Coach Matt Smith’s Tanner soccer team took home the blue map this year in the playoffs. But he’s also earned his own accolade by being named the 2023 AHSAA 1A-3A coach of the year.

“I enjoy the attention that it brings to the program and the boys more than it does me,” he said. “Anything I can do to draw a spotlight to them is great to me.”

Smith said this team has meant a lot to him. The chemistry of the team has been what got them to the championship. and he feels like he’s tried to instill that sense of family in them.

“The character of the team is always going to be that of the head coach,” he said.

That’s been easy because of how they’ve responded to his coaching style and taken ownership of the team on themselves. He said a lot of his coaching style was thanks to former coach Laron White, who was his coach when he was a football player.

“He instilled in us that sports was just a foundation to create brotherhood,” he said.

Smith said he has the team breakdown before the game on “family,” on “finish” at halftime, and at the end of a game on “family” once more.

“You get that mentality of ‘I’ve got everybody that I need right here in this huddle to get the job done,’” he said.

With this season, he has wrapped up 10 years of coaching with a record of 139-59.

“For me to be named small school coach of the year, it felt amazing,” Smith said. “For a long time it was surreal because I didn’t have any idea, no inkling of even thinking I would be coach of the year. It was definitely an honor and means a lot to me.”

In those 10 years, his soccer team has only missed the playoffs twice. Once was during COVID when playoffs weren’t held, and the other year was 2018.

He said when he was a student at Tanner they didn’t even have soccer, and he graduated in 2007. Principal Billy Owens was the coach for many years until he asked Smith to do it in 2013.

“I knew nothing about [soccer], absolutely nothing. For me to take the job serious and know what I was doing, and I don’t like doing anything half-tailed. For me to continue doing it, I told coach [Billy] Owens … somebody else that knows this is going to have to teach me the ins and outs of it,” he said.

“I get it all the time ‘Man what does this dude know about soccer? He’s 6’6, 400 pounds; he played college football.’ and every time it gets under my skin, man. Y’all don’t know the work that I’ve had to put in because I don’t know this sport,” he said.

He talked about how he reached out to coaches at the Universities of Alabama Birmingham and Huntsville to learn the game.

“Those two guys opened up playbooks, opened up set pieces and opened up anything that I wanted. They sent it to me. They invited me down to watch games, sit in with coaching meetings and staff and stuff, just talking with those guys and learning as much as I could while I was with them,” he said.

He said there are even coaches at larger schools like Russellville and Florence that have helped him learn.

“Having them two guys in my corner has taught me more about soccer than anything else I’ve done in my career,” he said.

Russellville coach Trey Stanford and Florence coach Glenn Harscheid both have Smith beat in the games they’ve played. He said his goal is to one day beat his mentors before he — or they — retire. Even though they’ve beat them in recent games, he said Tanner won’t stop playing them.

“No one loses in games like that, because you just learn. You learn so much about your team. The boys, the character that they have. You learn about yourself,” he said.

He said there have been many mentors in his coaching career, including retired Athens coach Ron Oakley. Smith said he feels like he can still reach out to Oakley, even though he’s retired now. Athens was one of the first larger schools that allowed Tanner to play them, Smith said.

“Being in this sport for as long as I’ve been in,” Smith said, “I’ve head the pleasure of calling some of these coaches family, brothers.”