There are two schools of thought on how you handle a disappointing loss. One says that you throw the game tape away, tell the guys to erase it from your memory and quickly move on to the next challenge. The other says you dissect the game tape with surgical precision, torture yourself with replays of missed tackles and bad decisions, then find a way to learn from it without completely beating yourself up.

Birmingham chose the latter option after its disappointing season opening loss to Crespi last week.

We found the team in a rather subdued, but focused mood on Wednesday. They'd spent the last few days trying to learn from everything that went wrong last Friday and finally seemed to be in the mood to move forward.

Coach Croson doesn't mind that his team has to deal with failure so early in the season. In fact, he prefers it that way. Coach said that when he first came to the school in 2000, the schedule was so easy early on that the team never had a chance to find out who it was and learn to deal with adversity. When the playoffs came, and things got tough, the team unravelled too quickly.

This week, the Patriots have ordered another plate of adversity in the form of Long Beach Poly.

I've heard conflicting things about Poly this year. Some think they're just an average LBP team, which, inand of itself, is pretty darn good. But the Birmingham staff thinks LBP is great this year.

Said one assistant coach, ``They're not normally a great passing league team, but they were winning them this summer.''

Still, no one was questioning the logic of playing them.

Said assistant coach Kevin Thomas, ``Something happens to the team after we play Long Beach Poly. It's like once we play them, no one is scary. It changes the team after we play Poly. They become fearless.''