Transcription of Rich Smith for the show Youth Sports #215
Lisa: I always enjoy spending time with people that I know socially, or for other reasons, and having the opportunity to bring them into the radio show and have a longer conversation with them. The individual before me today is Rich Smith. He’s someone that I know well. He’s a fifth grade teacher at Yarmouth, where he’s been coaching sports, three sports a year, for about 30 years, and for 27 of his 30 years, he’s been the head coach of the Yarmouth Girls’ Soccer Team. Rich, you’re a bit of an institution.
Rich: Yeah, I have been doing that for a long time. I think it was maybe 3 years ago, my first parent night with the Yarmouth Girls’ Soccer Team, and one of the parents I had coached, when she was in high school. That was a little revelation for me, to be coaching somebody I coached’s daughter, because it’s been 27 years. I’m the only Yarmouth girls’ soccer coach. There’s never been a girls’ soccer coach before … I started it, and then I’ve been there for 27 years now, so it’s kind of cool. I do still enjoy it thoroughly.
Lisa: I was talking to my sister Adele about the girls’ soccer program, and we both remember when Yarmouth didn’t have a girls’ soccer program at all. You either did field hockey or cross country. Those were the two sports when we were there. My sister Amy and I did field hockey, and my sister Adele originally did cross country. When the girls’ soccer team came along, in its first year, Adele decided that she was going to be on that original girls’ soccer team. That was a big deal, to start a sport from nothing.
Rich: I remember, I actually went to college and played football. My first year out of college, I coached football at Deering High School, and then I got a teaching in Yarmouth. They said they needed a JV boys’ soccer coach, so I said, “Well, I could try, but I don’t really know that much about it. I could use some help.” The head coach said, “Oh, don’t worry. We heard you’re pretty good with kids, and we can take care of the rest.” I did JV boys’ soccer for 3 years, had no idea what I was doing or how to do it, but learned a lot from the coaches and the kids. After 3 years, I think it was 1987, they decided to start a girls’ soccer program, and I said, “I’ll do that. That sounds great.”
We started off, oh, 13 and 1. Tied our last game of the year. It was as if we won the state championship. We tied a game. We did get better and better every year, and we won our first state championship in 1995. It took some years to get there. We just got better every year, and the town had more and more kids playing soccer, and the feeder system got better and better. Traditionally, we’re one of the better teams in western Maine, Class B Soccer. Over the 27 years, we’ve been pretty consistent.
Lisa: I want to talk a little bit now about how you got to the place where you decided, “I want to be a teacher, and I want to be a coach.” You grew up in Medford, Massachusetts, and you came to Maine because you were recruited to play football for the UMaine Black Bears in Orono. What was it about your early years that got you so into football, that you would go on and play it on college here in Maine?
Rich: I am from a big family. 9 kids. I have 4 brothers and 4 sisters. We’re almost up there with the Belisles. My dad was a football coach. He was a high school football coach at Boston Latin. I used to go to his football practices, and his football camps, and we always watched college football and pro football. I have my 4 brothers, 3 of my brothers played college football as well. One played at Tufts, and two of them play at Northeastern. It was just in us as kids to … My dad was an English teacher, and a football coach, and a baseball coach, and a referee. He was always either reffing, or coaching, or something like that. He did stress. Education is really important, going to school. I actually still do this today. I go to school, I practice, or play, or coach for a couple hours, go home and have dinner with the family, do some homework, get up and do it all over again.
I feel that balances me, to have that in my life, where I get a great opportunity to teach all day long, then I get to go outside and play, and be with kids. I do have enough time to go home, and be with my family, and then have dinner, and do some homework. Of course, my family’s all grown up now, but I just think that is like a balanced life, to be able to do that. It’s a great schedule for a day. I coach soccer, and then I coach basketball, I coached baseball for years, I coached track for years. I do summer camps all year long. Mike Haggerty and I do six weeks of summer camps, and we just love being with kids, and being outside, and playing, and having fun. It’s fun for me.
