Coaching career
After graduating from college, Smith returned to Louisiana and became a math teacher and assistant basketball coach at Slocum High School. [1] [3] After two years there, he left to become a teacher at Pineville High School, but did not coach basketball there. [1] In 1975, he joined Peabody Magnet High School as a teacher and assistant to head basketball coach Earnest Brown. [1] As an assistant coach, he helped Peabody win the state championship in 1979, their first, with the team featuring future NBA player Paul Thompson. [1] [2] In 1985, he succeeded Brown as head coach at Peabody. [4]
Although his team did poorly in his first two years – going 8–18 his first year and then 13–13 the next – his "brand of disciplined and defense-driven basketball" soon began to have success. [2] He led Peabody to a 28– record in 1987–88 which resulted in his first state tournament appearance and district title, and Peabody finished as state runner-up in 1990, then won the state title in 1991. [1] [2] His teams then showed dominance throughout the ensuing years; as of 2019, Smith's teams had won at least 22 games every year from 1988. [5] He won his 500th game in 2003 and his 1,000th in 2018, while he broke the all-time Louisiana wins record with 1,072 in 2020. [6] [7] [8]
Smith, by 2019, had won the district title 28 times, including a streak of 19 consecutive titles that ended in 2014. [5] By that point, he had led Peabody to the Top 28 18 times, while having never lost in the first round of the state playoffs. [5] He has won eight state championships as a head coach – 1991, 2000, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2012, 2017, and 2020 – and compiled undefeated 41–0 records in 2004 and 2010, with him being named the ESPN National Coach of the Year in the latter season while both of those teams placed highly in the national rankings. [3] [4] [9] He is a five-time recipient of the Louisiana Sports Writers Association (LSWA) Coach of the Year award, and in 2020, he served as a head coach at the McDonald's All-American Game. [5] [10]
By 2024, Smith had compiled a record of 1,204–214, being fourth all-time in high school basketball history for wins. [3] [4] He has coached over 60 players that received college scholarships, and over 70 that played college basketball, including his son, Ked, and grandson, Jacoby, both of whom played at the NCAA Division I level. [6] [11] As head coach, he has coached one person who has played in the NBA, Markel Brown. [11] Smith wrote a book on his life, Legendary Coach Charles Smith: In My Footsteps, and a documentary was produced about his time at Peabody, called Chasing 1,000 Wins. [6] He was inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in 2019. [1] In 2024, he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, only the sixth high school coach ever to receive the honor. [12] He was inducted in his first year of consideration. [13]
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