Smith a master of playbooks, textbooks at Foxcroft, UMaine

Editor’s note: Several sports personalities with Penquis-area ties have been named to the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2016, among them the late Ed Guiski of Dexter, former Penquis Valley of Milo player and coach Tony Hamlin, and former Foxcroft Academy stars Kevin Nelson and Dean Smith. This is the last in a series of profiles of those inductees.

DOVER-FOXCROFT — Dean Smith placed high expectations on himself as a youngster growing up in rural Maine.

But rather than merely talk about his plans in basketball and engineering, he willed himself to achieve those goals.

By the time he graduated from Foxcroft Academy in 1986, Smith was one of Maine’s best high school basketball players.

When he graduated from the University of Maine in just 3½ years, not only had Smith led his basketball conference in scoring, the three-time Academic All-American won the 1990 Walter Byers Award as the NCAA’s top male student-athlete in the nation.

“He was on the all-rookie team as a freshman at Maine,” said Skip Chappelle, Smith’s college coach for three seasons. “Then when he was a senior he was first-team all-league and the top student-athlete in the country.

“That’s quite a pair of bookends.”

Smith will be recognized Aug. 21 with his induction into the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor.

Learning the game

Smith’s began playing basketball in his native Monson, where his dad Jake had starred on Monson Slaters high school teams of the mid-1960s and other relatives had found enjoyment and success in the sport.

Smith often played basketball on the outdoor courts near the school, including one summer when he was coached by Kevin Nelson, the towering center from Southeast Monson who starred at Foxcroft Academy and the University of Maine.

“Following him from that time into high school and college he was my inspiration,” Smith said. “He was a kid who actually came out of Monson and got to play basketball in college. He was a big part of what I hoped I could replicate as a basketball player.”

Smith and his family moved to Dover-Foxcroft during his middle-school years, a decision prompted by his mother Glenda taking a new job as well as an event perhaps more symbolic of life near Maine’s wilderness.

“I think it was after the activity bus hit a moose that we decided we probably should move to Dover to eliminate some of the late-night traveling back and forth on the back roads,” he said.

Smith played basketball, football and baseball at Foxcroft, but it was basketball where his star was brightest as the 6-foot-3 center scored a school-record 1,722 career points and earned Bangor Daily News All-Maine first-team recognition as a senior.

The Ponies had mixed success during that time, in part because the program had three head coaches during his four varsity years. Foxcroft did reach the Class B regional quarterfinals in 1985 and the Eastern C semifinals in 1986.

“We always played hard and played together and it was a great experience for me,” said Smith. “My senior year with a couple of breaks we might have been state champions, but I was proud of how we brought our level of competition to what I thought at the time was as high as there was in the state.”

Goal oriented

While he sought to lead his high school team to postseason glory, Smith also was pursuing a more personal goal motivated by importance of basketball within his family and spurred by the college basketball careers of Nelson and Wayne Champeon, a Foxcroft math teacher who like Nelson starred at UMaine.

“I had a lot of basketball inspiration around me, and I used that to put in I can’t even tell you how many hours of practice in order to have an opportunity to play in college,” said Smith. “I wanted to play in college, and wherever I could do that I wanted to play at the highest level.

“I had an outdoor court at my house in Dover that was on a slanted dirt driveway with tons of rocks. I shoveled snow off it when I had to. It didn’t matter. I wanted to be a basketball player.”

Smith also attended basketball camps at UMaine and out of state, using those experiences to learn he needed to develop his guard skills and shooting touch to thrive in college.

“But the biggest thing, and I thank my coaches at Foxcroft and specifically my football coaches and Gary Worthing in particular, was that I needed to get stronger because at my height if I didn’t get stronger there would be no real opportunity for me at the next level.”

Smith added strength training to his regimen midway through high school, and it corresponded with his improvement on the court.

“Doing the weight-room work did two things,” he said. “Obviously you become faster, stronger and quicker, but mentally it really added the aspect of confidence. That’s one thing I think most kids who don’t lift are missing, but it’s something that really helped me compete at the next level.”

On-court transition

Smith gave at least equal time to academics as he considered his college options.

“At that time computers were becoming a big thing,” Smith said, “so electrical engineering was what I wanted to do and the University of Maine had a very good program. In my mind I could get the best of both worlds at Maine by playing at the Division I level and with its engineering program.”

While Smith smoothly adjusted to the rigors of his academic major his introduction to Division I basketball was more abrupt.

“The first thing I remember going into a preseason workout at Maine was that every shot I took got thrown into the stands,” he said. “I couldn’t get a shot off. I thought I was open, and in high school I was open or I would have been able to jump over people and get my shot off but here I couldn’t.”

Smith concentrated on improving his ball handling, passing and shooting with the knowledge that he would play mostly small forward for Chappelle.

