“This is what spaghetti gets you!”  George Daily-Lyles yelled to his second mother, after winning last week’s CIF championship, his second and his school’s 18^th.  Julie Turley, wife of Poly’s Defensive Coordinator Jeff Turley and the ear at the other end of Daily-Lyles’ shout, would know.  For the last two years she’s had the pleasure/burden of cooking for Long Beach’s hardest-hitting family on Thursday nights.  When he was the head coach at St. Anthony, Turley’s Saints teams would have team dinners on Thursdays—at Poly, Turley has carried on the tradition with his linebackers, he and Julie hosting the weekly dinners as a way to spend time together, and to watch a little extra film.  With Julie’s help, of course, it’s also a way to ensure his linebackers carb-load before games.  Judging from the way linebacker coach Carlos Lara’s car scraped the asphalt on the way from practice to the Turleys’, she’s doing a pretty good job—at one point the coach had to stop and instruct the players to move around, redistributing their weight so he wouldn’t wreck his ride.  Poly’s game this week, as it was last week, is on a Saturday, but the players and Turleys decided that since the dinners had been on Thursdays, they should maintain the Thursday tradition. 

Tuiloma, Iosia, Suttles, Jones, and Daily-Lyles watch Pacers film, while Turley watches everything.

Upon entering the Turley home, George Daily-Lyles, Matt Jones, Kenny Tuiloma, Mac Iosia, and Andrew Suttles immediately make their way to the back of the house, where they start a game of pool as Turley gets the DVD player ready to watch game film from Grant vs. Alta (the State Champions from Utah).  The game comes up on the screen and Turley calls them over to the couches.  The film study is much more relaxed than usual, and the players start to chatter as they scout.  “Thirteen more tackles and I’ve got Alo’s record,” George Daily-Lyles boasts, referencing former linebacker William Alo’s school record for tackles in a season.  The players watch, taking note of tendencies and potential weaknesses, until dinner is ready—as you can imagine, the linebackers are ready to eat.

Ready enough that, even as they dig into Julie’s CIF championship-winning spaghetti, all Daily-Lyles wants to talk about is The Food Network.  When Suttles questions his seriousness, Daily-Lyles responds with a quick, “All I watch is the NFL Network and the Food Channel,” backed by a chorus of “Me too”s from his fellow ‘backers.  Turley says it’s this kind of banter that makes this group special.  “These guys truly are friends on and off the field.  I think they’re closer off the field than just about any other group of guys we’ve had.” 

Their chemistry as a unit—chemistry cooked up along with the pasta, perhaps—is obvious to anyone who’s watched them play.  But while they’re strong on the field, they do share a weakness off it: all three starting ‘backers (Jones, Tuiloma, and Daily-Lyles) are lactose intolerant.  “One Thursday night, after a game they played really well in, we decided to get the guys pizza as a treat,” Turley says.  “I asked them what toppings they wanted, and ordered two large pizzas.  When George, Matt, and Kenny opened up their box, they said ‘Turley, there’s no cheese on our pizza!’  Like I was going to give them cheese the night before a game.  I told them ‘Look, you guys got the toppings, the other guys got the cheese.’”

With a warm, providing mother and a gruff, instructional father, the dinner definitely feels like a family gathering, especially when Turley talks about this being their last pre-game dinner.  “I’ll miss these guys.  But then, you always miss them.” 

Over game film and food, they relax, eating fudge for dessert, the table shaking with laughter after Jones spits ice across it, finally getting a joke Turley had made earlier.  They act like a lot of families in Long Beach Thursday night—except it’s safe to say they could outhit any other table in the city.