I know it might seem cliche to start out the biography of a football player with an allusion to a song all about the love of the game, but when Kenny Chesney's "Boys of Fall" came out in 2010 I couldn't shake the uncanny connection to Marshall. I'm sure nearly every other young male that has played high school football also loves the song, but there's so many elements that speak specifically to small-town athletes:
In little towns like mine, that’s all they've got Newspaper clippings fill the coffee shops
The old men will always think they know it all
Young girls will dream about the boys of fall. (Chesney)
That's LaCrosse. And Osborne. And every small town our family and extended family has been a part of. Friday night football is what brings a community together in the fall. And not just the people who are interested in the game.....everyone. Because it's what you do on a Friday night, plain and simple. And that's the type of place our Sooner comes from.
8th Grade Football
When Marshall was in grade school and teachers would ask him what he wanted to be when he grew up, his automatic response was, "A football player in the NFL!" I can't count the number of years he was a Dallas Cowboys for Halloween and he never left the house without his football. Being a part of the game was second nature for a little boy whose dad coached football. The Musil's lived and breathed football and knew no other way of life. He started organized flag football as soon as he was old enough and padded up in 4th grade with his other pint-sized classmates. He played with those boys through 8th grade and then made the move to LaCrosse, Kansas. But moving to LaCrosse wasn't really moving away; it was almost like moving back home. Marshall's dad, Terry Musil, started his teaching/coaching career in LaCrosse in 1984. It only seemed fitting that his son should play out his high school career on the same field his father started his. If things had turned out differently, Dad probably would have been Marshall's coach, but in his absence Marshall was surrounded by some of the most amazing, supportive, and respectable men the game of football has to offer. Before we knew it, four years of high school football flew by and small-town Marshall was about to journey off to the red dirt plains of Oklahoma to compete with one of the most prestigious college football programs in the nation: The Oklahoma Sooners.
LaCrosse Leopard Team Captains
It's been a long road from those Little Dawg days, but a rewarding one. I've only been a bystander on this journey, but seeing Marshall go from a tiny #22 running back juking back and forth all over the field to the 240 lbs. all-around athlete that he is now, has been nothing short of awe-inspiring. Being a football player at this level requires so much more than padding up on Saturday. Watching Marshall step up as a Sooner and then make the transition to FHSU to be closer to family just proves what a remarkable young man he has grown to be.
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