Spring 06 Baseball COY: Smoot guides team with solid mix (06-22-06)
Strasburg coach uses humor, voice to spark players -- By Michael Petre (Daily Staff Writer)
STRASBURG — There are at least two sides to Jeff Smoot.
When the lights come on and his team takes the field, Strasburg's baseball coach is as serious and straight-laced as can be. His players follow suit, carrying a professional frame of mind onto the diamond.
"He definitely likes to get down to business," senior first baseman Luke Ramsey said. "He wants things done the right way."
And then there's another side, exhibited mostly to his players in practice or before games. Flexing his comedy muscle, Smoot routinely offers his players a joke to lighten the mood and remind them of the fun baseball can be.
"He has a sense of humor like no other coach I've had," Ramsey said. "He keeps us loose as much as he can; that's a tribute to how he coaches. He knows how to get the best out of his players."
That approach spurred the Rams all the way to the Group A state tournament semifinals. Strasburg's unexpected run earned Smoot the nod as the Northern Virginia Daily's Baseball Coach of the Year.
"I think if anybody would tell you the truth, I don't think anybody expected us to go as far as we did this year," senior pitcher Parker Neal said. "We played pretty well in the big games, and a lot of that has to do with the preparation we did before every game."
Smoot said topics like the Rams' chances in the postseason never come up, even among the coaching staff.
"We don't really talk about it," he said. "We just want to get to the second season and see where we are at that point."
The Rams had a solid nucleus, led by Neal, Ramsey and follow four-year varsity player Travis Conner. They had some young pop in sophomores Josh Kibler and Timmy McDonald, but they didn't have an overwhelming pitching staff or dominant offense that state tournament teams normally possess.
Neal said Smoot found a way to get everybody to contribute, allowing the team to go farther than it probably should have.
"We had some guys who could play and some guys who needed some fine tuning," he said. "[Smoot] takes guys that maybe don't have the best skills and finds ways to motivate them and get them to add to our game."
Motivation was key. After disappointing losses to George Mason in the Bull Run District title game and Goochland in the Region B championship game, Smoot turned up the heat to make sure the Rams' season kept rolling.
"He really had to put a lot of fire under our butts because we couldn't do it ourselves," Ramsey said. "He knows how to get us motivated."
And how's that?
"He yelled at us quite a bit," Ramsey chuckled.
Smoot reluctantly agreed with that, but deflected all credit to his players.
"There were times maybe that we felt like we had to fuss at our boys a little more," he said. "But I'm certainly in no way, shape or form going to take credit for what we did. I'm just not. We had good players and we've got a good staff."
And then there are those pre-game jokes, which re-energized the Rams before they got serious.
"He likes to joke around with us," Ramsey said. "But they're all too crude and rude for the paper."
R Contact Michael Petre at mpetre@nvdaily.com
Jeff Smoot
School: Strasburg
Year: 25th year
Position: Coach
Claim to fame: Smoot directed the Rams to the semifinals of the Group A state tournament, where they fell to eventual champion Goochland.
