Kyle Smith Takes the Helm in Levien Gym - Columbia College ...

Columbia CollEgE Today KYLE sMITH TAKEs THE REINs
The Columbia program bottomed out
in 2002–03, when the team was winless
in the Ivy League and 2–25 overall. Jones
came in and laid a foundation. A campus
presence, he boosted team morale, reignited
spirit among students and alumni,
recruited some good players and got the
Lions to the middle of the Ivy League.
But last spring, when Donahue cashed
in on Cornell’s success and moved on to become
head coach at Boston College of the
Atlantic Coast Conference, Jones resigned
to become Donahue’s top assistant.
athletics Director M. Dianne Murphy
said more than 150 applications
were reviewed before her
search team selected Smith as
Jones’ successor. “He’s exactly what we’re
looking for as our head basketball coach,”
Murphy said when Smith was introduced
to the Columbia community on May 5, citing
Smith’s “strong leadership skills, excellent
basketball knowledge and successful
recruiting experience.”
For Smith, the opportunity was “too
good to pass up,” he says, even though it
meant uprooting his family from a comfort
zone on the West Coast. “Head coaching
jobs are hard to get, period, and everybody
knows the Ivy League and its schools. For
certain kids, for certain families, there’s a
feeling of awe when you say Columbia.
Now I want to get the basketball to match
that, which Columbia deserves.”
Smith had no qualms about moving from
a school, albeit a relatively lesser-known one,
that was able to offer athletics scholarships
to one where all financial aid is need-based.
“I like the non-scholarship piece,” he
says. “I was a Division III player at Hamilton
College, and there was an investment
on our part as players. We were there for
the love of the game. I’ve been on the other
side of that for a long time, where you’re
offering scholarships that are worth $50,000
a year. There’s somewhat of a lack of appreciation.
I don’t know of many 17-year-olds
who are ready to take on a $50,000-a-year
job, which essentially is what it becomes.
There’s a sense of entitlement, and they
tend not to want to give back, whereas people
at Columbia, or where I went at Hamilton,
tend to give back.”
Smith says he was pleasantly surprised
by the interest in the basketball program
among alumni. “I think the piece that really
sells Columbia is that people who have
gone through here have had a wonderful
experience and they care so much about it.
I wasn’t expecting that. There hasn’t been
great recent success in the program, and
After 18 years as an assistant,
Kyle Smith assumes his first head
coaching position at Columbia.
PHOTO: DANIELLA ZALCMAN ’09
NOvEMBER/DECEMBER 2010
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