New Garrison Forest coach, Mimi Smith, does “all things (field) hockey”

Garrison Forest’s new field hockey coach Tamika “Mimi” Smith simply tells people, “I do all things hockey.”

Last month, she played in her third Masters World Cup, helping Team USA finish seventh in the Over 40 division in Nottingham, England. She returned home on Aug. 23, started coaching the Grizzlies the next day and officiated a college game in Philadelphia three days after that.

To say Smith loves the sport isn’t quite enough. She lives it.

And it all started by accident.

At 11 years old, Smith tagged along to a cousin’s field hockey practice just to watch. The coach asked her if she wanted to play too.

“She said, ‘Do you like to score or do you like to keep people from scoring,’” recalled Smith. “And I can still see this moment: I was like, ‘Hmm, I think I want to score,’ and she directs me to the forward line… I went to the left wing because nobody was there and I didn’t want to wait in line and I ended up playing left wing in high school and loved it.”

At Ocean Lakes High School in Virginia Beach, Smith had no idea how good she was. She expected to play basketball in college, but once she committed to field hockey, she began writing an illustrious resume.

At Old Dominion, she led the Monarchs to the 1998 NCAA Division I championship. She won the Honda Award as the best player in the college game and was only the second African American to win it. She was also a first-team All-American and the Colonial Athletic Association Defensive Player of the Year, having moved to center back in college. She then spent five years on the US national team and played in the 2002 World Cup.

In addition to the US Masters national team, she still plays for three field hockey clubs, including the Washington Dragons.

Smith loved the game for many reasons, one being that it was hard.

“Anything that’s challenging, that’s difficult, it’s fun to try to figure it out, like dribbling on your reverse stick, not being able to use the other part of your stick. I remember it being so very difficult and I wanted to figure that out,” she said.

That’s part of the mentality that she wants to bring to the No. 3 Grizzlies, who have been one of the best programs in the Baltimore area for more than a decade, winning six Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland A Conference championships since 2010, more than any other school. The Grizzlies won in 2019 and were finalists last season.

The players are very talented, she said, but she wants to help them get even better, especially as a team, giving them more responsibility for what happens on the field and urging them to be confident enough to leave their comfort zones at times.

“I really want them to know they have everything they need,” Smith said. “They have the tools. They know what to do. They just have to execute it and to trust me — trust that I’m going to put you in the right position to be successful and even if you don’t know what it is, trust that I’m going to tell you how to get there.”

Smith, who has coached at the high school, club, Junior Olympic and Nexus levels, has high expectations for the Grizzlies. She gave every girl a chance to express her feelings after the Grizzlies dominated Wednesday’s scrimmage and then explained some adjustments that should have been made sooner.

“Sometimes I’m criticized because some people are like, ‘They’re just kids,’ but I’m a believer that if you set the bar high, they will reach for it and they have already done that and exceeded their own expectations which is so fun to coach when you can see the light bulb go on and you can see kids surprise themselves,” said Smith.

Senior Ella Kokinis said the Grizzlies like how much Smith believes in them.

“I think all of us really put all of our trust into Mimi. She really pushes us to be our best and she is really good at making sure that what we’re doing is with a purpose and that it’s done to the best of our ability,” Kokinis said.

Smith’s passion for coaching impressed Garrison Forest athletic director Jessy Morgan right away.

“It’s great when somebody’s a great player, but I can already tell she’s an amazing coach who wants to make a lasting impact on young women and carry on some of the things she got from the sport,” Morgan said. “She’s not just into teaching the fundamentals of the game, but she’s really into leadership, confidence building, those types of things, so that really goes well with what we’re trying to build program-wide at Garrison.”

Smith works as hard as she plays. A treatment consultant for Acadia Healthcare, she has master’s degrees in marriage and family therapy and in sports psychology. She’s a life and wellness coach too with specialties in athletics, mental health and high achievers.

She is also one of the directors of the Black Field Hockey Network and has served on DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) committees for USA Field Hockey and the National Field Hockey Coaches Association.

In high school, Smith played for an African American coach, Yogi Hightower-Boothe, and her team was extremely diverse, with players of many nationalities. Back then, she said, she never realized that most teams didn’t look like hers.

Grizzlies junior Morgan Qualls likes that Smith is an accomplished African American player and someone she can emulate who looks like her, but, she said, race doesn’t matter on the field.

“I feel like with Coach Mimi, it’s no different than any other coach,” Qualls said. “She’s a very professional coach, but it’s more like I feel like she treats everyone the same. She has very high expectations for us and it kind of makes me want to push myself to be better, but it also makes me feel like I can do what she did because of her accomplishments.”

The Smith era of Garrison Forest field hockey will kick off Friday when the Grizzlies head to Parkton to take on No. 9 Hereford at 5:15 p.m.