x13

Georgetown Hoya

Scott Smith is originally from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
He has played as a forward on the Canadian National Squad for 5 years.
He has coached at College, High School and Club level for 6 years in Canada, England, and now the USA. This year he took a job as assistant coach at Georgetown University in Washington DC. He talked to PlanetFieldHockey about his experiences and first-year impressions.


PlanetFieldHockey: You?ve done a lot of coaching in the past at different levels. What do you need to be a good coach in the NCAA?
Scott Smith: I guess as far as coaching the key thing is being well balanced, in the office and on the field.

Also I think the key thing is to have a genuine interest in the kids as players and as individuals, and not just use a revolving door. Avoid the approach of graduate the seniors (final year college) then bring in new freshmen (first year college) for the benefit of the program - even though the program is important.


PFH: How was your first year coaching there?
SS: Coaching Georgetown this year has been ? I?ve been a able to help Georgetown to it's best record ever at 13-6 and the team made it to their first ever post season ever. We lost in the ECAC (East Coast Athletic Conference) semi-final 1-0 in a hard fought match to Columbia, who are a good team.

I like the coaching but on the field coaching only makes up about 20-30% of the job. Recruiting kids is a major part of the job when there are so many schools to choose from, and especially at Georgetown where academics come first. We can only help them so much to get into the school, without any scholarship money to offer to make it more appealing. On the other hand, I guess just getting in to Georgetown is your scholarship because of the prestige of the school.


PFH: How much of a role do scholarships play?
SS: I think scholarships are key. If you have scholarships to offer then it is easier to attract better players, whether they are foreign or not. At Georgetown we don't have scholarships to offer and it is a very hard college to get admitted to. It is like the ivy league with teams such as Harvard and Princeton. It is also expensive to go to Georgetown. The base per year for your annual tuition is roughly $35,000. So the kids on our team, if they wanted to, could just quit without losing any scholarship money as oppose to a college like Maryland for example, where a kid who is on a full ride (tuition, books, food, rent) - if they quit they basically lose their scholarship which means they lose all those funds.... So in essence they are paid athletes if they are on a full scholarship.


PFH: What are the rules like governing the NCAA?
SS: The rules are something else - there are so many of them. The Division 1 NCAA manual has five hundred pages and averages about 10 rules per page dealing with things like eligibilty and recruiting and so on. Some of the rules that are weird are minor but things, like if a player comes into your office and ask for a piece of gum or tape or anything like that, it is a violation if we give it to them. Another rule that we recently dealt with, was when the other assistant coach and I were driving to the Final Four tournament and there was a senior all-star game which was taking place with one of our players in it. We had to check with our compliance officer (who is a lawyer who deals with all the fine print if we need his help) whether it was ok if we could drive our player down there. It took a little while for us to find out if that was OK, which it was in the end. But if that happened in most other countries it would have been a given that you could drive your player there. We cannot drive our players anywhere unless we get back late from a game and it is unsafe to walk home because (we usually travel by our team bus).


PFH: The umpiring?
SS: I think that most of the top 10-15 schools probably get better reffing than teams that are not in the top 20. I noticed that when we play lower opposition we get the refs that don't let the game free-flow as much and blow the whistle if it is something they haven't seen before.
Probably the thing that gets me the most are the hand signals. Some of the refs umpire lacrosse and hockey, so they will blow what might be a lacrosse foul and use a lacrosse hand gesture to show us what they are calling, and I have got no idea!

An interesting rule is that there are never any draws, at the end of regulation time if it is still tied they go to 7v7 for sudden death overtime ? two 15-minute halves and after that if it is still tied it goes to strokes.


PFH: Overall Impressions?
SS: I was suprised how many foreign players there are here studying and playing. Of the four teams in the final four only one team (UNC) had no ?foreigners?.

I guess in a nutshell - what I am trying to say is that I am impressed with the level and the amount of players over here. It is a business and I do like it. I just think that they could some things to improve the game over here and that would improve the skill level which in turn might help their National Team.

Rate This Article

Select Here  5 Stars  (Best Rating)   4 Stars   3 Stars   2 Stars   1 Star  (Worst Rating)

Your opinion counts.
Rate this article or enter your comments below.