By Ben Wolford
Record-Courier correspondent
If toe touches were the measure of a football team, the Field Falcons might still be without its second playoff berth.
Out of about 50 football players on their roster, scarcely a half-dozen reached much past the knee pad while stretching at practice Thursday.
Luckily for the Falcons (8-2), they have other strengths: A star-studded rushing squad, a capable quarterback and a healthy pack of 250-pound linemen.
And if Field is going to win its opening-round, Division III playoff game at Walsh Jesuit tonight, head cocah Patrick Youel said those strengths can't falter.
Not even once.
"Basically, we've got to play sound football," said Youel, who is in his first year as head coach of the Falcons. "We can't turn the ball over, and we can't have many penalties. If we make mistakes, we will be in trouble."
That's the way it has to be when you're playing the top-seeded Warriors. They're big and they're fast and they're widely favored to win the Region-9 bracket.
But many of Field's players know what Walsh Jesuit is like from their encounter in the state playoffs only one year ago.
The Falcons, who had never been in the playoffs prior to 2007, lost 35-0 to the Warriors in 2007, though the score looks worse than it actually was. And in any case, it marked a renaissance for the program.
Before Thursday's practice, a big tray of chocolate cookies lay on a table in the coach's office " a gift for the coaches, "love, your wives and girlfriends."
"Can I have a cookie, coach?" asked junior running back Jay Lugo as he poked unannounced into the room.
"Touch them and you're running," Youel said. "Those are from the coaches' wives and girlfriends, and I don't love you that much."
But you do love him that much, I asked when Lugo left.
"Yeah, I do," Youel said.
Since transferring to Field from Windham over the summer, the Falcons' program has benefitted immensely.
"He was a very wonderful addition to our team personality-wise and talent-wise," Youel said.
Even from Field's first day of summer camp on July 17, Youel said the Falcons made the new guy a part of the team.
But Youel, formerly the offensive coordinator, was a new guy, too.
Fortunately, the transition was easy, he said, as the Falcons were undergoing a "change of culture" anyway.
"What (former head coach Matt) Furino was able to implement and bring to this school was that change of culture," Youel said. "It really was a change of a 60-year culture of maybe being 5-5 or 6-4 or 7-3. Last year it was expected of that team to go beyond that."
It's the new sense of expectation, determination and community interest that has pushed the program to a higher tier of performance, Youel said.
In 2007 they introduced a new slogan: "Two communities, one team, one vision."
They even bought about 1,500 shirts that said "Witness" and gave them for free out to the community.
"You have to use Mogadore as an example," Youel said, "but you can't go five feet in Mogadore without seeing a sign of a Wildcat. If you come to any one of our games now, you're going to see someone painted and running with a flag."
But that's how you change a team's attitude.
That's how you get people excited.
That's how you secure playoff spots.
With so much culture-changing at Field, it's easy to see how toe touching could get overlooked.