THE OUTSIDE world is used to seeing unbeaten high school Football teams coming out of Concord. But there's a new twist this season: The city's only unbeaten doesn't wear forest green.

At least to this point, it's the red, white and blue Clayton Valley High "Ugly Eagles," not vaunted De La Salle, sporting an unblemished record heading into the playoffs: 10-0 as they prepare for Friday night's North Coast Section Division II home quarterfinal game against Casa Grande-Petaluma.

Momentous? You bet. The school is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and this is the first Clayton Valley team to finish its regular season undefeated. The team won the Diablo Valley Athletic League title, the first outright Football crown by an Eagles team in any league since 1975.

If that isn't enough reason for celebration, the team recently learned it will receive a distinguished scholarship award from the NCS for carrying a collective 3.06 grade-point average.

"This has been a very special year," coach Herc Pardi said. "We thought we were going to be good. We just didn't know we would be this good."

If you coach long enough, and Pardi has been at it for 33 years (the last 13 at his alma mater Clayton Valley), you might be lucky enough to helm a team for which everything comes together staff, squad, scheme, spirit, sacrifice to create a magical alchemy for success.

Pardi credited an offseason workout regimen engineered by strength and conditioning coaches Paul Reynaud and Les Garaventa as crucial to the turnaround. He also cited a brilliant year of scheming by 70-year-old defensive coordinator Jerry Coakley for a team anchored in its ability to shut down opponents.

It may have helped, too, that in the NCS major offseason realignment, Clayton Valley rejoined the DVAL, where it competed for so many years until being placed in the Bay Valley Athletic League recently with the likes of Division I juggernauts De La Salle and Pittsburg.

The Eagles were 4-6 a year ago and 3-4 in the BVAL, so what they've done in 2008 was hardly expected. They were picked to finish fourth in the DVAL by the Bay Area News Group's usually spot-on prep prognosticators, a selection that quietly delighted Pardi.

"Our guys have carried that chip on their shoulder all year," he said. "I've never seen players on a team cheer so hard for each other. The chemistry and camaraderie on this team has been amazing. Even the bus rides to and from our away games have been something. We have guys who'll just jump up at any moment and say, 'Hey, let's get a song going.' "

What may have been overlooked is that the current seniors and juniors were 9-1 in back-to-back years as freshmen, their only losses coming to De La Salle. The team suffered varsity growing pains last year but matured this season into a united, well-disciplined powerhouse.

The ultimate test so far came in a crosstown rivalry game at Concord on Oct. 24, the opponent's homecoming. The Eagles trailed almost the entire game but scored 14 late points to pull out a 29-22 victory.

"It was a tremendous game and a tremendous win," Pardi said. "There were 3,500 people, it was loud, it was Friday Night Lights to the max."

Those 22 points by Concord account for more than one-third of what Clayton Valley has surrendered all season a mere 60 in 10 games, with four shutouts. Coakley has crafted a unit that snuffs the run with a strong up-front cast that includes Jon Carlson, Adam Lee and Josse Tejada and a stout linebacking corps anchored by Joey Levine.

Levine also is in his second season as the starting quarterback, and while the Eagles prefer to run the ball, they are very efficient when they do go the air. Heading into the playoffs, after back-to-back games going 8-for-8, Levine has connected on 22 consecutive pass attempts.

"He's essentially a linebacker playing quarterback, but he has really evolved as a quarterback," Pardi said. "When Joey really got it going in league play, it all came together for us on offense."

So for a team this dominant, why the Ugly Eagles label? It was reclaimed by the team as a historical moniker, originally slapped on the 1974-75 back-to-back Clayton Valley league champions and carried through several subsequent teams until Pardi more or less phased it out when he arrived in 1996.

It's the only aspect of this Clayton Valley season that doesn't really jibe. Nothing this beautiful could be that ugly.

Contact Carl Steward at csteward@bayareanewsgroup.com