“The transition to the vertical aspect of the college game as well as the quickness and the physicality was a significant eye opener,” he said.

Smith made his first college start against a Northeastern University team led by future NBA first-round draft pick and Boston Celtics star Reggie Lewis.

Smith scored 23 points while shooting 8-for-10 from the field and 6-for-7 from the free-throw line, all while guarding the 6-foot-7 Lewis.

“Once you get that inkling of success you can build on that,” he said. “With basketball at the Division I level, if you get there you’re obviously a good player but the question is can you do it mentally, can you get over the idea that everything’s got to be perfect. That was the big thing with me.”

Smith was named to the 1986-87 North Atlantic Conference all-rookie team, and by his senior season earned first-team all-conference status after leading America East with 19.1 points per game as well as being one of Maine’s top rebounders.

“He led America East in scoring as a senior, and you don’t do that unless you’re very skilled,” said Matt Rossignol, the UMaine point guard from Van Buren who was Smith’s roommate on the road for three seasons. “No. 1, his physical strength was amazing. His playing weight was probably 180 pounds and he could bench press 350. At that level strength is very important and he had that.

“The other thing was his intelligence, he knew how to play the game. I’m not just talking about academic intelligence, I’m talking on the floor. Knowing angles, knowing how to head fake, knowing where to be on the floor at the right time. You combine the athleticism Dean had with his smarts and you’ve got what you got.”

The sacrifice

Smith’s quest for achievement in athletics and academia was fueled by a single notion.

“A lot of what drove me, to be honest, was that I was scared that I didn’t know what I didn’t know,” he said. “The unknown of what was out there really drove me to work as hard as I could.”

That pursuit of excellence required sacrifice.

“That goes a lot to my personal nature after I was told a couple of things,” he said. “First, that you would never be able to play Division I basketball, and second, that even if you could play Division I basketball, there’s no way in the world you could have success in electrical engineering at the same time.

“That was burned into my brain because I wanted to play Division I basketball and I wanted to be an engineer. I wanted to be able to make contributions to the scientific community.”

Smith leaned heavily on academic advisers Dr. Carlton Brown and Dr. John Vetelino, as well as an engineering department that often let him borrow laboratory equipment so he could keep up his studies while on basketball trips.

“I’ll be honest, I didn’t have a lot of fun at college,” he said. “There wasn’t a lot of time for extracurricular stuff because I was dedicated to being on the court or in the classroom.”

Smith’s study habits were legendary.

“I’ve literally seen where our coach would come into the locker room for a pregame talk and then the coaches would leave to give us a few minutes alone to gather our thoughts,” said Rossignol. “As soon as the coaches left, I saw on numerous occasions when Dean would then take out his books and start studying.

“And how many times would we be coming back on a bus trip at two in the morning and everyone’s sleeping and I’d turn on a light to see where we were and there would be one other light on in the bus and it was Dean with his books.”

Smith’s academic prowess occasionally came in handy during road trips.

“We were in Boston one time and our reservations got screwed up at the last minute so we had to stay at this dive of a hotel and it had no heat because the thermostats weren’t working,” said Rossignol. “Dean, being the engineering nerd that I jokingly called him, always brought his little tool kit with him and he started fooling around with the thermostat in our room and fixed it and we had heat.”

Proving a point

The degree of Smith’s success with both textbooks and playbooks was recognized with the Walter Byers Award, considered the NCAA’s top academic honor.

“That was validation that all the hard work I put in both on and off the court was worth it,” said Smith, who had a 3.89 undergraduate grade-point average. “And, to be honest, to all the naysayers and those who doubted me, that was my answer.

“I talk to a lot of kids now and try to inspire them, and the story I tell them is it doesn’t matter where you come from or what your upbringing is, it’s in you and if you want it bad enough you can make it happen.”

Smith, 48, now lives back in Dover-Foxcroft with wife Laurie and sons Hunter and Hyatt and is an owner and vice president of engineering of Orono Spectral Solutions, Inc., in Bangor. That company provides state-of-the-art technology to detect chemical and biological warfare agents and toxic chemicals in liquids, air and on surfaces.

He’s also the namesake for the “M” Club Dean Smith Award, presented annually to the top male and female student-athletes at the University of Maine.

“When you go to the awards ceremony and see what these kids are doing and knowing how hard it is to have the success they’re having, I’m just humbled by having my name on that honor,” he said.

Contributed photo

MAINE BASKETBALL HALL OF FAME — Dean Smith, a 1986 graduate of Foxcroft Academy, is among the members of the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2016. Smith, who was a three-sport star for the Ponies, finished his high school career as Foxcroft Academy’s all-time leading scorer with 1,722 points. Smith went on to excel at the University of Maine where he was a three-time Academic All-American, a 1,000-point scorer and captain of the Black Bears his senior year when he led the conference in scoring. Smith and other inductees will be enshrined on Aug. 21 at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor.