WEST POINT — “God had a plan, and that’s where we are.”
Neither Nora Kathryn Smith nor her husband Jake expected basketball to take them where it has. The couple met at Mississippi State playing intramural basketball. A little more than a decade later the two are married with a daughter, Maddie Kate, and are now the head coaches of Oak Hill Academy’s boys and girls basketball teams.
The Smiths share a passion for high-energy basketball, focusing on intensity, defense and rebounding. It’s a sport that brought them together and helped them discover their calling to help shape their players for the better as the game had once done for them.
Jake knew he wanted to be a coach early on, but Nora Kathryn initially planned to pursue a degree in physical therapy. She was working as a physical therapy technician when Jake took his first job as an assistant at Choctaw County. That led her back to the game she’s loved all her life and she became an assistant coach to her former coach, Glenn Schmidt, at Starkville Academy.
“Basketball was something that brought us together,” she said. “When I saw him coaching at his first job it made me realize that was my calling as well. I wanted to be around basketball and have the same impact my coaches had on me when I was in high school.”
The first head coaching opportunity for either came for Jake when he left Choctaw County in 2021 to take the head coaching job at Hatley. He was told not to expect too much winning, but after three years it’s fair to say that wasn’t the case.
“Coaching at Hatley was a blessing for me,” Jake said. “It was a chance for me to be a head coach and I think I was effective. They bought in as much as I did and we won 15 and 12 games the last two years.”
Nora Kathryn’s first head coaching opportunity came at Oak Hill in 2023, where the Raiders went 21-9 and finished as North 4A finalists before falling to Central Hinds in the quarterfinals of the state tournament in her first season in charge.
“I didn’t expect to do as well as we did, especially in my first year, but they were bought in on day one,” she said. “We know we can win and I hope the winning attitude continues because they want to win at Oak Hill.”
The boys’ team did well under former head coach Lee Hazelwood, going 17-11 in 2024 with a third-place North 4A finish and a loss in the state quarterfinals.
Jake’s Hatley team played against the Oak Hill boys last season, winning 50-48 against the Raiders at home. It gave him another close view of the program from a basketball standpoint, but Jake already had positive feelings about the school based on his wife’s, and his daughter’s, experience there.
Ultimately, it was an easy “Yes” from him when the opportunity to coach there came his way two weeks ago, and he was named head coach on May 8.
“I knew they were a good team, but I got to see Oak Hill as a community this past year,” Jake said. “They took good care of my wife and my daughter, I saw the support that they had and it was something I knew I wanted to be a part of.”
The opportunity to coach the Raiders wasn’t one Jake expected until the phone rang, but it was one he wasn’t going to pass up. Sure, it makes the Smiths’ morning routine and commute easier, but it also gives him a chance to join Nora Kathryn in building programs together with the Raiders.
“He sees things that I don’t, and I see things that he doesn’t and we’ll be able to bounce ideas off of each other,” Nora Kathryn said. “It’ll be nice to have that.”
“We’re two different people and we see different things,” Jake added, “but we have the same agenda in what we want to accomplish, how we care about the kids and how much we love the game and coaching.”
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