Len Scotten coached Greenwood football for 27 seasons and is the program’s career wins leader.
Daily Journal file photo
Two days after celebrating his 90th birthday, Len Scotten attended the Indiana Football Hall of Fame ceremony honoring former Woodmen lineman Jayme Washel.
Player wasn’t necessarily expecting coach to speak, but coach spoke anyway.
The man always could work a room.
“He got up and really talked about the family of Woodmen football players,” said Washel, a 1992 graduate who went on to play at Purdue. “He was in poor health, so we stood next to him. But he addressed everybody. It really meant a lot to me.”
“One of the most impressive things about coach … everybody felt like they had this personal relationship with him.”
Scotten passed away on Oct. 19, his legacy being a green and gold trail of classes taught, pregame talks given, cherished gridiron memories made and hundreds — if not more — of lives positively impacted.
An employee of the Greenwood Community School Corporation for 40 years, Scotten spent 27 of them as the Woodmen’s head football coach.
The first 11 years were from 1958 to 1968; he returned in 1981, ultimately leading the program to some of its finest moments and greatest heights before stepping down for good following the 1996 season.
Scotten’s final record at Greenwood was 162-106-9. He later returned to the sidelines, only this time at Whiteland as one of Darrin Fisher’s assistant coaches. In 2015, the Indiana Football Hall of Fame made Scotten one of their inductees.
All of 24 when he began his first coaching tenure, Scotten wasn’t much older than the young men he was attempting to teach, train and motivate.
Former Woodmen boys basketball coach Bruce Hensley, a 1973 Greenwood graduate who quarterbacked the football teams during the 1971 and 1972 seasons under then-coach Gary Vandergriff, returned to the program a little over a decade later.
Hensley remembers the intangibles that made Scotten unique.
“I was on Leonard’s coaching staff for three years in his second stint,” said Hensley, 69, referring to the seasons from 1984-86. “It was great. I always felt like Leonard just saw the good in everybody. Don’t get me wrong, he wanted to win. But he really saw the value of why you have athletics in high school with all of their life lessons.”
Though his legacy and reputation professionally center mostly around Woodmen football, Scotten shouldered an abundance of responsibilities as one of the school system’s more recognized pillars.
At various points, he was head track and field coach, athletic director, assistant basketball coach, assistant principal, school board member and more.
Scotten wasted no time making the Woodmen relevant in football, guiding the 1959 squad to an 8-1 mark, going 9-1 the following season and calling the shots for the 1965 squad that went 9-0-1 while outscoring opponents by a combined score of 322-45.
Had the open postseason tournament format of today existed then, there’s no telling how many of Scotten’s teams would’ve contended for state championships.
“The big thing is when guys come back is not just the type of coach he was, but the mentor he was,” said Greenwood athletic director Mike Campbell, himself the Woodmen head football coach for 17 seasons (2006-22). “The impressive thing is he did that stint in the ’60s, sat out, came back and still had success. Just his ability to adapt after taking those 10-12 years off. He was a kid person who was relatable, but resolute in his beliefs.”
Scotten was finally able to experience postseason competition during his second tour as Woodmen football coach. Highlights included three sectional titles and the 1988 and 1990 teams advancing all the way to the Class 4A semistate; in both cases they lost to Franklin Central.
“Leonard had a really good way of bringing teams together,” Washel said. “He had his basic playbook, but once he found out what certain players could do, he would modify that playbook. And he was more of an innovator than people give him credit for.
“He had a good coaching staff, too, and he let his coaches coach. His coaches stayed with him, and I never heard any of them say anything bad about Leonard.”
