Marble Falls athletes finish first week of Forge

CAPTION: Basketball players Luke Ochoa (left) and Logan Mayor sprint to a cone from opposite ends, stop and backpedal as part of a change-of-direction drill that’s part of Forge ’26 workouts. Staff photos by Jennifer Fierro

The Marble Falls Independent School District completed its first week of Forge ’26 June 4 after enjoying a week off.

Strength and conditioning coordinator Karl “Beef” Bielfeldt was encouraged by what he saw.

Top of the list is the number of attendees. The program drew 125 boys in grades 9-12 and around 65 seventh- and eighth-grade boys. The Lady Mustangs in grades 7-12 had 100.

Bielfeldt, who is entering his third summer conducting the program, pointed out another positive – the veterans and how they are leading the younger athletes.

“If you’ve been with me enough and you’ve been paying attention and you’ve been committed to it, then the carrot or the reward is now that I can get a little fancier with you,” he said. “And so, (there’s) a pride one has as far as their ability to stay locked in and get done what they need to get done allows us, the other coaches and I, to focus on the rising ninth-graders, and anybody that’s near the program, that frees us up. And on top of that, they turn into coaches themselves because they understand what’s expected from them. That’s nice to see as far as kids doing a step up, and they’re becoming more vocal about how things work in the weight room and out on the turf. So they are leading by example, but they are also a resource.”

When the Lady Mustangs are on the turf doing their agility and change-of-direction training, the football players are in the weight room, while the Mustangs who play other sports may be on another part of Mustang Stadium doing their own change of direction drills. That way coaches can maximize space and time and ensure each group is getting the complete daily workout.

The change of direction and agility work serves as the conditioning work, particularly because coaches want the athletes to be precise in their movements as they go as fast as they can. These drills mimic much of the natural movements in every sport because so few of them allow athletes to run in a straight line.

“The big conversation piece I have with all of them when they get in the weight room, especially when they first meet me, is that my job is not to make them a good softball, soccer, football, baseball player,” Bielfeldt said. “As the strength and conditioning coordinator, which actually I call athletic performance coordinator, my job is to turn them into the best athlete possible and then deliver the best athlete to the sport coach and then the sport coach’s job is to use that athlete. Everything we’re going to do out there — every athlete needs to be able to jump, every athlete needs to be able to push-pull, they’ll be able to change directions — and so really when you look at it, I can take any player who goes ‘well, why are we doing this?’ I go ‘well, OK, based on this, this is why we’re doing it, and this is how it relates to what you’re doing on the softball field,’ or ‘this is how it relates to what you’re doing on the basketball court,’ and so it’s not always going to be a one for one, but there’s always pieces of ‘well, if we’re going to change the direction, I need to be able to stop and actually gain separation.’ I think one of the big things we saw over the past two years is our kids were able to create separation on the court versus ‘hey, I’m trying to shake them loose,’ and you never lose them because when they were trying to cut, they were spread out like a baby giraffe.”

CAPTION: Gage Goebel bends at the waist and uses his arms to lift weight designed to make him stronger.  

After the Forge session concludes, athletes divide into sport-specific drill work.

Bielfeldt noted one big challenge is the athletes committing to doing the work while not immediately getting the results they want.

“That’s definitely kind of those hard things because sometimes you don’t automatically see it right off the bat,” the coordinator said. “And so sometimes you have to go back to film and show them year-over-year (gains) as far as ‘hey, look when you try to do the same thing last year, this is what it looked like. Now, this is what it looks like this year.’ And so I know routinely throughout the year I’ll have a couple of the leaders on the team going, ‘Hey coach, can we do more of this? We really like it when we do this.’ I’m not going to be a totalitarian in how we do stuff. If kids have a drill they like or if they’re cognizant enough to say, ‘Hey, we need a little bit more work here, I’m feeling kind of deficient in this movement,’ then we’re going to go hit it.”

Bielfeldt said those conversations are invaluable to him as they illustrate the strong communication between athletes and coaches.

“I definitely want to have some sort of partnership with the kids where they understand that this isn’t just you walk in and do everything you’re told,” he said. “I’m going to listen to what you have to say, and if it makes sense and we can change it based upon the day we’re in or the phase we’re in, then we’ll do that as well. So when they take ownership of their training, things are so much better. I definitely start having more fun when they kind of challenge me to be on my toes a little bit more.”

Forge continues Monday-Thursday with the high school boys and all female athletes at 7 a.m. and the seventh- and eighth-grade boys at 9:30 a.m. for the next three weeks. The department will take a week off June 29-July 3 and begin again July 6.

“I think we had really good attendance for week one,” Bielfeldt said. “I challenged, specifically the Lady Mustangs at the end of the year and I said, “Look, I’m specifically including the middle school with y’all so you can set the standard of this is what it needs. This is what has to be done for us to be good athletically. You have to be here.’ And so threw that gauntlet down, and it was nice to see the veteran returners that were there, them actually showing the example and setting the example of this is what it’s going to take if we’re going to move our programs forward. Really do appreciate the acceptance of that challenge and then them rising to it.”

CAPTION: Freshman Bridgette Wilde (front, left) follows the examples of upperclassmen Paige Jamail, Delilah Guzman, Ally Moran (back, left) and Brighton Bernard during the Lady Mustangs agility work on the turf at Mustang Stadium. The Lady Mustangs formed about five lines in the south end zone and performed a combination of various movements that included sprints, stopping and sliding from side to side and back to sprinting, as they went around 25 yards.