Passing the Whistle: Mentoring the Next Generation of Coaches at Huntington High School
Shawn Jones
DIRECTOR, ATHLETICS
Shawn has 30 years of head basketball coaching experience combined with 11 years as an athletic director. He has coached in Colorado and Texas, and has taken teams to three Final Four tournaments and a state championship. He has seen numerous players of his continue on to compete at the college and professional level of the sport. He is also proud to have seen many of his athletes become high school and collegiate coaches themselves. As director of athletics, Shawn is a key member of Ballogy’s team, driving the company’s athletic strategy, partnerships, coach engagement, and product vision. He has been married to his high school sweetheart for 32 years and they have raised three wonderful children together. Shawn has a passion for player development and the desire to assist coaches with effective, time-saving tools of administering and assessing skill development drills.
One of a coach’s greatest accomplishments is to mentor assistant coaches who go on to become successful head coaches themselves. Adding frosting to that honor is the ability to transition an assistant coach into the role of head coach within the same program he was mentored. I have had the great honor to do this twice in my career.
At Los Fresnos High School (TX 6A) I handed the whistle to my assistant of 8 years, Marco Hinojosa, when I accepted an Athletic Director position. Marco has taken the Fighting Falcons to 7 District 32-6A titles and a Regional Semi-Final.
The most recent hand off is just beginning. Seth Smithhart, my assistant for 7 years at Huntington High School (TX 3A), is in his first year as a varsity head coach, after I exchanged roles from Athletic Director and Head Girls’ Basketball Coach to Ballogy’s Athletic Director in May. Coach Smithhart has assisted me 6 years on the boys’ side, an additional year on the boys’ side when I moved to girls’, before finally moving over with me last year in our historic run to the State Championship game. As an assistant on the boys’ side the year I moved to the girl’s, Seth was called upon to step in when the Head Coach was out ill. Seth went 2-1 as “interim” head coach, winning a District game, a non-district game, and only dropping the one loss in double overtime by 2 pts against Tatum HS, who went on to the Regional Semis.
The experience and knowledge Coach Smithhart has gained being an assistant in the same program he is now taking over as head coach is certain to serve him well as full time Head Coach.
I sat down with Seth recently, now that he has gone through Fall workouts and has just begun games as the man in charge. I asked what the biggest challenge has been and he was quick to respond, “Logistics…having so much to do and moving campus to campus in my teaching and dealing with this issue and that issue, trying to work around athlete’s other commitments, making sure I have everything planned out, watching film, and trying to put together game plans without having all of our athletes who are injured or still in volleyball playoffs…Logistics!”
A unique characteristic about what we did and accomplished at Huntington HS is that we coached boys the majority of the time together before moving to the girls’ side, and now Seth can compare coaching the two groups. “I think last year’s State run highlighted that girls really tend to listen, trust, and buy in. They listen and want to learn, and we just told them, ‘You just have to trust us to do our job, and you just have to go do yours, and we will be successful.’ That’s one of the things I’ve learned is if you can find a way to develop true trust with the girls, they’ll do everything you ask to try to win.”
What remains constant, whether coaching boys or girls, is Coach Smithhart’s expectations to work and play hard. “I want to win, but I want people in the stands to say we play harder than anyone they’ve seen, and we’re the most physical team they’ve seen, and everything’s a fight. I think if you can get that, if you can be that every day, then you have a chance to be good. I want to be the hardest playing, most physical team every night.”
Inheriting a team that graduated the majority of the State Runner-Up roster, Coach Smithhart must begin building the toughness and effort that made that team so successful. “Are we there right now? No, but it’s a culture that we’re rebuilding. When you graduate that huge chunk of kids who were fairly tough, had an edge, had experience, had confidence, had skill… it has to be taught and rebuilt.” Last year’s State team enjoyed experienced, Senior leadership and talent. Also, having the 3A MVP and All-State player leading the way didn’t hurt. This is something that Coach Smithhart knows clearly, and is working to overcome. “When we walk into the gym, we know she [Kyra Anderson] is not walking through the door, so where do we make that up? With physicality, with effort, with toughness…and then we hone in on the talent we do have and keep building it through player development. And once that starts to catch up with the toughness we have already instilled, then we will have something! That’s our three biggest keys: Energy, Effort, and Toughness.”
Giving credit to his first assistant, and a long time assistant of mine as well, Coach Smithhart acknowledges Coach Matt Andrews as being a huge factor in developing players with those qualities and fundamental skill. “Coach Andrews is a huge asset in player development…he’s just too humble about it. We saw the impact he had with Kyra [Anderson] in her career, and he is developing our young post players with that now.”
Coach Andrews added one tool that will help even him in developing players. “Ballogy Vision now will really help where kids can go in and they can shoot, they can look at their analytics and understand how to get better. Too many times kids think if they go in and shoot twenty 3’s they are getting better. But they really are not. It needs to be game-like and game-speed reps. Vision is going to help players and coaches see the analytics right then and look at the video side by side. That’s a game changer in player development.”
Having known the struggle and confusion of what it takes to play college basketball himself, Coach Andrews notes the value Ballogy can have for an athlete. “Kids don’t understand what it takes. Ballogy could be a great tool to help them understand the amount they have to put in. I didn’t know what it took. I was lucky to get there. If I would have known what it took, I would have been a lot better, and I would have been better prepared when I got there.”
Coach Smithhart and Coach Andrews are trying to instill that roadmap in their players and program now. In his first year as a varsity head coach, Seth is understanding it is the development of role players around the stars who will ultimately determine success. “How do we get our puzzle pieces to fit around our main piece? How do we get the average player to compliment the star? Improving every player’s abilities, whatever level they are, is our objective. That is the goal of our player development. We’d love to have lots of stars who want to play college basketball… but honestly, some just want to be good high school players, and that’s ok… so we have to motivate and develop them to be as good as they can be to go with the ones who are aspiring to continue playing at higher levels, and make it into a team to win. Ballogy can be a big part of that, because ultimately, those kids need to see the results of their work early and often. Ballogy offers that feedback.”
Being a first year head coach is never easy. However, with the experience of coaching both boys and girls and seeing the unseen hours of skill development turn into a historic championship run, Coach Seth Smithhart is equipped to turn all that experience into new successes for the Devilettes of Huntington High School. Teaching toughness, energy and effort as the staples of his program, Seth will undoubtedly build the program into another highly successful era.
I might be a little biased, having dedicated over a decade to Huntington as Athletic Director and Head Coach in the trenches with my assistants… but mostly through seeing firsthand Coach Smithhart’s and Coach Andrews’ passion and dedication to our kids, I am extremely proud to hand off the leadership to Seth and know that he is about to do great things. That is more meaningful than any championship could be to a coach!