SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — John Knight sat in the shadows underneath the stadium overhang behind home plate and tracked pitches in a notebook with a pencil.

He marked an "F" for fastball. The pitch speed went in the next box. The 12-year-old pitcher on the mound "has progressed physically. He's probably throwing in the upper 60s or low 70s," said Knight, who was scouting for the Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, team at the Little League World Series.

Scouting isn't just limited to professional baseball.

"We have to go for whatever advantages we can, whatever weaknesses we can spot," said Knight, 53, whose 11-year-old son played for Saudi Arabia.

The Little League teams at South Williamsport didn't have the elaborate scouting networks of major league clubs. Middle-aged men in wide-brimmed hats weren't pointing radar guns out from behind home plate — Knight, for instance, was estimating pitch speed with his eyes.

The teams simply have parents such as Knight who want to help their kids win. If they can't coach, they try to help by scouting.

"You feel like you are involved," Knight said. "You feel like you are contributing."

The Saudi Arabia team, composed mainly of kids of American families living abroad, has a pool of about four dozen kids from which to form a Little League team of about 12 players. Many U.S. teams in South Williamsport were all-star teams drawn from several local teams, which means a deeper talent pool.

So doing things such as charting pitches or assessing a hitter's tendencies can help a weaker team, Knight said.

Expanded television coverage of Little League has helped teams get a glimpse of the competition. Besides most of the world series games, most regional Little League championships are on TV.

At the Little League dorms, watching major league and Little League highlights were a favorite way to pass the time.

The Internet helps with scouting, too, and allows enterprising coaches to look at linescores and check out the heights and weights of players. The bigger the players, the more likely they'll be more talented, coaches said.

"You didn't have all this stuff 30 years ago," said Sid Cash, who managed the Maitland, Fla., team at the series and has coached Little League for three decades.

Before the series started, Ed Grothus, a coach on the Davenport, Iowa team, outlined his team's scouting plans: check out boxscores; create index cards for opposing hitters listing batting averages and whether they were a power or spray hitter; and make notes such as whether a hitter likes to bite on a fastball on an 0-2 count.

Only the coaches used the information, though they passed the word to players when the need arose.

"We know guys' tendencies," Grothus said as his team took infield practice in South Williamsport before the series.

It doesn't always lead to wins, though. Davenport finished the series 0-3.

"Generally, on these teams, there are always two or three guys that can beat you," he said.

Little League officials said they do not provide any scouting help to teams. But Little League doesn't have restrictions on scouting while at the series.

In the opening round, when all 16 teams were playing, time at the six batting nets was scarce. Often, three teams at a time were hitting inside two nets apiece.

One day early in the tournament, Shon Muna, manager of the team from Mangilao-Barrigada, Guam, was watching his team take swings in two of the cages from a golf cart.

He couldn't help but glance at the kids from the Maitland team two nets over who were getting hitting tips from coaches Dante Bichette and Mike Stanley, two former major leaguers.

"I'm pretty sure they are going to produce. Why? Because of their names," Muna said, referring to Bichette and Stanley.

At the same time, Muna, a Little League coach for 20 years, said he wasn't intimidated by them. He also said he doesn't keep track of numbers.

"If you go by stats, I could have a dominant pitcher against a weak hitting team and he could get better stats, but what would that tell me?" Muna said.