Smith excited about future, but boy, is he going to miss coaching Neelyville SB

Former Neelyville High School softball assistant coach Chris Smith speaks with a Tiger player last season. He was hired this spring to lead the Bloomfield High School baseball program.

Photo courtesy of Kim Dollins

This is the third and final installment in a series of stories on newly-hired Bloomfield High School educator and baseball coach Chris Smith.

Chris Smith is an emotional guy, particularly when it comes to young people.

The recently hired Bloomfield High School educator and baseball coach has a passion for working with his student-athletes and he can’t imagine an existence without his own three children, Spencer, 9, Aubrey, 7, and Sadie Lou, 5.

“They are my whole world,” Smith said.

That love for kids is why Smith, despite fulfilling a dream of becoming a head coach for the first time in his career, had such a difficult time accepting the opportunity from the Wildcat administration.

“When Bloomfield called and I had to tell the (Neelyville) girls,” Smith recalled, “it was one of the hardest things that I had ever done in my life.”

A year ago, Smith had spoken with Neelyville about returning to teaching from the marketing business that he had been running and serving with the Tigers’ baseball program. However, when he had the opportunity to become an assistant with the Tigers’ softball program, he jumped at it.

“I knew the group that (Neelyville) had coming in,” Smith said of the 2021 fall season, “they were rich with tons of girls that had played travel ball through the years.”

Former Poplar Bluff High School assistant track and field coach Chris Smith poses with his son, Spencer, after the Mules won the 2015 MSHSAA Class 4 Girl's Track and Field state championship. He was recently hired to lead the Bloomfield High School baseball program. (Photo courtesy of Chris Smith)

Neelyville won the MSHSAA Class 1 District 1 championship in the fall of 2020 and added seven talented freshmen last fall, including two first-year players, Dixie Cloud and Reese Dobbins, who both earned All-State recognition last fall.

And that group didn’t even include All-State First Team selection Lexus Hagood, who will play at Three Rivers Community College this year.

“Overall,” Smith continued, “they were maybe some of the best hitting athletes that I have ever seen; boys or girls; in high school sports.”

So, when Smith had to leave a program that won 39 games during the 2021-22 school year, he didn’t do so lightly.

“When you spend that much time with people,” Smith said, “the bus rides, the games, the practices, the early mornings and late nights, I was spending more time with the kids and (Tiger coach Cindy Siebert) than I did with my own family.

“It was really hard to leave.”

As excited as Smith is about the future of Bloomfield baseball – and he is ecstatic about the opportunity – he believes the future for Neelyville softball is as bright as it can get.

“I truly believe,” Smith said, “that (Neelyville) will win a state championship. They are that good.”

The Tigers have strung together four winning seasons in a row and beat East Carter 3-2 in the regular season last fall, prior to the Redbirds’ fantastic run to the MSHSAA Class 1 Final Four.

Neelyville had just two seniors on its 2021 roster, Cloud, Dobbins, and freshman September Preslar, who earned All-District honors in her first year of high school softball.

The Tigers won the Ozark Foothills Conference title this spring.

“I’m walking away from a position,” Smith said, “where I truly think they can win a state championship and I get a ring and be a part of that.”

But…

“But,” Smith said, “Bloomfield called. I ended up speaking with Bloomfield administrators Jason and Casey Karnes) on a Zoom call for two hours, and I thought that we really clicked. Our personalities matched. Our philosophies matched.

“Everything just seemed to line up.”