Paige Hassen: JRN

Picture Story One: Women’s Club Basketball Coach Caitlin Smith

Caitlin Smith is the Central Michigan University Club Women’s Basketball Coach and currently enrolled in the Sports Management graduate program.

As an 18-year-old, Smith started as the head coach when she was just a freshman. The previous coach came into one of her first undergraduate classes to explain that he was retiring and was in need of someone to take over. Speaking to the sports management undergraduate class, he was confident that someone in the program had the correct skillset, and Smith was that person. After a conversation and a few trial practices, Smith officially started a few short weeks later.

Entering high school at Troy High School in Troy, Mich., Smith made the varsity basketball team as a freshman. At the first official practice, Smith suffered a serious foot injury that resulted from running sprints.

“I don’t remember a lot,” Smith said. “I went to turn around and bent down, and then all of a sudden, I just couldn’t get up.”

Growing up watching Kobe Byrant, basketball was everything to Smith. She had aspirations of joining the WNBA and was arguably on her way there before the career-threatening injury.

“I grew up in a basketball family,” Smith said. “It has always been something important to me.”

The official injury that Smith suffered was a dislocation of an extra bone in her foot that ultimately caused her arch to collapse. It tore all the tendons and ligaments in her foot and surrounding area, resulting in total reconstructive surgery. Smith was not sure if she would be able to ever play again, but she wanted to continue to try.

The following year, after months of physical therapy and treatments, Smith was cleared to play about halfway through her sophomore season. Ultimately, she got re-injured and had to have another surgery. Going into her junior year, Smith was warned by her doctors of risk of more surgeries and possible permanent injury if she continued to play, to which she decided her previous dream of playing in the WNBA wasn’t going to happen.

“Because I couldn’t contribute on the court, I was looking for other ways to contribute,” said Smith.

From conversations with her high school coaches, they encouraged Smith to use her basketball IQ and help contribute to the team in a different type of way.

“Through all of that, it grew a big passion for coaching for me,” said Smith. “As much as I do want to play, seeing the impact on my girls now, I wouldn’t trade coaching for anything.

Five surgeries later, Smith is now entering her fifth year as the head coach and is not letting her inability to play stop her from doing what she loves in keeping basketball in her life. She is hoping to continue to coach until she is done with graduate school.

---

My experience:

This is a story that I think is beautiful and should have been told. When thinking of a sports feature, and thinking about who I could focus on, I found it interested that the women’s club basketball coach was so young. Usually, from what I’ve seen before, even club coaches are a little bit older (the previous one was a 40 year old man).

Going to each practice was a little bit difficult, due to the busy schedules of both Smith and I, but I enjoyed getting a look into her life. Seeing how much sports have an impact on her life was insane. She works in the Indoor Athletic complex, spends all her extra time at basketball practice or doing something with basketball, and is in an intensive sports management graduate school program. I wanted to try and get a glimpse of that with my camera. Seeing her love for the sport was inspiring, so I wanted to capture that as well.

Of course, not everything went to plan, some ideas didn’t pan out or some photos were a little shaky, but I’m still happy with the end result. I took a photography class this summer that really challenged how I view photography and what is visually appealing, so I tried to experiment a bit with the photos I took. Different angles, different focal points, different detail shots, different shutter speeds, etc. I think they turned out well, and I’m happy with the final product given that it was our first picture story of the year. I am looking forward to seeing how I improve.