Opening up their season on Thursday, Aug. 30, against Rockwall-Heath High School, Timber Creek Varsity Football will kick-off the 2018-2019 school year at 7 p.m. at the Keller ISD football stadium. With a district realignment starting, the players will go up against several new schools  in Class 6A, including Southlake Carroll, Denton Guyer and Byron Nelson high schools. Seen as the “underdogs”, the team spent the summer in preparation, working out every day and improving their skills, both on the field and off.

“We had our speed and strength camp [this summer], which was very well attended, especially by the varsity guys,” said Head Coach, Kevin Golden. “Most all of them were there every day all through the six weeks, and before that of course we had spring football. We think we’ve got a pretty good nucleus with the work crew this summer up to this point.”

Filling spots left by the 2018 senior class graduates, student-athletes Gage Haskin and Jason Akers on the offensive line will look to fight for a starting quarterback position, with both however playing throughout the season. Meanwhile, seniors like two year starter David Casillas look to continue with the work that they have already started, along with All-District player Gabe Jones leading the defensive side with Austin Compton. Just as well, the defensive line will be filled in by several new faces, with others like Brett Phillips and Evan Johnson returning.

“Every year it’s a new team so they’re going to have a different dynamic than the last team,” Golden commented. “We have some good players with stats coming back. Blake Irving had over 1,200 yards last year as a running back, which is very good. Over 1,000 yards is great, but of course going into his senior year I expect him to be doing a lot of that.”

Consistent throughout the team’s coaching and play styles, any improvements the team makes are minute. Having changed to Falcon Tackling four years ago in order to get players heads out of the tackles, only minor tweaks have been made to the program, working only on fine-tuning smaller aspects of performance. Attending clinics and conferences every year, as well as following several websites to share football information, Coach Golden is always looking to perfect the training the team is doing, whether a drill or a way the coaches want to run a particular group.

While the team’s training may stay the same leading into a new season, the players are constantly setting new goals,improving on their weaknesses both individually, and as a team. Looking to create result oriented goals, the team leaders hope to have 100% attendance every single week throughout the year, strengthening as a team together daily rather than alone.

“I’ve talked to [the team] already about goals; there are results oriented goals…that you don’t control,” said Golden. “We talked about ‘what do we control and how can we quantify that’… the guys talked about attendance…that’s something we can control. A lot of the time you can’t control whether you win or lose, you can [only] control how well you do your job. Sure we want to win a District Championship [title], but everybody else does too. How can we get to that point?”

Watch the game LIVE on the Timber Creek Sports Network via your NFHS Network subscription at this link: https://www.nfhsnetwork.com/events/timber-creek-high-school-fort-worth-tx/gam48ee2f1d2d

Games are available for free 72 hours after the live broadcast. Additionally, live games are simulcast on TCFM at this link: http://www.radionomy.com/en/radio/tcfm

View photos from the 2017 Football season here: