This season, the La Salle boys football team is using their strong work ethic and close relationships with one another to create community and grow the program.

With a strict, consistent schedule, they are always looking for ways to improve, starting as early as the offseason, which was described by senior lineman Zach El Youssef as “busy.” They start with the spring season, holding workouts in May which continue through November. 

However, the team bonding starts in the summer. 

Around the middle of summer, the team went on a retreat to Linfield College and stayed in the dorms for a few nights. “It was a pretty strict schedule,” junior lineman Ian Wacek said. “You just wake up, eat breakfast, go practice, and do a bunch of scrimmages all day.”

The team also attended a beach trip where they camped at Devil’s Lake. “It was a good experience for everybody [to] kind of get to know each other more and just become more of a team,” freshman quarterback Nate McCoy said. 

Many team members felt that the retreats and camps supported the friendships they’ve grown.

“Lots of the freshmen are more comfortable now because they know people at the school and they have ties,” El Youssef said. “That helped me a lot when I was a freshman too.”

Moving forward into the school year, the team has practice every day excluding Sundays. What they do during practice varies depending on the day, but it usually consists of weightlifting, a meeting, and then heading out to the field. Additionally, following their Friday night games, they have recovery from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Saturdays.

Both El Youssef and McCoy find the busy schedule somewhat tough to manage. 

“Practice is three hours, and you get home late,” McCoy said. “You just got to stay on top of everything and make sure that you don’t slack [off].”

For Wacek, however, he is able to find time to do his homework in between the busy weeks.

“I don’t find it too hard,” Wacek said. “I mean, we get some study halls, and there’s enough time after practice where I can just get my work done.”

As far as goals, the players use all of their combined efforts and ideas to support one another and the team as a whole.

Their slogan, “Pound the Rock,” created by Head Coach Dustin Janz, is their “biggest value” according to El Youssef. “PTR [also] stands for perseverance, truth, and respect,” he added.

El Youssef said an overarching goal for the team is to win the league title. “It’d be the first time winning the league title in 5A since we moved back up from 4A,” he said.

The team won the league title in 4A two years ago, but the switch to 5A, leading to competing against more skilled teams, has helped keep players motivated this season. 

“We played pretty hard opponents, 6A teams.” Wacek said. “The Lincoln game – that was pretty disappointing, that [game] we underperformed a little bit. But we can definitely get a lot better.”

Despite being recently ranked as a 5A team and playing only 6A teams in nonleague, the Falcons are determined to make a name for themselves. 

“[It] kind of lit a flame under us,” he said. “We’re gonna go prove that we’re not just the easy win, we’re gonna go give them a tough shot.”

For El Youssef,  his favorite motivator is La Salle’s student section. 

“I love the energy from the student section,” he said. “It’s amazing. Being on the field and making a play and hearing the student section go wild is one of the greatest feelings.”

Although the team has faced challenging matchups, they are determined to achieve the goals they have set for the team.

“We know we have the players,” McCoy said. “We know we have the great coaching staff. And I feel like if we could just lock it in and just perform at the level that we know we can, at that high level, then everybody knows that we could be really good.”

The Falcons play their next game away at Hood River Valley High School on Friday, Oct. 3 at 7 p.m.