Marcia Zierlein grew up on a farm near Menlo, Kansas, where she learned the discipline and work ethic that marked the rest of her life. She graduated from Menlo High School in 1963, attended Kansas State University and Colby Community College, and earned a business degree from Fort Hays State University. That is where she met Larry Zierlein.
Larry’s coaching career took the family across the country, and Marcia built a career of her own at every stop. In Abernathy, Texas, she started as a junior high library assistant and within a year was running the district’s federal programs. In Richmond and Rosenberg she worked in the Lamar Consolidated superintendent’s office. In New Orleans she became Director of Continuing Education at Tulane Law School, and she kept that job for two years while commuting from Baton Rouge after Larry joined LSU. In Cincinnati she worked in human resources at Citibank. In 2010 the Zierleins settled in New Braunfels.
She was a football wife in every sense. She fed Larry’s offensive linemen, helped with game film and grading, and opened her home to her children’s friends. She and Larry raised three children, Lance, Mike and Nicci, and she loved her nine grandchildren.
She was the engine behind the scenes.
From Marcia Zierlein’s obituary
In 1997 Larry and a partner founded the Lone Star Coaching Clinic to give Texas high school coaches a place to learn from each other. Marcia became its Director of Operations and ran it for 29 years. She handled the organizing, the problems and the thousand details that coaches never saw, so that they could spend two days getting better at their craft.
When Marcia was diagnosed with cancer in 2025, the clinic paused, because it could not run without her. She passed away in January 2026. The Lonestar Coaches Network now carries the clinic forward, and this award carries her name.