Written by Luke Poeppe
This 2024-2025 basketball season, the Algona Bulldogs girls’ Varsity head coach, Noel McLaughlin, was greatly inspired by colleges who have implemented what’s called a “scout team.”
A scout team is made up of a group of boys, mostly basketball players who don’t play school ball anymore. Their job is to give the girls’ basketball team harder competition than they would normally face and prepare them better for their upcoming games.
This year Coach McLaughlin recruited five senior boys to help out: Luke Poeppe, Brian Leininger, Rylee Wolf, Joseph Struecker, and Ryan Weier. Coach Ford was in charge of them and helped them understand what they needed to be doing to help prepare the girls. The goal was to bring the team to their full potential
Being on the scout team required the boys to be at practice one to two times a week, running set defenses and offenses according to the team they played that week. All with one goal in mind, pushing the girls to be at their best so they can beat their competition.
Coach McLaughlin says, “The scout team was a huge success; the guys did a great job preparing us and supporting us on and off the court.”
Scout team member Brian Leininger says, “It was pretty cool being part of the ‘All American Scout Team.’ I hope others get to experience it.”