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There’s a different vibe around San Marcos Academy this year.
For the first time since 2015, the Bears are heading to the playoffs. This team improved from a 1-8 season in 2018 to 6-4 this year, grabbing fourth place in TAPPS Division III District 3 and securing a spot in the postseason.
“What I really like about this group is that we’ve had a good mix of some kids that have been here for a while and some kids that came in and they blended together so well and have become a team and bought in to the work ethic area,” head coach Les Davis said. “And so we’ve played well.”
Senior defenders Daven Meredith and Gordon Murphy were just eighth graders when SMA last made the playoffs. At the time, the school was in TCAL District 1 — an easier league, Davis said.
Davis allowed the eighth graders to practice with the high school teams, although the middle schoolers wouldn’t play in any games. Meredith and Murphy had both play little league football when they were younger and enjoyed the sport, but hadn’t played in a few years. They both jumped at the chance to work with Davis and the older players.
“They let the eighth graders come play with the big kids,” Meredith said. “And we were the purple hitting dummies, so they smacked us around.”
Meredith and Murphy, as well as many other players, stuck with the team all throughout high school. They struggled through one-win seasons each of their first three years. But now, they’re beginning to see their perseverance pay off.
The seniors are the top two tacklers for the Bears. Murphy, a defensive end, leads the way with 150 stops in the regular season, 49 of them unassisted and 17.5 of them for a loss. Meredith, a defensive back, ranks second with 97 total tackles and is tied with fellow senior Animaan Singh with two interceptions.
“They’ve just continue to work and get better and better and better each year,” Davis said. “And they’re our top two leading tacklers on defense and just do a lot of really good things for us. And they’re both involved in so many other activities, they’re the kind of kids that you want in your program, no matter what program you run.”
Meredith and Murphy said they see a lot of similarities between this year’s roster and the 2015 Bears. Both teams had a large group of seniors that rose through the ranks together. And both teams saw success during the season because of it.
“I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we came into this season with the mentality that we’re going to do well. A lot of times. if go into a season or even a game with the thought that, ‘Well, we’re not going to do very well this season, it’s not going to be pretty,’ then it will be,” Murphy said. “One thing that (assistant coach) Danny Davis says is, ‘How you think is how you feel is how you act.’ And going into this season, we had this mindset that we were going to win, we were going to do great, we’re going to make playoffs.”
Meredith plans to pursue a journalism degree after graduating from high school. Murphy wants to become a firefighter
SMA’s 19 seniors and the rest of the underclassmen Bears will travel to The Woodlands Chrisitian Academy (10-0, 5-0 district) on Friday for it’s first-round playoff matchup against the Warriors. Meredith and Murphy both said they’re confident heading into the game. Davis and the rest of the team is excited to be in the postseason again.
“It’s always exciting,” Davis said. “Anytime you’re playing an extra ball game as a coach — you know, it doesn’t happen. There’s a whole lot of teams that are not playing this week. And that’s what we keep telling the kids, is that, you know, you’ve earned this right by what you’ve done to this point. So now let’s don’t blow it off and forget what we’re here for. So again, even when you’ve been doing this for a long time, it’s still exciting to see kids perform and do things well.”
