Live Oak competes in TAPPS 6-man Division II football, and is coming off of a title-run, 8-6 season.
The Falcons are under new leadership this year but with a familiar face. Brice Helton has stepped into the head coach's role, swapping places with last year's head coach.
The team lost a lot of talent with last year's graduating class.
"We got a lot of good kids that know how to work hard, that have been putting the time in over the last few months, and they really bought into the program. And when you have kids that do that, I'm not gonna say that they're interchangeable, but you can absorb loss of athleticism and talent of seniors from year to year," Brice Helton, Falcons Head Coach, said.
But, the coaching staff believes winning is a by-product of the right focus: hustle and heart.
"Last season, we didn't workout hardly at all during the summer, and everyone was lazy. We'd just come off a win, we thought we were big, we were bad. But then, we lost a lot last year, and that's not like our program. We usually lost, at most, two games," Jackson Weithorn, senior running back and defensive back, said. "And so, this season we really came out, and said hey we gotta work hard over the summer because that's a big key factor, like we're losing a lot of guys, but we're gonna work a lot harder than we ever have before."
"Honestly, I think we'll win majority of our games just based on out hustling the other team," Ben Buras, senior wide receiver and linebacker, said.
The Falcons kickoff their season with a rivalry match-up at home versus Vanguard on Aug. 31st.
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