It couldn't have gone any better than this when the Upper Arlington women's basketball team watched Ohio State defeat Caitlin Clark's Iowa Hawkeyes, 100-92 in overtime, at the Schottenstein Center in January. As the UA players soaked up the electric atmosphere, they also noticed a No. 30 jersey hanging with a familiar name on it: Buckeye basketball legend, women's basketball pioneer and volunteer assistant coach for the UA team, Katie Smith.
The moment reminded the players that Smith isn't just a down-to-earth basketball nut rebounding shots and tweaking her shooting form. She's also one of the best players the sport has ever seen. “She's so humble, despite all her accomplishments,” UA point guard and co-captain Quinn Buttermore said. “She's not just a basketball player, she's an even better person. That alone means a lot. I'm really grateful for the privilege of being around her.”
Smith joined the UA staff after head coach John Wanke took over the program in 2021. A longtime Upper Arlington resident, Smith wanted to get more involved in the community. She recently married and is raising two children, Yeslin and Lenin, at the UA with her wife, Yesenia. After a three-minute phone call with Wanke, she applied for the high school job.
Since then, the UA women's team has been going strong. The team finished this year with a 22-4 record, their third consecutive year of improved performance. While Smith misses practices and games due to her day job as associate head coach of the WNBA's Minnesota Lynx, she's with the UA team most of the time. She gives feedback, acts as a sounding board for Wanke and works with each player one-on-one. “It's good to see her around and we all know how much it means to us to be able to count on her,” says Buttermore, a senior who has been on the team for three years. Smith agrees. “They're great kids, they're really funny and they work really hard,” she says.
Smith will return to Minneapolis this summer for the WNBA season, which, with Clark's addition, will be one of the most anticipated in years. At the time this article went to press, Clark was projected to be the No. 1 overall pick in the league's April 15 draft. Clark and other young stars have transformed women's basketball from the niche sport that Smith and other pioneers established into a mainstream phenomenon. “I love it,” says Smith, who retired as women's professional basketball's all-time leading scorer (Phoenix Mercury star Diana Taurasi has since broken her record). “It's very exciting.”
But Smith also wants to continue giving back to the community, and her job at UA fits that mission. She says Coach Wanke is building a tradition at UA that she wants to be a part of. She's already looking forward to next season. “We have a great eighth-grade team coming up,” she says.
This story is an excerpt from our May 2024 issue's Inspiring Women feature. Columbus Monthly.