Lisa: I’m amazed by the fact that you’ve been doing this for such a long time, and you’ve actually impacted so many people in my family. My sister Adele is in her early forties now; she’s just a little younger than I am. She was one of your earliest girls’ soccer players. Then you had my sister Emily, my sister Sarah. You actually coached my brother Jeff in middle school basketball, and now you’ve had my daughter Abby, who used to play for you before she went on to college. Now we have my daughter Sophie, who is a rising freshman for the soccer team. I think you’ve had all three of my kids in fifth grade, too, as a teacher. It’s been a lot of years of coaching and education, but you still maintain this enthusiasm. You still seem fresh, and energized by the work that you’re doing.
Rich: It is kind of energizing. I actually had a fifth-grader last year ask me, “Mr. Smith, you’ve been doing this for like 30 years. Do you get bored?” I was like, “No.” Actually, I never thought about before, and I think what happens is, the kids change every year. Even though I’m coaching soccer every year, or I’m teaching fifth grade math every year, the kids change every year, so they bring such a humor and a youthfulness, and energy, to my life that I never get tired of it. I feel like, even though it’s my thirtieth year of doing preseason soccer in a row, I can’t wait for it to start. I don’t sleep the night before, and I get nervous. I’m writing down plans for coaching, like now, and watching videos in the morning on soccer drills. I do enjoy it, and I do enjoy the challenge of helping the kids be the best they can be.
Lisa: Middle school seems like a really interesting time. Not only do we need our kids, fifth through eighth grade, to learn things like reading, writing, arithmetic, and all the basics, but we also need them to learn how to be social. They’re trying to understand how to interact with their peers, and with their teachers. They’re just getting to a place where they’re starting to change classrooms, and really do things like they’re going to be doing them in high school. I’ve always thought that one of the things you, as a teacher, brought to the table, is your ability to help kids with that socialization aspect of school.
Rich: I think my background … My dad was a real strong disciplinarian. He didn’t seem to make, to me, to make learning fun. He was a great guy, and I loved him, and then I went to Catholic school with all nuns. You obeyed the nuns. You didn’t learn because you love learning, and you didn’t behave because you thought it was right to behave. You learned because the nuns scared you into learning, and you did what you were supposed to do, because they were watching all the time. I always felt like, even when I was a student, school could be much more fun than that, and learning could be much more enjoyable than that. As I’ve learned to be a good teacher, and a good coach, and I’ve always kept the, “If it isn’t fun, or it isn’t enjoyable, they’re not gonna want to come back. They’re not gonna want to learn.” That’s just how I learn. If it wasn’t fun and enjoyable, I struggled with it, and when it was fun and enjoyable, I tried to do better at it.
I think that in fifth grade, I definitely want their day to be memorable. I want them to want to come back tomorrow. I want them to love learning, and I’ve talked to them about responsibility versus being obedient. When you’re responsible, you do the right thing because it’s the right thing; when you’re obedient, you do the right thing because somebody’s watching. I try to teach that, being responsible, learning while you’re having fun, not instead of having fun. I just try to keep that in the back of my mind when I plan everything, when I think about, “Is this too much stress I’m putting on these kids?” Or, “Is this too fun and too relaxing?” You get to find that happy medium that makes them work, and makes them learn, and makes it enjoyable.
Lisa: We know much more about learning styles than we once did, maybe 50 years ago. We know that there are some children who are more visual, some are more auditory. We know that some children have a higher level of emotional development, and some have a higher level of kinesthetic, or physical development. Has that knowledge changed the way that you approach teaching?
Rich: Yeah, I think it has. I think knowing that kids and adults learn in different ways, and have different strengths and different weaknesses, does make you want to change and adapt lesson plans and activities. I think the balance word keeps coming up, but I think just because they have a strength in visually learning doesn’t mean, “All right. Let’s not teach them the other way, and not give them a little bit of something else.” We do do a lot more differentiation these days in class, and we know where they’re at when they come in in the morning, and say, All right. I can bring this kid to this level, and I know if I challenge this person a little more, he’s gonna get a little, or she’s gonna get a little more out of math class, or science class today.”
