The Lineman Challenge is growing, and this is a good thing. It hosted its state tournament in Duncanville on Wednesday, and what was an eight- or 10-team event last year has become a 40-team event this year.

“When you get to go up against the atop athletes in the state and get out of your own pond, the bar is raised,” said David Woods, lineman coach for the Marble Falls football team. “They see the best guys and work hard to get close to their marks.”

The sport is drawing from a much larger pool this year. They had teams qualify from as far away as Laredo, San Angelo, Abilene and Texarkana. This means the sport has taken hold across the whole state, not just in the central metro areas where it began.

“I think we will see tremendous growth in our sport over the next five to 10 years,” Woods said. It will probably do the same way 7-on-7 did.”

Three Marble Falls linemen competed at the state event. Ronnie Boatwright and Blake Ripple were competing for the second time. They were both there last year as freshmen. Andrew Mitchell was competing for the first year.

Results for the meet weren’t available at press time, but according to Woods, they were to be posted on the organization’s Web site, www.texaslinesmanchallenge.com, by Thursday night.

“It’s hard to tell how we finished,” Woods said. “We know we didn’t come in first, second or third, but they wouldn’t give us the results. They didn’t want any confusion or to upset people at the event, so they took some extra time to make sure everything was correct.”

Even without the final results available, Woods was confident that the three Mustangs competing did very well.

“Our guys did really good and they competed really hard in all six events. They didn’t make any major mistakes; no one slipped and fell. It was just a really solid performance. The guys did just about what they normally do for times. They were really close to how they did at the Seguin meet,” Woods said.

The competition was a long one, lasting four and a half hours. Each event took about 30 minutes to complete, and the sun was present for all of them.

“The best part about it was seeing superior athletes and competing against them,” Woods said. “I saw one young man pull a 135-pound sled that was tied to his waist 40 yards in 4.7 seconds. It was unbelievable. I had to check the judge’s time twice. When our kids see that type of athlete, they know they have to work harder.”

Final results from the state competition will be in Tuesday’s edition of the Highlander.