The man in charge for the Pilgrims is assistant John Scott.
“Whatever he does, I’m in agreement,” said Edison. “What a blessing to have him and so many others that help. It is a real advantage. They are all such students of the game. We’re fortunate to have them.”
Scott is the mastermind behind the whole operation, with large doses of assistance — and time — coming from JV coach Tony Plothow, freshman coach Tom Isenbarger, assistants Michael Edison, Joel Grindle, and Zach Scott, and former assistant Michael Delp.
At the beginning of the year, Scott assigns 3-4 opposing teams to each assistant, who then see those teams at least once before Plymouth faces them. Scott used to do all of the scouting himself up until the 2002 season.
“It is so much easier now and more efficient,” he noted. “It helps having other people and the equipment that’s available.”
But it still takes time.
“It takes a lot of hours, but you don’t think about it,” Scott said. “If you worried about that, you wouldn’t be a very good coach.”
So what motivates Scott to spend so much of his “off” time, on those rare nights when Plymouth does not have a game, at another gym usually far from Marshall County?
“I like the challenge of trying to figure out how we match-up with other teams,” Scott said. “I like trying to figure out what might work best, find things to exploit against an opponent.”
Typically during the regular season, at least one coach will see each opponent. Edison concentrates more on the conference teams and is sure to see every one of them at least once. Usually, at least one other assistant will have too.
Besides scouting in person, “dub” tapes are made for each opponent. The dubbing process takes almost an hour each and basically involves editing a full game into a 4-5 minute tape highlighting what Plymouth will see against that opponent.
“Sometimes we’ll just ask other schools for tapes that involve our future opponent,” said Scott. “Other times we’ll leave a blank tape with the school where we are scouting, with an envelope and paid postage, asking them to make us a copy. It makes it easier for them to send and harder for them to say no.”
When playoff time comes, the scouting procedure goes up a notch or three.
“We start collecting game tapes of potential sectional and regional teams in January,” Scott continued.
By the time regionals arrived last Saturday, the Plymouth staff had four tapes of semifinal opponent Hammond Clark, plus five and three of potential opponents Western and Gary Wirt, respectively. Each of the three teams had been scouted in person at least twice.
So, how well-prepared were the Pilgrims?
Try 22 pages worth of information on the Hammond Clark Pioneers, including individual and team stats, newspaper articles, season results, detailed info on the top eight players, offensive and defensive tendencies, two pages of Clark’s offensive sets, one page of out-of-bounds plays and the Pioneers’ set-up for the opening tip.
The handouts for most-likely regional final opponent Western numbered “only” nine pages, but four were offensive sets and one broke down 11 out-of-bounds plays.
It turned out that Western was upset by Gary Wirt in the second regional semifinal, but the PHS staff was ready.
 “Almost immediately after our win over Clark, we spent 10 minutes on Western and 3-4 on Wirt in the auxiliary gym, then watched the second half of that game,” said Scott.
Then at approximately 3 p.m. that afternoon, the team did a walk-through in the driveway of Jason Renz’s house.
“(The coaches) saw some things on tape (in the early afternoon) that we thought would be helpful to go over,” said Edison of the impromptu practice session.
The team reconvened again at 7 p.m. in a more likely location, the auxiliary gym, and prepared for Wirt another 30 minutes or so. Game time was 8:30.
“It was well worth it,” concluded Scott, who was at his usual place on the Plymouth bench next to Edison during the Pilgrims’ eventual regional victory over the Troopers.
This Saturday’s Class 3A semistate opponent, North-Wood, is a familiar one, but the PHS staff has still done its homework: 13 pages of info for this one and five game tapes. (NW’s two regional games and three other regular season games.)
As with winning, there are also myriad reasons for a loss. Lack of preparation will not be one of them if the Pilgrims fall short of their dream to reach the state final.