Baraboo football coach Steve Turkingtons new philosophy is simple: Tough people win.

The saying, shortened to TPW, is not only reiterated during practice, but the acronym is printed on the back of the teams practice shirts as a constant reminder that no matter what adversity you face, tough athletes can get through it.

The Thunderbirds have faced more than their share of adversity over the past decade, failing to make the WIAA playoffs since 2006. That drought almost ended last season, as Baraboo was one win away from a postseason berth. The T-Birds had two losses of five points or less, both to playoff-bound foes.

Baraboo has some big holes to fill as its leading passer rusher, and receiver were lost to graduation, but Turkington believes he has the players able to keep the teams progression going.

The season was just inches away from being something really magical, he said. So now this group came in, and theyre a different kind of group, but they worked so hard during the offseason that were really excited to see what happens.

Baraboo dropped a 28-27 heartbreaker early on to DeForest and was still clinging to a potential playoff berth when the T-Birds played Mount Horeb/Barneveld on the road in Week 8. Baraboo held a one-point lead at halftime, but missed out on a couple scoring chances and a roughing-the-passer penalty helped the Vikings escape with a 19-14 victory. While some teams would like to forget about the close games and move on, Turkington said the T-Birds are using them as motivation.

I obviously reflect on it every single day. You look at all the little details if we would have hit on some of these things, that would have been the difference in the DeForest game or the Mount Horeb game, Turkington said. Either one of those we could have won and would have been in the playoffs, but instead that kind of came back to bite us.

We use it as motivation to say were not going to skip out on anything. There will be no stone left unturned to make sure we make the playoffs this year and get those wins. Because those were ours.

It all goes back to TPW, a philosophy that Turkington hopes will push his team harder than ever before.

TPW is something we stole from a coach down in Texas, and the concept is more mental than physical, Turkington said. We want you to be physically tough, but mental toughness is really what were talking about. So when adversity strikes, youre going to push through it and youre going to come out a winner.

Its going to be our permanent thing, as long as Im here. We used it in baseball too. (Baseball coach and defensive coordinator) Steve Considine and I met this offseason, before baseball even started and started asking, What are we missing? Obviously weve got this kids working really hard. And weve got coaches, were teaching the game well, weve got fundamentals and all that stuff is being taken care of. What we were missing is the culture change across our sports. So we invested a lot of time and energy in culture.

Physically, the T-Birds will be tougher as well. Turkingtons Winning Edge workout program has seen record numbers.

I would say during the wintertime, Monday and Wednesday mornings wed have 50-60 kids in the weight room. And theyve never had that around here before, he said. Weve created this program where were going to make sure our athletes are doing it during the season and it becomes a year-round thing for our athletes.

You can see it in our kids. Were way bigger, faster and stronger than we have been in the past.

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PREP FOOTBALL: Baraboo's "Tough people win" philosophy bringing new attitude - WiscNews