Emma Smith, part of one of the prairie’s most-successful sports families, follows her grandfather and aunt into the Coupeville Sports Hall o’ Fame. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)
Smith was a league, district, and bi-district champ in the shot put.
On the volleyball court, a Valkyrie unleashed.
Emma Smith was born to be good, but she made herself great.
Her grandfather, Steve, was one of the most physically-impressive athletes Coupeville has ever seen, and her aunt, Joli, remains, to this day, one of the most talented Wolves I have covered on a regular basis.
Toss in Emma’s parents, her sisters, her uncles, and her many, many relatives, and there is no question the Smith family can stand up there with the all-time success stories of prairie athletics.
So, she could have coasted. Could have let strong genes carry her to a certain point, and let it be.
But she didn’t.
Emma pushed beyond that, put in the work, year after year, practice after practice, camp after camp, road trip after road trip, and became a top-tier athlete.
She was often majestic on the volleyball court, rising up to the heavens to smash the ball, sending her rivals scrambling for cover and finding none.
Then, when spring came, you would find Emma off to the edges, lofting the shot put and letting the discus fly far away, content to bust PR’s in the relative quiet of field events.
Her track career ended, appropriately, with an especially-strong senior season, a campaign in which she torched the joint three weeks running.
Wins in the shot put at the league, district, and bi-district meet assured Emma of a trip to state (she also advanced in the discus), and gave her 10 first-place finishes during her high school days.
To that you can add five wins during her middle school career — three of those came in relays, proving she had speed to go with the upper-body strength — and you have a portrait of a track star who used her time and opportunities well.
But when we think of Emma, an intelligent, graceful young woman, what Wolf fans will remember most is her time on the volleyball court.
She is blessed with height, with reach, and with quick reflexes, and, to that, she added passion, heart, and fire.
On a volleyball court, Emma burned to be brilliant.
You could see it in how she carried herself, how she prepared, how she played.
During her junior season, Emma was an integral part of a Wolf squad which made it to the state tourney, the first CHS spiker unit to make the trek in 13 years.
Scan the stats for the past four seasons — she was the lone freshman listed on the full-time varsity roster back in 2015 — and her impact is obvious.
Playing alongside fellow big hitters like Katrina McGranahan and Maya Toomey-Stout, she rained down spikes, drilled winners, made the ball slash a chunk out of the court, then skid far, far away from the opposing team.
But while she could, and often did, fill up a stat sheet, Emma was someone you needed to see play in person to fully appreciate how good she was, and is.
She was an effective, often-dangerous, server, and someone who sold out time and again, fighting alongside long-time running mate and co-captain Ashley Menges, refusing to let plays die or big-name schools skate by on reputation alone.
The enduring image of Emma, though, will be of her elevating skyward, right arm swinging down to smash the air out of the volleyball, rival players scattering before a force of nature unleashed.
Well, that and her holding her niece after games while the lil’ girl beamed like 1,000 lights had all clicked on at once.
Emma is obviously a great aunt, and that image will endure, as well.
But, while the president of her fan club was being restrained in the stands, the image which transfixed Wolf fans, and rival coaches, who voted her as one of the league’s best, was of Emma going full-on Valkyrie.
No team felt the pain as much as South Whidbey, and the prairie terminator saved her greatest high school sports moment for the night of her 18th birthday — Sept. 25, 2018.
It was Armageddon, but bigger, with two high-flying teams going as toe-to-toe as you possibly can.
A look at the stat sheet afterwards showed the Wolves and Falcons virtually identical in every single category across five torrid sets.
The difference? Emma, having the sort of night every athlete should get at least once in their career.
I could recap it here, or you could go one better, bounce to https://coupevillesports.com/2018/09/26/there-can-only-be-one/, and marinate in the whole hyperventilating, hyperbole-filled article I wrote while the buzz of the gym was still reverberating in my ears.
It starts with “18 years to the day she was born, Emma Smith committed cold-blooded murder. And her mom loved every freakin’ second of it,” and then just keeps going bigger and bigger from there.
I like to think it’s a fitting testament to a young woman who is a great athlete, and a better person. Or, at least I hope so.
This article, the one you’re currently reading, is, probably quite obviously, a build-up to inducting Emma into the Coupeville Sports Hall o’ Fame, the third entry from her immediate family.
After this you’ll find her at the top of the blog, under the Legends tab, right where she belongs, having earned her spot based on her play, her work, and her attitude.
I hope, as she goes forward and kills it in real life, she will occasionally look back and remember her prep sports days and nights.
I hope the good memories never fade for her, and that she will always take happiness in knowing how highly she was thought of by Wolf Nation.
And, one day, maybe when her own daughter takes the volleyball court for the first time, I hope Emma leans forward and whispers, “It’s going to be great. Your mom was a freakin’ Valkyrie, and you will be, too.”
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