Oak Hill Academy’s iconic basketball coach, who is in the 31st year at the small Baptist affiliated boarding school in Mouth of Wilson, Va., won his 1,000th career game Dec. 29, 2015 when his team defeated Oregon Class 6A champion West Linn, 77-47, in the semi-finals of the Les Schwab Invitational at Liberty High in Portland, Ore.
As soon as the game ended, the celebration began. Smith’s players surrounded him and an overflow crowd watch a video of congratulatory messages from former stars like Carmelo Anthony and Nolan Smith, along with his daughter and grandson. Then, Smith was escorted to the school lobby when he spent the next hour signing 250 commemorative Oak Hill T-shirts and was presented a bottle of expensive champagne by tournament officials. He posed for dozens of photos and even found time to sign a clipboard he smashed in a pique of anger during the game.
“My wife bought me a new one for Christmas,” he assured the Portland Tribune, which did an extensive, well written story on the program while the Warriors participated in the LSI.
Smith is 60-years old and still going strong. His career record after that game was 1,000-65. Smith’s Warriors have won the mythical national championship eight times in 1993, 1994, 1999, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2012, finishing second another six times while playing a traditionally difficult national schedule. He has been named National High School coach of the Year on six different occasions by USA Today and has won 40 or more games on four different occasions.
Steve Smith, who has been nominated for the Naismith Hall of Fame, deserves to be voted in for induction on the first ballot.
Fabled high school coaches Morgan Wooten of DeMatha, Md. Catholic and Bob Hurley Sr. of St. Anthony’s of Jersey City have already been enshrined in Springfield. It might be time for the Naismith’s NBA dominated selection committee to create a special category for grass roots coaches, much like they have done for women and internationals. It is hard to believe any current coach has a better resume or has produced more NBA players than Smith, who has nine of his former players– Anthony, Kevin Durant, Rajon Rondo, Brandon Jennings, Ty Lawson, Steve Blake, Josh Smith, Michael Beasley and Nolan Smith– playing in the NBA.
Durant and Anthony could both make the U.S. senior men’s basketball team that will play in the 2016 Olympics in Rio.
But retired NBA player Jerry Stackhouse was the biggest draw ever to play for Oak Hill. He was the biggest draw for the basketball team Smith regards as Oak Hill’s best – the 1992-93 Warriors, who rolled through a 36-0 season. Stackhouse’s teammates included Alex Sanders, who went to Louisville, and two players who followed him to North Carolina – Jeff McInnis and Makhtar Ndiaye. That team filled Oak Hill’s little 400-seat Turner Gymnasium with SRO crowds that ballooned closer to 900– many wearing Tar Heel blue– whenever Oak Hill played marquee games.
Smith has changed hundreds of lives by holding his players responsible to strict rules and discipline that carries over into their academic lives. At the same time, the impeccably dressed Smith, who has been married to his college sweetheart Lisa McBride for 33 years, has turned Oak Hill into a destination for talented players, many who are also looking for academic guidance to improve their GPA and meet NCAA requirements for a high major scholarship.
There are no distractions permitted on this out of the way, wooded campus.
All students are forbidden to have cars or cell phones, which must not be seen or heard on campus. They wear tailored uniforms– with no caps– to class. They can have personal computers but not personal Internet connections. No video games. They go to school on Saturdays. They have mandatory study hall at night. They can’t leave campus unless they’re accompanied by a staff member. They’re required to attend Sunday worship services at Young’s Chapel. They also must attend basketball games, in uniform. There are chaperoned weekend socials, with rules that forbid such things as “sitting in laps and making out.” Substance abuse leads to an automatic expulsion. So does sneaking into an opposite-sex dorm.
Most of the school’s 22 teachers live on campus. Smith lives just a short walk from the gym. Among other things, the proximity to housing helps Smith and the teachers constantly keep tabs on students, making sure they have completed their classwork assignments
Oak Hill was founded in 1878 but didn’t become a basketball power until the early 1970s when Robert Isner was the academy president and his son Chuck was the basketball coach. The Isners wanted increase the visibility for the school to attract more students. Football was too expensive so they decided the best way to market Oak Hill was through basketball. Isner dispatched Chuck to New York City and he returned with four players. Oak Hill made the quantum leap from 3-20 in 1970 to 27-3 in 1974 and the program took off from there.
Smith, who grew up in Wilmore, Ky. attended Asbury College, where his father Winston, taught biology for 30 years. Another Asbury graduate, Larry Davis, coached the Warriors in the early ’80’s. He persuaded Smith to leave a job in the banking business to become his assistant coach in 1983. When Davis left two years later, Smith took over as head coach, elevating the program to another level. Over the years, Smith has had 29 McDonald’s All-Americans and 28 NBA draftees. One of his current assistants is Cory Alexander, who attended Virginia and played seven NBA seasons.
Oak Hill has an enrollment of about 160 boys and girls in grades 8 through 12, with annual tuition at $33,000. All of Smith’s players are on scholarship. Financial aid is based on need and the most of the players come from single parent families. But they all pay something. Even players on full aid pay a minimum of $1,500.
Smith’s biggest star this season was supposed to be Harry Giles III, a 6-10 senior forward from Wesleyan Christian Academy in Winston Salem, the pre-season No. 1 prospect in the country who helped lead the United States to a gold medal in the U19 World Championships in Crete. With Giles, the Warriors might have been unbeatable. But Giles, who signed with Duke, suffered a season ending knee injury and has since transferred back to Winston-Salem, where he is taking on line courses at Forest Trail Academy in Kernersville, N.C.
Smith still has a potential McDonald’s All America– 6-7 forward Mario Kegler from Jackson, Miss., who is there to sanitize his resume before entering Mississippi State. If you include Giles, Kegler is one of six Oak Hill players to sign Division I scholarships in November for a 20-1 team that is ranked fifth nationally by USA. The others are 6-7 forward Braxton Key (Alabama), 6-10 center Rodney Miller (Miami of Florida), 6-10 forward Khadim Sy (Virginia Tech) and 6-7 forward Joe Hampton (Penn State). The Warriors captured a fourth regular season tournament Dec. 30 when it defeated sixth ranked DeMatha, 82-66, in final of the LSI, a stacked tournament that also included third-ranked Garfield Wash. High. Oak Hill plays a difficult 48-game schedule that includes against mostly prep and private schools throughout the country and should be the favorite to win the Dick’s Nationals later this season in the Garden.
When Smith first started, he used to call AAU and high school coaches to inquire about a player and ask whether he had an interest in transferring. The school initially attracted to players from the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. area, Virginia and North Carolina. Now, they call Smith. Oak Hill has a deserved national profile and track record of developing Division I players, with prep stars from as far away as California, Africa and Europe looking to enroll.
Some of that magnetism has changed with the growth of private academies like Montverde Academy in Florida, Findlay Prep in Nevada, Prolific Prep of California, Huntington, W. Va. Prep and increased recruiting from the New England prep school circuit.
But Oak Hill will always be remembered as one of the original brand names in the prep school world.
Hopefully, Naismith voters remember that when they review Smith’s credentials.
