Faith Academy finishes first week of strength and conditioning

CAPTION: Austin Edwards (left) is enjoying being chased by Quinton Merlick. Staff photos by Jennifer Fierro 

Faith Academy of Marble Falls football fans may have heard the players laugh here and there during their summer strength-and-conditioning session June 3, but the results were no laughing matter.

That’s because the Flames performed plenty of one-on-one drills designed to force them to get faster and stronger, no matter if they were on the turf at Britton Field or in the weight room.

The drills called for one Flame to chase down another, mirroring so much of what Faith faces during a six-man football game where one broken tackle can mean the ball carrier going untouched the rest of the way to the end zone.

One drill featured the team forming a circle with an orange cone in the middle. A weight wrapped in a bandana was tied with a rubber band and placed on the cone. Head coach Jay Silvers called out a math equation needing the correct answer. The two Flames who got it right went to the cone. The objective was for one athlete to get the bandana and sprint back to his spot before his counterpart could tag him.

Another drill was similar. The Flames, who totaled 25, broke into about six lines in one end zone. One athlete began running while another was trying to tag him before the leader reached the 30-yard line. But most of the first runners didn’t run in a straight line.

The coach said those two drills were specifically designed to tackle a deficiency he and his staff witnessed last season.

“What we noticed a lot was we lose sight of the ball, and instead of keeping one eye on the defender or the offensive guy and one eye on the ball, we’re trying to get them to understand ‘hey, you have to stay hip to hip with them,’ especially for our defensive backs,” Silvers said. “When we played (Huntsville) Alpha Omega last year, we just had a hard time with those wide receivers, and it really exposed us a little bit on that. And so we want to make sure we’re working on those fundamentals – being able to chase down these receivers without creating penalties on ourselves, and that’s why that one drill works pretty good because you have to stay on them. But you can’t touch them. We’re just trying to get them to understand you cannot fly into him. And so they did really well with that concept and working on changing directions, the cone and ball drill, being able to run, grab something. But working on their hip movements – side to side without having to turn their whole body. We want them to trust their feet and get in the direction that they want to go quickly.”

The turf work ended with the Flames running two laps. But the catch was the program’s fastest players started in the back and had to sprint to the front of the line to set the pace. If Silvers thought they were going too slow, he would add laps. Players told the leaders to keep a solid pace so they wouldn’t have to run extra.

“I want them to set the pace for everybody, because they will get tired if we did all 25 of them (as leaders),” he said. “We’ve done that before (on conditioning day). With this big group, I wanted to work on the pace part. I talked to Graham McGraw and Landon (Silvers), Egan Barnes and Price Rosemond and Wade Dillard and said make them chase y’all down a little bit. But then just set your pace and make it a good pace. They all did a great job.”

The Flames then went into the weight room where they did core work and ended with pushups. All of that hard work will pay off when the football season starts in late August. The coach recalled hearing from two opponents that their players ran out of gas going into the fourth quarter and the Flames were still fresh and ready to battle.

“And that feels good that we’re doing the right thing on the conditioning part,” Silvers said. “You have to be conditioned. It’s just that longevity part of it.”

CAPTION: Nick Zarob (left) does his best to run fast enough to get to the 30-yard line before Chase Schorre can tag him during a chase drill that’s part of the Flames’ summer strength and conditioning.