We work as a team, too, in Yarmouth, in our school, and the school system, and we try to bring everybody’s best thinking and best practice to the table, so it’s not just one person saying, “I think this is good idea” anymore. It used to be that. Now we kind of learn from each other. I have a great fifth grade team that I work with, and there’s 3 of us to do math and science, and we work together on, “Okay. What’s the best way to reach all these kids today?” All the different learning styles, and there’s a lot of computer work that we do. We definitely try to mix it up, so they get a variety.
Lisa: One of my favorite topics is sports, specifically sports and children. I know that this is one of your favorite topics, too. I love that we have great opportunities for our kids, because I want our kids to be healthy. I want them to learn how to socialize, and feel successful in the field. I want them to build lifelong skills. You have 30 years of doing this as a coach, but also as a player. As a football player at the University of Maine, is there a way that we can find a balance, and not go too far in one direction? I’m thinking about kids that play three seasons. Year-round basketball, year-round soccer, year-round baseball. I’ve had children that have done this. What are the drawbacks to doing this? What are the pluses? What are the minuses?
Rich: Yeah. It’s really difficult. I think it’s really difficult for parents to know where to draw the line, and where to say, “No. We aren’t gonna be able to do this, but you can do this.” Kids are starting to specialize at a really young age, and at seventh grade, they say, “I want to be a soccer player, and that’s all I want to do, is play soccer. I’m gonna join the elite soccer team, in seventh grade.” They travel all over the country, and they spend thousands and thousands of dollars, and all kinds of stuff can happen when that happens. I personally don’t think it’s good. I think being able to play a whole bunch of different sports, being able to play some that are just for fun, some that are team sports, some that are individual sports.
Usually, if you’re a great athlete, by the time you’re a junior or senior in high school, if you think, “Maybe I want to play in college or beyond.” I think that’s an okay time to say, “You know what? I’m gonna focus on my school and soccer, or my school and hockey, because I want to go to college and play it.” Other than that, I think when kids start joining and playing year-round sports, they over-train certain muscles, and they get prone to injury, they sometimes get a inflated picture about themselves, and how good they are. I know kids that they lived in Yarmouth, they can’t beat Falmouth, but they feel like they need to go to Orlando, Florida, to a national tournament, to prove how good they are, and vice versa. Parents driving them around, and spending all kinds of money, and going to Jersey every weekend, it is when you lose that balance in your family, and you lose that balance in your life.
I know my daughter Abby played premiere soccer, and she was a really good soccer player at Falmouth High School. She went away one weekend. I think it cost $350. She was supposed to play in a tournament in New Jersey, and for whatever reason, they left on Friday night. She didn’t play on Saturday, didn’t play on Sunday, came home at Sunday night. Cost $350, she didn’t play a second, and she was in New Jersey for a summer weekend. She said, “Dad, I think I’ll just have you train me in the backyard. I’d get more out of what I got this weekend.” I do think that parents have to take those things into consideration. What is going to make them happy, and balanced. While still, a lot of those kids who push themselves, and push to succeed, and really want to get better, there is a place for that, too. If you have a daughter who’s in ninth grade, and just loves a certain sport, and loves a game, and it’s their passion, and it’s what they want to do, with a lot of thinking and a lot of planning, I guess you got to try to make room for that.
My own children who were athletes never were just like, “I want to do one thing, and one thing only.” They always wanted to do a whole bunch of stuff. My youngest daughter, who we didn’t think was the athlete in the family, ended up being a pole vaulter and volleyball player. She said, “[inaudible 00:17:32] what you know nothing about, Dad. I’m gonna do those.” She did great at them, and loved them, and enjoyed them, and it opened up a lot of different things in her life for her. I do think our kids are getting kind of pushed in a direction that might not be good for balance and for family, and for a successful future. We probably should take a look at it, and I’m glad you asked me to talk about it, because I do worry about it. I worry about kids think, and what they believe is true, and what they need to when they’re young, in order to achieve something. A lot of it isn’t really true.
Lisa: As a coach, you want your team to succeed, but you also want your players to be balanced. You’ve got good players, who play premiere soccer, and they happen to play for your team, so it’s going to benefit you that you have these good players. In some ways, if someone has over trained, and gets injured doing this premiere work, or they’re burnt out, or they’re spending weekends traveling back and forth around the country, so they can’t spend time with your team, it can create problems.
