Scout team takes its knocks each week to prepare starters

They work day in and day out and get beat up over and over again, only to stay in Bloomington on the weekends. Then they get the crap kicked out of them some more.\nIt may not be the most glamorous of jobs, but freshman quarterback Teddy Schell is an advocate of the IU football scout team.\n“Some days, you walk back to the locker room and you’re sore as hell,” Schell said. “And you’re wondering ‘what is this for?’ But we’re ... our own cohesive unit down here. The main reward comes every Saturday when our defense makes a big stop on the plays that we’ve been showing them.”\nThe members of the scout team are, in a sense, the Hoosiers’ own group of “Rudy”s. Each week, the group that fluctuates around 20 players helps the team prepare for its next opponent, hoping to play for a spot to dress on Saturdays.\nThe scout team includes an eclectic group of players – scholarship athletes and walk-ons, freshmen through seniors. Typically, walk-on freshmen will automatically be delegated to the scout team unless exceptional performance dictates otherwise.\nProviding the opportunity for players to rise through the ranks, scout teammates relish the fact that starters and former walk-ons such as senior fullback Josiah Sears and senior linebacker Adam McClurg have made it to the \nbig time.\n“Those guys, they were in our shoes a few years ago,” freshman linebacker Jamie Lukaszewski said. “It just shows that if you put in the hard work and the effort, you can be starting one day or on a scholarship.”\nLukaszewski and his teammates go through a taxing routine. \n“That freshman year is so hard,” said Sears, who spent his first year at IU on the scout team. “You’re just practicing everyday, and you’re in this doldrum state because it feels like you’re working \nfor nothing.\n“You feel like a second-class citizen because the whole team is gone and you have to watch them on TV. But you grow into a role, and you learn from that experience.”\nMost of the preparation throughout the week involves studying the following opponent so the scout team can implement their offenses, defenses and special teams during weekday practices. While the scout players are typically overmatched and undersized in these practices, the benefits for scout and first-team players are abundant and have paid dividends.\n“If we don’t produce in the week, you can definitely tell on Saturday,” sophomore offensive lineman Mike Reiter said. “We’ve got to be there. There’s a role for everybody, and we have ours.”\nThose dividends have not only resulted in lessons learned for players on the scout team and starters alike, but have also helped lead the Hoosiers to a 5-1 (2-1) record – the team’s best start in \n13 years.\nHaving a successful scout team that is adept at picking up opponents’ schemes has helped propel IU to its quick start, coach Bill Lynch said. He said he understands that scout players aren’t able to play at the same speed or skill as the weekend opponent, but appreciates the job the players do.\n“Those scout team kids go out there and try to learn a new offense each week,” Lynch said. “Then they’ve got to be pretty good actors in practice. Like everything else, it takes awhile to get the real feel of how you want it done.”\nThat kind of gratification from a head coach and playing for a Big Ten football team is what keeps players like Lukaszewski coming back for more beatings from the starters.\n“Being a part of Division-I football like this and knowing that it’s going to take hard work and all that effort, you have to look at the big picture,” Lukaszewski said. “It’s not about the day-to-day stuff. It’s about where you could end up in maybe two years.”