Every Friday night there is a group of men wearing polo shirts and headsets. The men behind the headsets are focused on calling the perfect play, establishing the perfect defense and trying to put the young athletes in the perfect position for success.

There is more to the men behind the headsets then just calling plays. These men have all been on journeys.

After a short stint of playing college football at Birmingham Young University, Red Mountain head coach Mike Peterson found himself selling cars at Casa Chevrolet in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

"You're a student-athlete your entire life and then all of a sudden you're not,” Peterson said.” You really don't know what you are; it's a lot of your identity. When I left there [BYU] then ended up selling cars for a couple years I still love[d] the game, still watch[ed] the game on TV, still went to games in Albuquerque. I just thought, I want to be back in it. That's what I did. That's what I loved and that's what I want to do again.”

In 1996 Peterson started out as a volunteer at Las Cruces Mayfield while studying Mathematics at New Mexico State University. Ever since then he hasn’t looked back and has been coaching for 23 years now.

After realizing walking on at Northern Arizona University wasn’t for him, Gilbert High School head coach Derek Zellner dedicated his summers and Friday nights volunteering for the Dobson High School football team.

“[I] just consumed myself with coaches who studied, and tried to soak up as much knowledge from the people that I was surrounded by,” Zellner said.

The men behind the headsets also find themselves with the responsibility of being a role model to today’s youth.

At the age of 9, Zellner's father passed away. He gives credit to those coaches, who were part of the people that gave him a positive influence growing up without a father.

“They were the positive role models that I had in my life as well as my teachers. And the friends that I ran with, their dads kind of took me under their wings,” Zellner said.

Peterson and Zellner have been coaching for over 20 years now. Once they were young coaches eager to learn the ins and outs of the game in hopes of running their own programs. They credit a long list of coaches who were examples to them. Today they pay it forward, trying to be the men all younger coaches can look to for advice.

Gilbert's freshman team head coach, 22-year-old Gabe Martinez, played quarterback at Dobson High School when Zellner was the offensive coordinator. Zellner coached Martinez for only one year, but that one year playing under Zellner intrigued Martinez enough to start a coaching career of his own

Martinez started coaching right out of high school volunteering at Dobson. Martinez is now in his second year coaching under Zellner at Gilbert.

“His style of coaching made me a student of the game and I wanted to really teach the game [to] the next generation of players,” Martinez said.

Kellen Eulate played at Red Mountain when Peterson was the defensive coordinator under former coach Mike Wisniewski.

Eulate is now 24-years-old and currently coaches both the offensive and defensive line, and is the special teams coordinator for the Red Mountain junior varsity team.

An interaction that sticks out for Eulate during his senior year at Red Mountain, which set an example for the young coach, that success off the field is important to a program as well.

“Coach Peterson, when I was a senior, helped me with math. He gave me a lot of time and encouragement to succeed,” Eulate said. "He gave me motivation to study and make sure I pass my classes in order to graduate.”

When sitting up top in the metal bleachers, looking down at the men behind the headsets it may seem like the only game plan this week was to run or pass more, or to blitz on third down.

What you don’t know is those men have a deeper game plan. This game plan involves wins and losses down the road. This game plan when all said and done is more important than the one you see on Friday night.

“You really have to be focused on teaching them to be good husbands and fathers and men in the community,” Peterson said. “Because, [when] it's all said and done if the only thing you're focused on is winning the state championship, there's only one team [that’s] going to do that, and that doesn't make the rest of us not successful, that doesn't make the rest of us a bunch of losers who wasted our time. You've got to really be focused on teaching them to be good husbands and fathers and men in the community or it's all for not. Because I've won one state championship since I've been in Arizona for the last 20 years, that doesn't make me less of a coach or a bad person because the other 19 times I didn’t. You've got to focus on you; got to keep focused on the other three [things].”

Legendary football coach Vince Lombardi once said, “Football is a great deal like life in that it teaches that work sacrifice, perseverance, competitive drive, selflessness and respect for authority is the price that each and every one of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.”

“In life we face many adversities. In football we face many adversities. In life we're going to have those ups and downs where we win, and there's going to be those times in life that we lose,” Zellner said. “The same with football, and it's just teaching them how to deal humbly with the wins, and how to deal humbly with the losses, and how to prepare yourself after a win and how to prepare yourself after a loss. In life not everything goes perfect, and it's the same with football.”

At around 7 o’clock on Friday night you see a group of men in polos put on a headset. They go through four quarters of ups and downs trying to call the perfect play, establish the perfect defense and trying to put young athletes in the best position to succeed.

When the clock hits zero the scoreboard may tell the story on whether they did just that. But you won’t be able to tell if those young men truly won until a few years down the road when they become contributors to society, loving husbands or doting fathers.

Regardless of what the scoreboard says, if that game plan gets perfected, those men got the win that matters the most.