When Kent Smith ventured into retirement in 1998, he was convinced he had completed the final chapter of his legacy as one of Colorado’s best high school boys basketball coaches.
What more could one man accomplish?
Quite by accident, Smith has revived his coaching career in La Veta, a town of about 1,000 some 20 miles west of Walsenburg. This time, he has breathed life into a long-dormant girls program.
Rejuvenated at the age of 65, Smith is in his fifth season coaching the Redskins, who moved up to Class 2A this season. La Veta, which finished 20-2 and just missed advancing to the Class A state tournament last season, is 9-2 in 2A this season.
“I wish I had gotten smart and coached girls a long time ago. It’s a lot more fun,” said Smith, whose career record is 353-173 (.671).
Smith won two big-school state titles (1977 and 1979) while compiling a 182-58 record (.758 winning percentage) in 11 seasons at Boulder, ending in 1982. He built the Ponderosa program from scratch, reaching the Class 3A semifinals his fourth and final season (1987) and watching from the outside as it won a title under Myron Long the year after he left. Then, Smith took over and retooled the Highlands Ranch program during a five-year run, also serving as athletic director and cross country coach.
Long before then, Smith had attained two of his three goals in life: coaching a team to a state title and writing a book (“Winning Basketball with Multiple Motion Offenses,” published late in his Boulder tenure). All that remained: building a house.
Smith and his wife, Laura, found 37 acres of ranch land between Walsenburg and La Veta and began building.
“I guess I always wanted to be a cowboy,” said Smith, who cares for horses and greyhounds on the ranch.
Smith, who is 61-19 since going 9-11 his first season at La Veta, has no intentions of slowing down. He said he is committed to coaching the Redskins for at least two more years.
La Veta can thank Diane and Vince Koutnik for luring Smith out of retirement. When Smith first settled on his ranch, word of his accomplishments as a coach spread to one of his neighbors, whose sister, Diane Koutnik, lived in La Veta and had three girls: two in middle school and one who played on the fifth-grade team.
“I didn’t come here to coach,” Smith recalled, but he reluctantly agreed to work with the fifth-grade team.
Parents were so impressed with Smith’s coaching, the next year they asked if he would coach the high school team.
“We realized we needed this guy in the high school,” Diane Koutnik said. “They had had, like, 17 coaches in 20 years. I didn’t think I could handle my three daughters playing and losing like that. We went to the school board and talked him up, and they saw the light.”
“I said no, but they kept after me,” said Smith, who recalled watching the La Veta girls lose 110-8 one night.
Smith remains a no-nonsense disciplinarian whose coaching style focuses on fundamentals and full-court, man-to-man pressure defense — characteristics his former Boulder players insist often resulted in the Panthers exceeding their talent level.
The 1979 Panthers might be the best example of Smith’s ability to mold an overachieving team. Boulder lost six games after going 18-1 the previous year. Smith calls his 1978 team “the best group I ever had,” but Smoky Hill knocked BHS out in a district upset.
In 1979, a six-loss Boulder team got revenge by winning a playoff game at Smoky Hill — only to have the team bus’s tires slashed and windows broken in the parking lot — and went on to beat Regis for the championship. And the 1980 team was second in the state.
University of Colorado athletic director Mike Bohn was the starting center on the 1979 team and remains convinced Boulder won the title that year for one reason only.
“Regis had God on their side; we had Coach Smith,” Bohn recalled someone saying after the championship win. “He clearly was the John Wooden of Colorado high school basketball. His organizational structure and ability to keep everybody focused was just incredible. . . . We didn’t always have the best talent, but we had the best team and the best program because we had the best coach.
“He truly was the program, and he inspired so many other people to do it.”
He still relishes challenges.
“I think one of my strengths is taking a program that’s down or nonexistent and seeing how far I can take it,” he said.”(Coaching) gives my life a little structure, and it’s another challenge to see how far I can take these girls.”
