Pickens High School A.D. Chad Smith
Jeff Holt | The Easley Progress
PICKENS — When you think of the Easley and Pickens rivalry, there are not too many people who are more connected to both schools than Chad Smith. He write a 300-page book about it with several chapters about his ties with the Green Wave-Blue Flames.
His current role is the Athletic Director at Pickens High School.
His family is deeply-rooted in the Pickens area. Several of you remember him as a standout football/track athlete at Pickens High School (1997 grad).
Ironically on Friday night (Aug. 23), as Easley and Pickens battle it out on the football field, is also the birthday of Chad Smith. So, be sure to wish Chad (or Coach Smith) a happy 45th birthday at the big rival game tonight.
Smith does wish Sam Houston the best as the head coach of the Green Wave football team.
“The family he’s from are good people and I have no doubt he’ll be successful,” Smith said. “I know this from personal experience – it is very difficult to go to your hometown (and coach) because people are going to question the things that you do. My prayer for Sam is that the people in Easley give him time. He will do a good job, but it won’t happen over night.”
The ties between Smith and Houston go way back. Smith served as Easley’s head football coach all three years that Sam Houston played on the Green Wave varsity football team.
Going back to those days, Smith took some time to reflect on Houston as a football player.
“He (Houston) was tough and he was smart. He was a 160-pound linebacker his sophomore year, about 190 his junior year and around 210 pounds his senior year and was a stud,” Smith said. “I am not a proponent of specialization and it was a different time. But with me being the track coach, if you didn’t play baseball or soccer, I made you run track. Sam was a backup catcher for the baseball team. He talked to Roger Finley who was the baseball coach at the time and he decided to try and get faster. So, he went out for track and I made him run the 110 high hurdles. It wasn’t because he was good at it, but it was because it would open his hips up. We got his 40 time down probably as low as it could at the time and that made a huge difference. He still wasn’t a blazer, but he was fast enough to make the plays and he’d through a brick wall. Sam’s junior year we were 11-2 and the two losses were to Greenville – we lost to them in the regular season and in the second round of the playoffs.”
Smith – as the head football coach of Easley High School from 2010-12- turned in an impressive 29-9 overall record. He left his mark in Green Wave country and it will always be a cherished time of his life. He still remembers his playing days at Pickens High School, when that bell would go off at Brice Field after a touchdown and he hated it. However, when he coached at Easley High School, he’d love hearing that bell go off after a touchdown. He remembers the huge crowds at the games (close to 8,000 fans) with cars lined up for a country mile. One of his good friends to this day, too, is the legendary Bert Owens and they still stay in contact.
It’s the “little things” like having numbers on the side of the helmets that Smith knew and that Houston grew up with.
“Even though I was from Pickens, I understood Easley,” Smith said.