Staff photo / Brian Yauger Brookfield freshman running back Rico Smith carries the ball upfield against Champion on Friday night.

It’s been a strange month for Brookfield football.

Over the last five weeks, the Warriors have had to reinvent their offense twice, once in the four days leading up to their first game. After an 0-2 start to the season, Brookfield went back to the drawing board, opting to throw its glut of youth to the wolves to see what they could do.

The decision paid off as the new look Warriors have scored 66 points across two games and have two wins to match.

Their quarterback, Josh Rankin, running back, Rico Smith, and multiple offensive linemen are all freshmen.

The kids are definitely all right.

“We play a lot of freshmen and a lot of new faces. We’re getting there,” Brookfield coach Randy Clark said after his team’s 40-13 win over Champion on Friday. “We had a great week of practice. I told the kids before they came off the field, ‘One day at a time. If we have another good week, we’re going to get that much better.’ So we’ve just got to keep getting better.”

After getting his feet wet during the first two weeks, Rankin, like Brookfield as a whole, has come into his own.

In the last two games, Rankin has thrown for six touchdowns and 358 yards. Entering the season, Clark had a lot of excitement for his freshman signalcaller, but didn’t want to rush things. Circumstances changed however, and Rankin has adapted well so far.

The same can be said of Smith, who has gradually improved in each game so far, and his emergence has allowed the Warriors to push star junior Christian Davis out to receiver.

Most recently against Champion, Smith had 160 rushing yards and two scores, the first of which came from 80 yards out.

“I never thought anybody would push Christian away from running back, but we needed a receiver bad for this offense,” Clark said. “And that’s what helped the offense, because we’ve got a weapon right out here (now). Christian accepted it. He’s such a great team player, they all are. They don’t care who scores.”

That attitude has spread throughout the Warriors’ locker room over the last month like a disease and it’s shown. Not just on the scoreboard, but in the excitement on the sidelines and the blaring music coming from the locker room following the victory over Champion.

“They’re really buying into it now. Especially as they’re starting to have some success,” Clark said. “These kids earlier in the year were looking around looking for Donovan (Pawlowski) or looking for Isaiah (Jones) and looking for (Connor) Heater or (Ryan) Tetrick and they’re not here, so they picked it up. It’s probably one of my favorite top groups that I’ve coached. The atmosphere at practice is unbelievable. We’re very happy together and these kids deserve to get what they’re getting right now.”

For Smith, this is more than just a team. This is a family. That’s why they’re having this success.

“It’s the culture,” Smith said. “In the beginning we had little mess ups and low spots that we needed to fix, but we passed them and now we’re back to normal and we’re going have a good year this year for sure.

“(These guys are) like brothers to me. Since I first came here, they have shown love. I came in sixth grade and ever since, they’ve been showing love, so I’m going to send the same thing back to them.”