community effort.”

Harman explained why having a place on campus meant so much to the players.

“(It) installs pride,” he said. “Here’s the thing about sports, and it doesn’t really matter what the sport is, but there’s a lot of things that go on in the locker room that directly lead to success on the field – you have team chemistry and you have bonds. In a one-hour or two-hour practice, you’re out there and you’re working together. But the teams that are truly successful, they spend time off the field together and a lot of that time is in that locker room. Before practice you’re getting dressed and you’re talking about your day and after practice, you take your time getting out of there, you make plans. For us back then, you’d finish practice and guys would make plans to go to Taco Bell on the way home and five or six or eight of us would go there as a group. Having that field across town, it was outdated, it wasn’t a great playing surface. and that’s all we had, so we made do. But the moment we got that thing on campus and we could walk straight from the (academic) building, get dressed in a locker room together, walk down that hill together, go in that dugout that had our logo and our name on it. It changed everything in my opinion for that baseball program.” 

In early April 2006, the Marble Falls Independent School District’s Board of Trustees renamed both ball parks at the high school Scearce Field and conducted a celebration. By then Ronnie Scearce had retired from coaching and the athletic department had added girls softball.

The night of the dedication, former Marble Falls baseball player Stan Whittle, who was on staff as a teacher and coach at that time, drove a cart around the field with Pop as his passenger. The two chatted with old friends and other alumni. By then Mike had taken over field maintenance. 

Two weeks after the event, Pop died, and coach Scearce indicated how much it meant to him and to his family the school district and the two programs conducted the ceremony while the elder Scearce could enjoy it.

Ronnie Scearce never believed it was an honor for him; it was a dedication to honor all that the Scearce family had done to get that field built and maintain it as one of the pristine playing surfaces anywhere.

Before the start of the Mustangs’ final regular season contest April 24, 2026, Celeste Scearce sat at a table with scrapbooks and other memorabilia between the stands and the home dugout, while the two Scearce men sat in the stands in front of several high school students, watching the Mustangs run-rule Jarrell 15-3. With one out left, alumni were invited to make their way to the gate on the home side. But the men didn’t get there. They stopped to talk to the Scearces then celebrated another Mustang home win. Mike and Ronnie called the evening “bittersweet.”

“When you think about that field, it was a community field,” Ronnie Scearce said. “People jumped in. A lot of hard work, a lot of memories.”