Last fall, the St. Joe tennis team won its third state championship in the last four years. That makes 12 for coach Doug Smith, which means that in his 25 years of coaching high school tennis, he’s winning state titles at nearly a .500 clip. 

Noteworthy is the fact that St. Joe won the big trophy last fall by defeating what Doug calls “our old friend and often nemesis,” Columbia Rock Bridge. That team is coached by St. Louis native Ben Loeb, who has won nine girls state championships and 10 more as the boys coach at Rock Bridge. In their head-to-head meetings in the state title match, they are tied 4-4. 

Under Doug, the Angels are never a long shot to win a championship, but what was a long shot were the chances of Doug ending up in St. Louis. 

Growing up in Aberdeen, South Dakota, Doug never dreamed he would become a coach. He was more of an academic sort. He and his twin brother David once were ranked 1-2 in a high school class of 325. David went on to earn a PhD in philosophy at Stanford. Although Doug is known to pontificate in a scholarly manner – he has a master’s degree in English from Kansas – he took a detour off the road to academia and wound up devoting his life to tennis. 

Doug had been a pretty good player himself, having played at Northern State University in Aberdeen and having won the conference championship in singles and doubles. But, still, how did he end up in St. Louis? 

After earning his KU degree, he hung around Lawrence for a couple of years as an adjunct professor before deciding it was time to get a real job. His goal was to find a job teaching school in the Twin Cities, but in the summer of 1977 he took a trip to New York to work as a linesman or umpire at the U.S. Nationals at Forest Hills. One day, at one of the matches Doug was working, he saw a familiar face in the stands. It was Craig Sandvig. 

At the time, Craig was working on his master’s at Washington U. He’d been in Europe for the summer playing some tournaments and was on his way back home when he stopped at Forest Hills to watch some tennis. Craig is from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and he and Doug knew each other well. 

They went to dinner, and Craig told Doug he was going to start working at Sunset Tennis Center, where he wanted to build a strong junior program. He asked Doug to join him, and from 1977 to 2014, Doug was a fixture there with Craig. 

Besides the lessons and clinics, Doug was instrumental in starting the Gateway Invitational, a tournament that went national and counted Andy Roddick among its winners. Not long after that, Doug brought the USTA Girls 14 Indoor to Sunset. Both tournaments were in November, and Doug was tournament chairman for both. 

“Running both of those tournaments was a big chore,” Doug says. “It really drained me.” 

Doug also served for 17 years as junior circuit coordinator for the Missouri Valley, a job that sent him around the section to oversee tournaments.

Ready to lighten his load, he turned the reins of the Gateway Invitational and Girls 14s over to Judy Dippold and devoted all of his time to St. Joe. 

Doug and his St. Joe girls had a run of five straight state championships from 2004 to 2008, and he’s had a bunch of very talented players – too many to name. But he is especially close to Tina Harrison, who actually played for St. Joe just before Doug arrived, but whom Doug coached from age 10 to 18. Tina won two state titles in doubles and was a runner-up in singles. 

Tina introduced Doug when he was inducted into the St. Louis Tennis Hall of Fame. 

Another player with whom Doug is close is Joey Gonzalez, a Sunset product who was No. 1 in the Missouri Valley 18s. Joey won a sportsmanship award from the USTA, and Doug accompanied him to the ceremony at the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island. 

Interestingly, Doug got quite the baptism into coaching. It was 1967 and he was working part-time at the YMCA in Aberdeen. He was asked if he’d be willing to coach a flag football team of 5th and 6th graders. 

“I said sure, like I’m going to coach football? What do I know?” Doug recalls. 

He studiously went to the library to read up on the intricacies of football and within no time had installed a pro-style offense. 

“There are seven schools in the community,” Doug says, “and, much to my surprise, we went undefeated, untied and unscored upon.” 

Then basketball season started and Doug was up to the task again. Just so the community could have an even number of eight teams, he split his boys into two squads, he coached both of them, and they finished 1-2 in the league. 

“What’s so hard about coaching?” Doug must have been thinking. 

Then he introduced tennis to the boys, who up to that point had played only baseball. After a short while, the boys said forget baseball, they wanted to play tennis. In July, Doug rented a yellow school bus and took the boys to the town of Brookings for the 12-and-under South Dakota Closed. Seven of the eight quarterfinalists turned out to be Doug’s boys. 

“That’s how my coaching life began,” Doug said. 

They didn’t make a Disney movie out of Doug’s year with those boys, but they should have.