Marble Falls football gives Midnight Madness attendees plenty to cheer
CAPTION: Junior quarterback Anderson Liscum finds his receiver and the spot where he needs to throw the football as head coach Keri Timmerman observes during Midnight Madness. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro
As the clock struck midnight, the Marble Falls High School football players ran through the Mustang tunnel and onto the turf at their own stadium as the band played the fight song.
That’s how the 2026 Mustangs kicked off the first practice of the year – with a new scoreboard in the north end zone, family members, friends and fans eating barbecue sandwiches, and the players going through their normal drills to get loosened up.
“I thought it was a great night,” head coach Keri Timmerman said. “I never know what the fans look like because I don’t ever look back over there but seemed to be well attended, got a lot of positive comments and stuff from the community. Being late, sometimes it’s hard to get up, but we had a lot of support. It felt like a lot of the parents are really excited about it and had a lot that stayed after. So that part’s fun.”
And make no mistake. Attendees were treated to a bunch of players bringing their best as they spread throughout different parts of Mustang Stadium to work on position specific drills. Then the skill players reunited to combine drills, while the linemen continued to work on staying low, hand placement, footwork and other parts.
The way the players worked going into Timmerman’s third football season at the helm, where they went from drill to drill efficiently, was encouraging, he said.
“Just more comfort in how we operate, expectations, systems, scheme,” the coach said. “A lot of coaches do this, but some do it a little differently. We tend to dump as much of our offense as possible on them in the first week with no pads on so we can narrow down who we are and just see how things — motions and shifts and plays and concepts — fit our quarterbacks, our backs, our line. A lot of it was just getting in a lot of different formations, a lot of different motions and shifts and running one or two plays.”
The reason for doing it this way allows coaches to see what the players are doing well and create what Timmerman called the Mustangs’ “bread-and-butter stuff” or plays and formations they know so well and feel so comfortable in that coaches can call them at any time or use them as a base to add more options.
“Just kind of dump all these things on before we get to full pads, and where they have to be thinking about all the true physical execution of the play,” he said. “We need to be at full speed doing the right things the right way, and so that was encouraging to see our kids’ level of what they’ve been holding onto over the past three years and then just a lot of growth in a lot of positions.”
He also liked the rapport between junior quarterbacks Crawford Mattox and Anderson Liscum and the running backs and receivers. One drill called for quarterbacks to hand the ball off to a running back, while a receiver began running a route. By the time the receiver broke and turned, the quarterback had thrown another ball that was pitched to him after the handoff.
“We want the ball off the ground all the time, but we believe in the idea that we want to put them under pressure early on,” the coach said. “I want to get lots of reps, and I want to get lots of reps with people moving the way they’re going to move in a game. (The quarterbacks are) going to work on mesh, catch, throw over and over and over, and then we’re going to have some of our play action off that that will work during that time.”
The Mustangs will be in their shells beginning Aug. 5 and are allowed to wear full pads beginning Aug. 8. They welcome Gatesville for the first scrimmage Thursday, Aug. 13, and travel to San Antonio Davenport Thursday, Aug. 20, for the final scrimmage. Both begin at 7 p.m.
