Scheppler’s Shooters: Tiny Pinewood School may be better than ever
By Alex Simon
LOS ALTOS HILLS, Calif. — There’s a lot of things a basketball player can practice to become a better shooter, and you better believe that Doc Scheppler has tried them all at some point.
But, in the end, the head coach at Pinewood (Los Altos Hills, California) School knows that shooting is a mental challenge. And the best thing that a shooter can experience is mindlessness.
“I’ve placed shooters’ mindsets in four different areas: I know it’s going in, I want it to go in, I hope it goes in, and I’m begging it goes in,” Scheppler said. “When a shooter is shooting well and you ask them what they’re thinking about, they say, ‘Nothing.’ They’re just shooting. They know it’s going in. But with each ascending level of stress, your mind becomes more involved and you start to think too much.”
In his 23rd season at the tiny private school, with an enrollment of around 200, Scheppler has been preaching the value of 3-point shooting for decades. And, in this season, he may have the best shooter and the best team he’s had yet.
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Scheppler remembers watching when the 3-point line was introduced in college basketball in the 1980s and saw how teams used it to their advantage. A shooter himself, he was impressed by Rick Pitino’s Providence team that reached the Final Four in 1987, while also finding inspiration from an Ivy League school.
“I was intrigued by how Princeton played with their movement,” Scheppler said. “Then, when the 3-point line came in, they started to really utilize that to really be competitive against these higher-level Division 1 programs, where they emphasized ball movement, spacing the floor and shooting to kind of combat the athletic and size difference that they were facing with these teams.”
Scheppler was coaching boys high school ball at that point but stepped away to be able to coach his kids at the youth level. But when an opportunity was available at Pinewood in 1995-96, right as his daughter Kacey was set to start her freshman year, Scheppler jumped at the chance.
He brought the 3-point shooting with him, and by the end of her high school career, Kacey Scheppler had set a state record with 395 3-pointers and the Panthers won their first state title in 1998-99, her senior year.
“That’s when our program designed our offensive philosophy around shooting threes,” Scheppler said of the early years. “We have modified it a little, but we’ve kind of perfected it in the time that we’ve been here, to the extent where we now shoot threes, floaters, finishes/layups and free throws.”
Success continued to come as Pinewood established itself as one of the best small school basketball programs in the state, winning five more Division 5 state championships. In every season Scheppler’s been in charge, the Panthers have made at least 150 3-pointers and have consistently been in the Top 10 nationally in 3-pointers made, according to Maxpreps.
One of the better shooters on the first Pinewood team to win back-to-back state titles (2005 and 2006) was Sami Field-Polisso. In her senior year, Field-Polisso made 118 shots from behind the arc, good enough to lead the nation (per Maxpreps). She says one of the things that makes Doc such a great coach is his unwavering confidence in his players.
“His thing is, as a shooter, you’re coming in to the gym thinking, ‘I’m the best shooter in America,’” Field-Polisso said, noting Scheppler once told her that in high school. “That’s his thing. Whenever I see him, I’m always like, ‘I’m the best shooter in America,’ and he goes, ‘No, I’m the best shooter in America.’”
Now a coach at Saint Francis (Mountain View) High School, just a short drive down the road from Pinewood, Field-Polisso’s saw just how difficult it is to face Scheppler’s shooters when they faced off on Dec. 30. But after the 22-point loss, Field-Polisso thinks that Pinewood junior Hannah Jump may take that title for good.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that Hannah Jump is the best shooter in America. I’m a huge college fan, and there’s not a game that I don’t miss. Hannah is by far the best shooter I’ve seen at the high school level, and she could be the best at the college level when she gets there.”