Coach Steve Smith (right) and longtime assistant Lee Schopp
 In
23 seasons under coach Steve Smith < sdsmith@hope.edu >, Hope
College men's soccer has become a highly regarded program among NCAA
Division
III teams.
Averaging 13 victories
a season, coach Smith ranked 17th nationally among all active NCAA
Division III coaches by winning percentage entering the 2012 season.
He also ranked in the top twenty among
the winningest all-time Division III coaches by percentage (18th).
Coach Smith's record through the 2012 season is 320-108-34, .757.
His mark against MIAA opponents is 219-62-20. With 200 conference wins, Smith joined two hall-of-fame coaches -- Hardy Fuchs of Kalamazoo (254 MIAA wins from 1971-2002) and Marv Zuidema of Calvin (214 wins from 1970-1997) -- who also achieved that distinction over the 40-year history of MIAA soccer.
Coach Smith has taken his teams on international trips three times,
most recently in 2009.
He has guided the Flying Dutchmen to nine
MIAA championships (1992, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2010) and appeared in the NCAA tournament 10 times (1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2010, 2011).
In 1996 Hope became the first MIAA team to win three consecutive
outright
conference championships. The 2005 team won
a school-record 13 games against league opponents. In 1994 Smith
was voted the Mideast Region Division III Coach of the Year. The 2011 team advanced to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Division III championships.
A professor of kinesiology at Hope, Smith
received his doctorate degree in motor development from Michigan
State University.
Smith in 2011 authored a series of books featuring easy-to-do fitness
activities for kids and families. His on-going research focusses on performance
and fitness
levels in children, with an interest in encouraging healthy behaviors.
The books grew out of his discovery that exercise plans for children don't
do so well unless their families are part of the picture.
While growing up in Lansing, Mich., he played soccer
at Capital City Christian High School. He played soccer four years
at Grand Rapids Baptist College (1978-81) where he received his bachelor's
degree.
He coached soccer at Lansing Christian High School
while working toward his masters degree at MSU. He also did a soccer
internship with Michigan State University coach Joe Baum. He was assistant
soccer coach at Manchester College in Indiana in 1988 and 1989.
Smith taught undergraduate
classes in growth and motor development, measurement and evaluation,
and elementary physical education
methodology at Michigan State and Manchester. He has a strong background
in adapted physical education including the teaching of physically
and mentally retarded children. He instituted the "I CAN" program
for a school district which previously had no physical education
for the
handicapped.
Smith and his wife, Nancy, have two sons, Trevor and
McCall, and a daughter, Shanley.
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