From the bayou to Bronco Stadium โ Scott Pellegrin joins the Broncos.
The Zachary High defense has a new coach handling โthe back halfโ this year with the addition 14-year coaching veteran Scott Pellegrin.
Pellegrin starts his first season with the Broncos after slowly moving up in elevation from his time playing defensive backs in the swamps at South Terrebonne High (Bourg โ elevation 60 feet above sea level) to the high plains of Zachary (elevation 110 feet above sea level).
After high school Pellegrin earned an undergraduate degree at Nicholls State University (Harvard on the Bayou) in Thibodaux (elevation 13 feet above sea level), where he also was a coach at E.D. White High School.
โI was an accounting major to start. Changed my major to education, and a friend in class working at E.D. White got me my first coaching job,โ Pellegrin said. He worked with the eighth-grade team.
He received a M.S. in educational leadership from LSU in 2017 and was a coach at South Lafourche High School (Cut Off โ elevation 2 feet above sea level). With the Tarpons he worked with three different head coaches over a five-year period where he worked as an offensive line coach, was the special teams coordinator, and finished as the defensive coordinator.
He journeyed to the Baton Rouge area to help revive the Liberty Magnet football program where they played a junior varsity schedule as brand-new program.
He saw an opportunity to go to East Ascension High School (Gonzales โ elevation 10 feet mean sea level) and went to work as a defensive backs coach for Darnell Lee, or so he thought. The defensive coordinator left in July, and he was quickly promoted to run the defense as the coordinator.
Lee is known in the Baton Rouge area as strong defensive coach that Pellegrin indicated was not overbearing but always there to โprovide a plan B.โ Pellegrin noted Lee โcould dissect things on the field very quickly, which allowed me to make adjustments on the fly.โ
When Lee was replaced, Pellegrin was prepared to stay at East Ascension, but had the desire to run a program as the head coach.
โThe athletic director at Woodlawn got my name from a coach at Denham Springs, who was also from down the bayou, and I got the job. I knew it was going to be a challenge,โ Pellegrin said.
โAt Woodlawn we had a lot of good players, we worked hard to provide organization and were trending in the right direction.โ He put together a 5-5 record with a much-improved team that the Broncos faced in District 4-5A last year.
Pellegrin comes to Zachary as new blood with coaching experience that was quickly put to work.
When he arrived Pellegrin indicated โCoach Brewerton said if you see anything let us know, bring it to the table, give us new ideas, we want to be better and we canโt get stagnant.โ
Other early impressions Pellegrin noted were โhow organized everything is and how prepared the coaches and players are.โ
Pellegrin commented on the work ethic of Brewerton and the staff. โThe coaches bring it every day, are competitive and always working to make sure the kids are at that same level,โ Pellegrin said.
Pellegrin will be in the press box during game days where he will be scanning the bigger picture for the Broncos.
Pellegrin has a deep group of safeties that includes two returning starters and upperclassmen who will compete for playing time.
โWe have depth and we can rotate guys, which is great for competition and will be critical if we want to go deep in the playoff,โ Pellegrin said.
โI always admired Zachary from afar based on what they did on and off the field and always said that was the program to model.โ
Now he is up here in the higher altitudes to hopefully help the Broncos make it back to the Superdome (New Orleans โ elevation 35 feet mean sea level).
Pellegrin will be teaching P.E. at Rollins Place this year when he is not coaching the Broncos safeties or spending time with his wife Hailey.