With 18 days left before UCF opens the 2026 season against Bethune-Cookman on Sep. 3 at 7 p.m., the Knights’ countdown to kickoff turns to two players wearing the same number: kicker Will Stone and linebacker Preston Hall.
Stone arrives in Orlando with more than just a leg. He told teammates during an April 7 practice that he has taken up DJing after getting into house music a couple of years ago.
"When I was still in Austin, I got a couple of gigs to go DJ for different places and different people," Stone said. "I recently got into sound design, so making my own songs, my own house songs and EDM songs; and so for my talent, I made a couple different remixes of different songs, and I put them together live, and I played them all for the team, and they loved it."
He also said he plays golf to a 2-handicap, a game he has kept with him through high school and college.
On the field, Stone has mostly worked as a kickoff specialist since joining Texas in 2022. His only extra-point work came in the Longhorns’ CFP semifinal against Ohio State at the 2025 Peach Bowl, when he went 2-for-2.
At Texas, he played in four games as the kickoff specialist before redshirting. He kicked off 20 times, produced eight touchbacks and averaged 62 yards per kickoff.
Since arriving at UCF, Stone has already shown up in a pair of trick-shot videos on the Knights’ social media channels. In one, he punted a football into the air and struck it with another football kicked kickoff-style. In the other, he launched a football from the Black and Gold Cabana into a tall box at field level.
UCF special teams coordinator Pete Alamar, who Stone said he first met during a Texas football summer camp, described him as "a student of the game" and "focused."
That experience could matter in a close competition for the kicking job. Stone is battling redshirt freshman Noah McGough for the placekicker role, and his college background gives him a strong case to be the favorite.
"I just got to be repeatable," Stone said during the Knights' local media day. "I gotta show [Alamar] that yes, you can hit the big ball and you can hit a good kick, but how many times in a row can you do that to the point where he trusts you? Because consistency is really just being repeatable for a long period of time, and I think if I can just show him that, maybe I'll get the opportunity this fall."
Hall’s path to UCF comes with a football family background. His father, former U.S.
Marine Ahmard Hall, walked on at Texas after attending on the G.I. Bill and became the Longhorns’ starting fullback on the 2005 team that won the national championship.
He later signed with the Tennessee Titans as an undrafted free agent in 2006 and spent all six of his NFL seasons there, catching 73 passes for 561 yards and two touchdowns while rushing 24 times for 80 yards.
Preston Hall’s older brother, Mason, played inside linebacker at UTSA, though he appeared in only three games across three seasons in San Antonio.
UCF landed Preston Hall on June 22, when he committed after receiving his first Power 4 offer from the Knights, according to 247Sports. He also held offers from San Diego State, Colorado State, San Jose State, UTSA and Sam Houston.
At Ridge Point High School, Hall put together a senior season that included 73 tackles, 47 solo stops, 12.5 tackles for loss, two sacks, six quarterback hurries, four passes defended, one interception and two fumble recoveries.
He enters a linebacker room that has grown deeper since spring practice, with Arthur Kingdom and Cole Kozlowski joining the group, along with transfer additions Tackett Curtis, Jahleel Culbreath and Rashad Henry. Those moves, plus returners Lewis Carter and Jayden Jennings, make it unlikely Hall sees much, if any, action in 2026. His clearest path to the field would come late against Bethune-Cookman or in garbage time later in the season.
Even so, Hall is part of a freshman group that includes Matthew Occhipinti, Jayden Burnett and Dylan Bennett, and the long view is where his role could matter most. With several veterans in the room expected to move on, there’s room for that young group to grow into the backbone of the linebacker unit down the line.
"They're fortunate to be around a really good group of guys like [Carter] and veteran guys, like we have, and Jayden Jennings, and all those guys, because they've got good mentors in the room, in terms of their peers," UCF linebacker coach Mark D'Onofrio said during the Knights' local media day.
In Other News...
Texas Suddenly Has A Camp Concern It Couldn't Afford Up Front
Texas got an unwelcome camp development this week when Trevor Goosby went down in Mondays practice on a non-contact play and had to be evaluated further. The redshirt junior left tackle had emerged as a name worth watching up front, so any issue there immediately puts pressure on a position group the Longhorns can least afford to thin out in August.
Goosby was diagnosed with a bone bruise in his left knee after a Tuesday MRI, and the medical staff will handle the timeline from here. The uncertainty is the real problem for Texas, because his recovery could take anywhere from weeks to months, leaving the staff to sort out both the short-term rotation and the longer view for a spot that has to hold up before the season arrives. [Read more 🡒]
Art Briles Just Added A Wild Twist To Texas History
Art Briles is back in college football, this time as the head coach at Eastern New Mexico, his first stop in the FBS or FCS ranks since 2016. The move sends him back into a sport he once helped shape at Baylor, after stops coaching in Italy and at the high school level, and it immediately reopens an old chapter in Texas football history for fans who still remember how close he once came to Austin.
In a recent interview, Briles also revisited a fascinating what-if from more than a decade ago, saying he had lined up a path that would have taken him to Texas in 2013 before changing course. The timing of that decision still hangs over both programs in different ways, especially given what Baylor became afterward and how much the Longhorns coaching trajectory changed in the years that followed. [Read more 🡒]