“They call me Mr. Dandy, cause I got all the candy!!” (John Fisken photo)
Brothers from another mother? “Stop pouting, Tumblin. Mom likes me best cause I’m handsome and successful and you’re just lucky I let you hang out with me.” (Shelli Trumbull photo)
The Man. The myth. The legend.
Few coaches, if any, had as much fun as Willie Smith.
The Coupeville High School hardball guru, who called it a career Tuesday after 19 seasons at the helm of the Wolf baseball program, was Cow Town’s Alfred E. Neuman.
Even at his most intense, and some losses ripped visibly at his very soul, Smith was always 1.3 seconds away from busting out a huge grin.
He took the games seriously, and had great success across three sports at CHS — girls’ basketball, football and baseball — but never bought into the myth of the coach being infallible and unapproachable.
“I don’t need to be in any Hall of Fames, cause I’m in every Hall of Shame!!” Smith said, then rocked backwards in his chair laughing.
Whether he was bribing rival third basemen by tossing candy at them or winning a one-sided water gun fight against his basketball players, Smith enjoyed every moment he proudly wore the red and black.
And it almost didn’t happen.
The pride of Sequim had a first interview in Coupeville where the sense of humor that would one day endear him to the town fell with a thud on the unamused ears of the interview board.
Exiting the room he told wife Cherie “I will NEVER work in this town!!”
Never say never.
Coaching basketball and football in his home town, he was about to give up pursuing a teaching gig when a second, unexpected crack at Whidbey Island opened up.
Interviewed on a Thursday, left to suffer through a Saturday football practice while a fellow coach knew he had already been hired but let him hang, he came home to the phone call that would change his life.
Well, the second call.
The first was from his father, who got a loud “DAAAAADDDD! Get off the phone!!!!,” followed by a slam.
“I might have said sorry later. Might have…”
The Smith family moved on a Monday, school started on a Tuesday and a whirlwind of teaching (he plans to remain at CHS in that capacity) and coaching was off and going.
He led the girls’ basketball program from 1993-2000, becoming the first CHS girls’ hoop coach to ever win a game at the state tourney.
With his wife by his side for much of that run, he changed the culture of the program and kick-started what grew into the most successful sport in Coupeville.
“I loved it. Loved, loved, loved it,” Smith said with a huge smile. “Most fun I ever had coaching.
“Girls buy into it more than boys sometimes. Boys want to be the superstar, girls work together and sacrifice more readily for the team.”
He had big stars like Zenovia Barron, Ann Pettit, Ashley Bagby-Ellsworth, Tina Lyness and a young Brianne King, but got huge moments out of role players as well.
Jaime Rasmussen, who hit the free throws that iced the school’s first-ever win at state, was a defensive-minded scrapper who rose to the moment in the biggest game of her life.
“That was a group of girls patterned after my own heart: tough, disciplined, team oriented, and with a fair amount of goofiness,” Smith said in a retrospective years later.
“It illustrates why I loved coaching that team — we had Lyness, Bagby and King, three of the biggest names in girls basketball, and it was Jaime who got us going and it was those three girls that kept feeding her the ball.”
At the same time he was building a hoops juggernaut Smith was working as an assistant coach for Wolf football (1994-2011) and baseball (95-96), before being semi-forced into taking the baseball helm during the 1997-1998 school year.
During his time on the diamond he won his fair share of games, took the Wolves to state more than once, earned the respect of Hall of Fame Coaches like Stan Taloff of ATM and Jim Waller of Oak Harbor (“To get that respect, to have them say, we like the way your players handle themselves, the way the program is run, means everything”) and, most importantly, had a huge impact on his players.
He doesn’t know how many victories he had, but he vividly remembers the moments.
Coaching both of his sons, James and Ian, was a particular highlight.
When Ian was a freshman, he hammered a home run and everyone came off the bench in celebration, with James, a senior, screaming “NOOOOOOOOO!!” in mock horror because his lil’ bro had beat him to the first homer of the season.
The memory, and a photo on his computer of both sons playing for Coupeville in a game at Sequim — completing the circle for their dad — evoke huge smiles.
Having coached for more than half his life, the 48-year-old Smith wanted to get out before he lost the passion.
He’ll still teach, still rock the mic at Wolf football games (“Balls … balls”) and doesn’t rule out returning to some form of coaching down the road.
But, for now, he wants to go to spring training, be able to go hunting without worrying about leaving a team in the lurch and spend more time with Cherie.
Will he write the tell-all book the world so desperately needs? We can only hope.
I know, for me, he has been the absolute gold standard.
A coach who, whether he was thrilled or shooting sparks from his ears, never did anything but tell us the flat truth.
Couldn’t always print what he said — and he knew that, with the grin creeping out as he regaled the media — but never dodged a question in his life.
Straight shooter. Builder of young women and men. Class act all the way.
Want to know who Willie Smith is?
During his final baseball season, I misread the schedule and thought Coupeville had gone to play in Meridian, so I sent him an email asking “How was your night?”
Most coaches would be “We didn’t play.”
Smith’s response?
“I had a lovely beef stroganoff and spent some quality time in the hot tub with an adult beverage. How was your night?!?!?!”
The Man. Always.
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