Rich: Yeah. It definitely can. It is an interesting one, because I’ve gotten praise and criticism for … I think there’s people in Yarmouth who think I don’t like premiere soccer. I have heard somebody say to somebody else, “How come Rich hates premiere soccer players.” I’m like, I love premiere soccer players. I think it’s awesome that that’s what they want to play, and they focus on the one sport that I coach them in. Most of them, because of all the training, and all the expertise, and all the practice, get really, really good. I still fundamentally believe that if they can play three sports or more for as long as they can, I think that is a great option. I don’t discourage, but I never push my girls into, “Yes, you should play premiere. You should give up basketball and lacrosse. You should do nothing except for train to be in the league soccer player,” because I don’t think that’s what’s best for them.
I think there might be two or three that it is best for them. They love it. They were really into it. They have the athletic ability to go for it, and be outstanding, but I don’t think it is for everybody. I do think premiere programs, anybody in the state of Maine, no matter what their ability is, they can pay to be in a premiere team, or an AAU team. People will take their money, and take their child, and take them to New Jersey, and Vermont, and Orlando. It isn’t, I don’t think, what’s best for them, and their family sometimes, that it would be best for them to be more well-rounded and play all kinds of different sports, and have enough time to study, and do their homework, and maybe get a part-time job, and learn from different things. It is a tricky balancing one.
I know some parents have said, “I’m glad you don’t push my kid to do that.” Some people have said, “I can’t believe he doesn’t like premiere soccer players,” which is not true at all. I love it when I do have a kid or two, and Yarmouth doesn’t have a lot of girls that play premiere soccer, and sometimes I do know … The coach from Scarborough just last week, said he had 26 premiere soccer players in his eighth grade, that’ll be freshmen next year. I was like, “All right. We have about 15 girls coming out for soccer next year in Yarmouth. I don’t think they’re all premiere soccer players.” That’s great, and in that community, they’ve said, “This is the way to succeed in soccer, is going this route.” I’m just not there yet, although I’ve had several girls do it, and I am definitely fine with it. I think it’s okay. Playing a bunch of sports, and being well-rounded, and fit, and healthy, and training all your muscle groups, is the way I would like to see people, all kids, boys and girls, do.
Lisa: Rich, both you and I have had daughters who have played premiere soccer, and as a coach, you have a broader view of this. It’s not just people coming in to play for your team that are premiere soccer players. I have a son who played premiere soccer, but also elite baseball, and then I have a daughter who did multiple different swimming organizations. I think you and I can agree that there are really benefits from doing this higher level of play. They are great opportunities. You get a chance to socialize with people outside of your town. You get a chance to experience different coaching styles, and you get a chance to compete with people from different states.
It also can be really expensive, really all-consuming, and I guess my worry is always that, when I’m on the sidelines, and I’m listening to the parent of a soccer player, or a lacrosse, or hockey, or whatever team their kid is on, who spent a lot of money to send their kid to these places, and to be part of this elite team. Sometimes, it sounds like they feel like they’re not getting enough of a return on their investment, and it sometimes feels like maybe they hope that their kid will be able to play more for the local team. There’s no guarantee there. I feel like this must be a tough situation to be in, as a coach.
Rich: It is. It’s tough. It’s tough for the coaches, because a lot of times, those kids and those parents have been told how good they are, and how much better they are than somebody else, and then they get to their high school team, and even though they star for the U14 team, which is all freshmen, and it’s a team in the state, and then they can’t play for the varsity Yarmouth High School team, they think, “It must be because the coach doesn’t understand.” Usually, they don’t see that their daughter maybe isn’t good enough. It makes it challenging, and that’s been a challenge off and on over the years. One of the questions you asked is, “Where are places in Maine that you love the most?” Yarmouth is one of them. I do feel like Yarmouth School System, and Yarmouth coaching staff, and Yarmouth kids, they get it, in general.
