Remembering Randy Smith…
Published 1:07 am Tuesday, September 24, 2019
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BY C.Y. PETERS
Randy got to become a good friend of mine through sports as most people do. Randy was an inspiration to everyone in every sport he coached.
His heart and the will to win would bring the teams he coached many victories. Even when a team wasn’t as good as some of the others he had coached, he would win many games on his inspirational voice.
I never heard Randy put a kid down if they did something wrong or “boneheaded” as he would say, he showed them the right way to do it. How to block, how to turn and run, how to slide into a base on the diamond and how to shoot hoops the right way.
He coached every sport he could and always put 100 percent into it.
Randy also took his turn at being an official. Calling the game still with a whistle in his mouth and at first, he had a hard time calling a technical on a coach.
He would try to explain the rule or the play to the coach and then when Randy would show the coach he was wrong they just got more upset. It took him a while before he just simply would start calling the T’s and telling the coach he should know better.
Randy was so much fun to be around, always smiling, and he was with me coaching baseball and football. My first meeting with Randy happened when my son Jeff, who is a left-handed pitcher, was playing for the Jr. Babe Ruth.
He was pitching against Randy’s team and we were ahead 15-0 with two outs when my son called time and motion for me to come to the mound.
When I arrived Jeff said, “I want to walk this boy.” When I ask why he replied, “he wanted to pick him off at first base where Randy was coaching.”
At the time, I didn’t know it was Randy’s stepson, but with that big of a lead, I told him to go ahead.
The boy was also a friend of Jeff’s and after the walk, he took about two steps off first base, Jeff fired a rocket to first to Nick Papantoniou who laid down the tag and the final out of the game.
Do I have to tell you what Randy said and how he went off?
He knew Jeff had done that on purpose. It was weeks, months, even years and we still talked about it when we would meet somewhere. “That ain’t right,” I don’t know how many times I have heard Randy say that.
Jiggy Rays owner Jon Malone said, “I had the pleasure of working with Randy through the boys and girls club and I can honestly say that he had a passion for youth sports that seemed more like a calling than a hobby.
“He treated every kid fairly and went far beyond what would be expected as a coach. He cared about his players on and off the field.
“He was definitely one of the great ones. I know the lessons he taught to his players will resonate with them for the rest of their lives.“
Randy also worked for one year in the early 2000’s selling ads for the Double Play Sports Weekly paper and did he love that.
He loved going out to meet people and he was a great salesman. He kept us going even when it was a hard time for newspapers. Randy once sold a large ad and was he on cloud nine.
He didn’t work for about three weeks after that, he just sat at home and played video games. He was like a big kid – I guess that’s why he got along so well with the players because he loved playing video games with them.
You could go to his house and about four or five boys would be sitting about the floor with controllers in their hands playing games on the x-box.
Jake Berkley said, “The first time I met Randy was when he coached my cousin’s basketball team, the 76ers, for the Boys and Girls Club. I believe I was 15 years old at the time.
“All the players on that team loved him so much and he honestly cared for each of those kids. But as I kept showing up to the practices Randy would start challenging me to games here and there – even though I wasn’t on his team.
He went on to add, “One of my favorite memories of Randy was one night after a ball game at Happy Valley Elementary School, I started talking smack to Randy.
“I was a cocky young teenager who thought not many people could run as fast as me. So I challenged this old man (old to me at the time) to a foot race – winner takes all the bragging rights.
“So as they said, ‘GO’, I took off and to my surprise, this old man is keeping up with me. By the time we made it to finish line he actually had nudged me out.
“I was in so much disbelief that a man more than twice my age could beat me in a race. From that day on, I soaked in as much as Randy could offer or teach me when it came to sports. The man loved the game more than anyone.”
I showed Randy what is probably the greatest card trick ever. It takes two people, a telephone and the know-how.
He would tell a player to pick a card, show his buddies, call me on the phone many miles away and I would tell them the card they picked. Then you could hear him with that loud laugh in the background say, “I told you so.” We pulled that off many times and I think he even made some money on it.
Randy coached at the Elizabethton Boys Club in football and basketball, he coached with former Elizabethton boys and girls coach Len Dugger in baseball with a team they put together called the Cobras.
He was a manager in the National Little League and coached in the Jr. Babe Ruth leagues. He helped in football and baseball at Elizabethton before going to Johnson County to coach for the Longhorns.
Randy played football at Hampton High School in the mid-’80s. This past week the Longhorn’s made a comeback win on the road as the players had shirts with the number 10 on the back, Randy’s old football jersey number.
Sadly Randy was killed in an auto accident this past week but for his friends, his family, his players, his old teammates, Randy left a lifetime of laughter and memories.