Booneville basketball coach Michael Smith never met football coach Frosty Westering, who died 13 years ago. Smith wishes he’d had a chance to talk to him.
“His book has meant so much to me over the years,” says Smith, the 48-year-old coach, who has become an institution in northeast Mississippi hill country where basketball is king and basketball coaches are royalty.
Westering was a highly accomplished small college football coach, mostly at Pacific Lutheran University in Washington state. Westering won 305 games and eight national championships over 39 seasons. He titled his book: “Make the Big Time Where You Are.”
The book’s title could also serve as headline to Michael Smith’s life story. That’s exactly what he has done at Booneville, where the basketball court bears his name and where his teams have won 765 games and 11 state championships over 22 years. Smith really has brought big-time coaching and winning to a Prentiss County town of about 9,000.
Inside the front cover of “Make the Big Time Where You Are” Smith long ago scribbled these words: “I don’t have to be the head coach at Duke or North Carolina to try and run a program like they do.”
North Carolina’s Dean Smith won 77% of his games. Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski won 76% of his games. Mike Smith has won 75% of his – and counting. Smith’s Booneville girls last week added the 11th state championship gold ball trophy to what must be a cramped Booneville Blue Devils trophy case. In their annual trip to Mississippi Coliseum, they defeated rival Belmont 54-31 for their fourth State Class 3A title in the past five years. That was Saturday. Three days earlier, Smith’s Booneville boys were defeated in the State 3A semifinals by eventual State Champion St. Stanislaus 49-41. Smith will coach the Mississippi boys All-Stars in Saturday’s Mississippi-Alabama All-Star game.
And this will tell you much about Smith and what drives him. I asked him after the girls’ victory if the happy outcome had erased any of the sorrow of his boys team coming up short.
“No. It’s like Christmas morning and one of your kids gets exactly the present they wanted, and one of your kids can’t even find his gift,” Smith said. “You can’t be ecstatic for one when you hurt for the other. You can’t ever get the ones you lose back. The losses haunt you more than you remember the wins. You just hate it so much for the kids. If you love ’em as much as we do, you just hate to see ’em hurt.
“I just try to enjoy the kids whether we win or lose, because if you’re just going to remember your last game, it’s going to be a miserable life for you.”
From left to right, the Smith family: Clark, Ava Kate, Shawna, Rhett, Michael with daugher Audra Rose, Greir with Abott, and Bauer. The photo was taken on 18-year-old Rhett’s senior night at Booneville High School on the floor that bears his daddy’s name.Michael Smith knows a thing or seven about kids and Christmas mornings. Michael and Shawna Smith are the parents of seven young’uns. There’s Ava Kate, 19; Rhett, 18; Clark, 16; Greir, 14; Bauer, 11; Audra Rose, 8; and Abott, 5.
Clearly, Michael and Shawna Smith don’t have a lot of spare time. He coaches both boys and girls basketball teams and is the Booneville athletic director. She is a nurse, who earned a PhD in nursing at Samford and now teaches nursing on-line to students around the globe.
Both Michael and Shawna grew up in the Booneville area. He played basketball at nearby New Site and then at Northeast Community College in Booneville. Michael was class valedictorian at New Site, then graduated with honors from both Northeast and Ole Miss, where he majored in education and social studies.
Says Shawna, “Michael could have done anything he wanted to do. He could have been a lawyer or a doctor, but he wanted to coach. It’s far more than a game with Michael. It’s who he is.”
Growing up, Michael figured he would become a lawyer, but then one day he was working as a counselor at a basketball camp at Northeast. A little camper was having trouble with his dribbling. The child lacked confidence. Michael showed him what he was doing wrong. And then, when the kid got it right, his whole demeanor changed.
“That was it,” Michael says all these year later. “I can still show you the spot on the court where it happened. Right then, I knew what I wanted to do. I saw that kid’s eyes light up and I saw that smile, and, for me, it was such a sense of accomplishment. In coaching and teaching, you can make a difference. So many people have made a difference in my life, helped me along the way. That’s what I want to do for others.”
When Michael Smith’s Booneville teams both won championships in 2023, his mother, Denise, was ill and could not attend. So Michael took the championship trophies to her.When Michael Smith ticks off the names of people who made a difference for him, it starts with his mother, Denise, a middle school teacher who raised him alone. His aunt and uncle, Diane and Willie Weeks, ran a Booneville diner where Michael began flipping burgers at age 10. “From them, I learned about hard work and how to treat people with respect, no matter who they are and where they came from,” Michael says.
There was his high school basketball coach Randle Downs, who was there for him when his mother was undergoing serious surgery. Says Michael, “I saw Coach Downs recently and I told him I may not remember everything you taught me about basketball, but I remember how you loved me.”
There was Mike Lewis, his junior college coach. “He opened my eyes to the game and how much I didn’t know,”Michael says. “It made me want to learn everything about the game and that has never changed.”
There was Ricky Neaves, now the executive director of the Mississippi High School Activities Association but then the Booneville principal when Michael did his student teaching. “Mr. Neaves took on a father type role for me. From him I got a master class in hard work and how to treat people,” Michael says.
And then there was John Wooden – yes, the John Wooden, the famed Wizard of Westwood, perhaps the greatest basketball coach there ever was.
Michael and Shawna Smith, with John Wooden, in 2007 at Wooden’s Los Angeles home. The photo was snapped by Wooden’s former UCLA standout Kenny Washington, a key player on two of Wooden’s national championship teams.Michael Smith was at a coaching clinic 21 years ago when he ran into a former associate of Wooden’s. Wooden won 10 national championships in one 12-year period at UCLA. Wooden won 81% of his games and four times coached UCLA to 30-0 national championship seasons. On the question of who was the greatest basketball coach in history, there is really only one answer.
Michael told Wooden’s former associate he would give anything to meet and speak with the greatest basketball coach there ever was.
“Give me your contact information and I’ll see what I can do,” the guy said. Michael gave him his phone number and address and then pretty much forgot about it.
A few days later, the Smith’s phone rang and on the other end of the line was none other than Wooden himself.
Says Michael, “I could barely speak.”
Long story short: Wooden invited Michael and Shawna (who was pregnant with their first child) out to Los Angeles for a visit over Labor Day weekend.
“Nicest man I’ve met,” Michael says, “so down to earth, so sincere. We spent two days with him, two unbelievable days. He took us out to eat, took us to his church. Here’s John Wooden, the most famous basketball coach ever and he was in his mid-90s then and was still driving a 1980 Ford Taurus. Here he is entertaining two people he didn’t know from a place he never heard of.”
Of course, they talked about basketball and coaching. But they also talked about their families, their faith and about the value of humility. If there was one big take from their weekend in Westwood, it was Wooden’s humility.
“He told me a story about after his UCLA team had won the first of 10 national championships,” Michael says. “It was a day or two later and he stepped out on to a balcony to take in the glorious day. And, just then, a bird flew overhead and pooped right down on his head. He said he figured the bird was sent by God to remind him to stay humble.”
Both Michael and Shawna say the weekend remains a highlight in their lives, which most notably include the births of seven children and the triumph of 11 state championships.
“I mean, here is a man so accomplished, so famous, and he welcomes us like long-lost friends and makes us feel like royalty,” Michael says.
But here’s the deal, which I am guessing John Wooden figured out: In Booneville, Mississippi, where big-time basketball is played by small-town girls and boys, Michael and Shawna Smith really are. Royalty.
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