I’m very proud to be a teacher and a coach in Yarmouth, and I do feel like, in general, the majority of the kids and parents do get it, and they do understand. That’s probably why I’ve remained there for so long. I love the community, and I do love what they stand for. I think there’s some wonderful, great parents and role models, and unbelievably great kids in Yarmouth, including your children. They’re so much fun to coach, and work with, and very creative. It comes with some challenges, always, but just, it’s a wonderful place to coach and work. Everywhere, there’s challenges, and there’s some things that need some explaining, that’s for sure.
Lisa: Sometimes I wonder if people understand that every year, you have to create a team out of a group of individuals. You’re coming up with a new combination of kids who need to work together. Sometimes you can be really great as a standout soccer player somewhere else, but when you come back to the town team, you need to be able to interact with other individuals. That’s its own skill set, I think.
Rich: I think so, too. I do feel like I have stressed over the years, the team concept of, “Everybody on the team is important, and everybody matters.” I don’t feel like we have kids in Yarmouth that think, “I am the standout. I am the star. We wouldn’t be here without me.” I don’t think there is much of that on the teams that I’ve coached. I try really hard to create an environment which is warm, and friendly, and family-like, so that the most important thing is that we have a great experience together, learning how to play soccer, and how to win, and how to lose, and how to get through a season in harmony. A lot goes into that. When things are bumpy, when things go bad, how are we going to handle it? Teaching kids and adults, and learning yourself, of what do you do when things go wrong?
There’s going to be some stuff that comes up in the course of a year, when you’re working with 40 high school girls, and 80 or more high school parents, and athletic directors, and administrators, and teachers. Stuff’s going to happen that isn’t so great, and it’s like, so how do you handle that? What’s next? You worry about the next play, or the next event, or the next thing, not what just happened. I think it’s really important, and creating a team atmosphere and believing that everybody’s important, and everybody buying into it is very important to me. I think it works most years, and I try to get it to work most years.
Lisa: Rich, you started coaching a number of years after Title 9 brought women and girls into the sports arena. You’ve had the opportunity to coach girls, and coach boys. You have a son and two daughters, yourself. What have you noticed about coaching girls’ sports that makes it different from coaching boys’ sports?
Rich: I do feel like girls’ sports have come a long way. I do feel like girls are starting to think of themselves as both scholars and athletes, that they are just as important as the boys’ sports are, that they train just as hard, and care just as much about sports as boys do. It wasn’t always that way. When I first started coaching girls’ soccer, they would come to the game, play the game, and be like, “Yeah, but the boys’ game is next.” They’d fix their hair, and they were more worried about the boys’ game than their own game, at first. That doesn’t happen at all anymore. They really know that what they’re doing is equally as important as what they boys are doing, and that when they train, and when they work, and when they strive to get better, that’s okay. It’s not frowned upon in any way, that they’re a female athlete.
I think they’re really looked up to, and admired, just like boy athletes are. We try, in Yarmouth, to be a scholar athlete, and a good sport, all the time. In fact, I have coached for 27 years, and for about 25 of them, 24 of them, I was like, “How come we’ve never won a sportsmanship banner?” I was like, “We’re pretty good, and I’ve never heard who has one of them, or who … I just know that we’ve never won a sportsmanship banner.” 3 years ago, we won our first sportsmanship banner, and as it turns out, they didn’t give one in soccer until 3 years ago. They gave them in basketball, and I think they gave them in one other sport, but they didn’t give sportsmanship awards in other sports in the state of Maine, and now they give in all the sports. That’s something we’re really proud of, that we play the game, we play it really hard, we’re really good at it, but we play it the right way, and we smile, win or lose, and we shake hands, win or lose, and we’re not disrespectful.
The sportsmanship award is varsity, JV, girls’, parents, the whole deal. It is a community award, and we’ve won 3 years in a row. The only 3 years there’s been sportsmanship awards. I’m very proud of that. I think that’s important stuff.
Lisa: That’s been really fun to have you in to speak with me today, Rich. I thank you for coaching my children, and my other family members, and for also teaching my children. We’ve been speaking with Rich Smith. He’s a fifth grade teacher at Yarmouth. He’s been doing this for the past 30 years, also coaching 3 sports a year for about all of those 30 years. Rich, I wish you all success in your upcoming soccer seasons, and I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me today.
Rich: Thank you for having me.