Being down 49-0 at halftime was unacceptable.

Following a blowout loss to Logan, Park City High School head coach Kai Smalley called a team meeting.

“I said all positions are up for grabs, but I told them, ‘if you’re going to challenge for a position, understand you have to be better than the person in front of you’,” he said. “You can’t be as good. You have to be better. The best 11 play and that’s just how it has to be.”

Smalley is a hard man to read. He’s a guy with an inviting demeanor; he is always the first to extend a hand and a friendly greeting.

But don’t expect to get through to him on Friday nights.

His job is to rack up wins. His job is to perfect an offense that features more audibles, at-the-line reads and calls than Brett Favre has ever thought of.

Most importantly, though, his job is to teach kids how to play the game of football and do so successfully and enjoyably.

So far, so good.

Following that loss to Logan, the Miners have won two games in a row, upping their 2010 record to 3-3 after a difficult start to the season.

Smalley is no stranger to football. But he is a stranger to losing.

A star defensive lineman at South Salem High School in Salem, Ore., Smalley knew what he wanted to do after graduation.

He wanted to play football for the University of Oregon.

Smalley walked on, made the team, took a redshirt year and then became a key cog in the Ducks’ defensive line rotation. He didn’t just compete once he was on the field. He went all out.

Smalley played so hard he separated both shoulders multiple times, which has required four surgeries, two on each. Hewas a member of the great early 2000s teams that featured future NFL quarterback Joey Harrington, among others.

In his junior year, Smalley blew out his knee, tearing several crucial ligaments. He would miss Oregon’s 2002 Fiesta Bowl win over Colorado.

Adding the injury registry, Smalley missed two games his senior year with a broken hand suffered against USC, which required two screws being inserted in his right hand. But he played in the first half of Oregon’s bowl game his senior year with a separated shoulder.

Ironically, before his senior year even started, Smalley was told by trainers that he should have immediate surgery on his shoulder and miss his senior season.

Smalley wasn’t having it.

“I said no,” he said. “Forget it. I’ll just play.”

So how does a star defensive player from the Pac-10 make his way to Park City, of all places?

The way it’s written in books, of course.

Smalley met his sweetheart, Lyndsey, who grew up in Coalville and attended Oregon. They fell in love and had their first child while living in Oregon, where Smalley was an assistant coach for two years at Thurston High School, and then Marist Catholic High School in Eugene, which Smalley described as the Juan Diego of Oregon.

While he was at Marist, where he also served as the assistant athletic director, the school won two state championships in 2005 and again in 2007.

Then, Smalley and his wife decided to move to Utah to be closer to his wife’s family. He had a brief stop in Heber City, coaching as a defensive coordinator and offensive assistant before taking the head coaching position at Park City.

Smalley had talked to then Park City head coach Brandon Matich last year about joining the staff as an assistant, but had to bite the bullet on account of no teaching positions being available in Park City at the time.

After Matich took his dream head coaching position at East High School, Smalley interviewed and was hired to replace him.

This was foreign ground for the guy who made a career in the trenches. Suddenly, the entire show was on his shoulders.

“It’s different pressures from all around,” he said. “There’s a higher level of expectations that Brandon (Matich) brought in. We were great, and we’re going to be great.”

Smalley said he couldn’t have walked into a better position, or into a more supportive, tenacious community.

“I realized, wow, I do have a lot of little stuff to take care of,” he said. “I found myself wanting to get involved in those little things because I want my hand in everything. I want the program to be reflective of where I see it going.

“But I couldn’t have stepped into a better group of kids. Athletically, we probably have some of the most gifted kids I’ve ever worked with.”

Lucky for the spread-offense coach, he has the necessary tools to tinker with in both his offense and defense.

Junior wide receiver Jono Schettler, who didn’t even play football last season, is currently ranked No. 7 in the nation in reception yards with 773, according to Maxpreps.com. Blake Thorne has proven to be a vital running back; Robert Cashel has served as Smalley’s ace-in-the-hole in running the Wildcat formation for the offense and spearheading the secondary.

But nothing has come easy for this team, and Smalley knows it.

“We’ve won three games, and we’ve had to fight to win those games,” he said. “It says a couple things: It says we need to be more focused going in, but also means our kids aren’t quitters.”

Smalley made sure of that.

Earlier this season, Park City saw itself staring at an 0-2 start on its way to a loss against Juan Diego. The Soaring Eagle head coach began to kill the clock late in the fourth quarter.

Smalley did not concede.

He used his remaining timeouts to give his team one more shot to get into the end zone, even though the game was well out of reach.

“I took a timeout, because I wanted my kids to realize that it is not over. You can’t just quit, and we went down and scored another touchdown,” he said. “There’s no quit in me, either.”

Many people have said that Smalley runs his program like a collegiate program. He gathers his team at lunch sometimes during the week to watch film, and he is adamant about handing out offensive and defensive packets with full scouting reports every week.

“The game is becoming more and more intellectual and it’s expanding,” he said. “All of our kids have online access to go home and watch the film. We don’t hand out DVDs anymore.”

earning their first road win of the season against Union last Friday, the Miners started their Region 10 title shot with a one in the win column. But Smalley knows there is more than enough work left to be done for his players.

“We have four steps; we’ve completed one of those,” he said.

It usually takes a rookie a few games to get his feet wet and get a feel for what he has to do to accomplish what he desires.

Smalley knows what he wants, and no one can take that away from him.

“I’m a very football-driven person. My wife will tell you that,” Smalley said. “I get very involved in what I do. I’m going to put that time in. I probably don’t need to be here 70 hours a week, but I am because if I’ve made the promise to (the players). We’re going to do this.”