Foundry Opens Friday Night; Marthaler Says ‘No Excuses, No History, No Way Out But Through’

TOM MARTHALER HAS COACHED high school football for fourteen years, which means he has coached approximately fourteen different versions of the same conversation, a conversation that goes like this: a player — usually a junior, usually a wide receiver, usually one who has been told by his uncle that he has “real upside” — asks if the team is ready to win. Marthaler, in all fourteen years, has given the same answer.

“Ready to play,” he says. “Winning is what happens when you’ve played well enough. You can’t be ready to win. You can only be ready to play.”

He gave this answer on Thursday to Brandon Szymanski, who is seventeen years old and the Foundry’s starting quarterback, and who had the grace to nod thoughtfully before asking Marthaler if he thought they were going to win. Marthaler closed a binder. “Play first,” he said. “Question later.”

Szymanski has earned the starting position by what Marthaler describes as “a combination of accuracy, decision-making, and the specific quality of not panicking when I am standing six feet behind him and he cannot see me but knows I am there.” This quality, Marthaler notes, “is harder to develop than people think.”

Szymanski himself describes his preparation as “really thorough.” He has watched film four days a week. He has run the two-minute drill until he can execute it without looking at his wristband. He has, he admits, spent some of this film study time discussing the defensive alignments with his Bespoke AI Model, which Marthaler is aware of and which Marthaler views as “fine, as long as the decisions are still his.”

“I ask it questions,” Szymanski said. “It answers. I decide what to do with the answer. Coach taught me that. The model just makes it faster.”

Marthaler, when this was relayed to him: “That’s a reasonably accurate description of what I intended.” He paused. “Don’t tell him I said that.”

The Foundry gets its name from a decision Marthaler made before he had a roster, before he had a schedule, and before he had a team. He came into this town in late July, drove the main streets, saw the factory going up on the hill, and decided that a town building something needed a team that played like it was building something: each play a piece of the structure, each game a wall going up, the whole thing visible by the end if you squint correctly at what’s been assembled.

“This is a foundry town,” he said. “Foundries don’t produce finished goods. They produce the material. The work from a foundry is what makes the finished goods possible. I want this team to understand that they are producing the material. The wins are the finished goods. But the material has to be right first.”

The team spent Thursday morning in its final walk-through at the high school field, a scrimmage-light session that Marthaler ran without contact but with full intensity, which he defines as “full communication.” Everyone calling out assignments. Everyone confirming coverage. Big Mike Fencl, the center — who is, as the nickname suggests, large, and who is also the son of Herb Fencl, the Tribune’s almanac columnist, a connection that Marthaler says had no bearing on the roster decision — called blocking assignments with the specificity of a man reading instructions aloud to himself in a quiet library.

“Mike,” Marthaler said, walking past him after one play. “Good.”

This constitutes, in Marthaler’s vocabulary, high praise.

The team’s assistant coaches are Ray Stibor, who handles offense and who is described by Marthaler as “an optimist with good reasoning,” and Pete Wielgos, who handles defense and who is described as “a pessimist with excellent reasoning.” The combination, Marthaler says, produces “a team with a realistic self-image, which is rarer than you would think.”

Running back Cody Russ, a sophomore, is the youngest starter and arguably the most likely to be featured in next week’s Sports section. He ran a forty-yard dash in the team’s first week of camp that caused Stibor to stop his clipboard and say, simply, “Oh,” in a tone that indicated the clipboard was reassessing its own contents. Russ describes his running style as “I go where there’s a hole.” Marthaler describes it as “instinctive in a way that I can work with but that I cannot teach.”

“Some kids,” Marthaler said, “you teach them to find the hole. Some kids, you just don’t close the holes.”

Kickoff is at 7 p.m. Friday at the Internet High School Athletic Field. Admission is $5 general, $3 students. Coach Marthaler requests that fans arrive before kickoff, “out of respect for the game.” Pavalko Jr. will not be calling this one; check the WTRB AM broadcast schedule for coverage.

The Foundry will play. That much is certain. Whether they are ready to win is, per Marthaler’s philosophy, beside the point. The point is Friday evening, a field, and a team that has no history to hide behind and does not appear to need one.

Don Pavalko is the Tribune’s sports correspondent. Game recap in Saturday’s edition. Go Foundry.