Former Rochester resident, Pete Smith, right, won two Class 3A state championships as boys’ basketball coach for Guerin Catholic High School in Noblesville. He was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame Wednesday, March 20. Rochester Mayor Trent Odell, shown with Smith, therefore decided to name March 20 “Pete Smith Day.” Photos provided by Pete Smith.

By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews

ROCHESTER — Pete Smith said “it’s truly humbling” to be inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.

The two-time, Class 3A state championship boys’ basketball coach noted there are “a lot of great coaches” who haven’t been inducted into the hall of fame.

Smith, formerly of Rochester, who had been assistant coach at Warsaw High School, was inducted Wednesday, March 20, along with 16 others, with a reception at the Hall of Fame in New Castle and a banquet in Indianapolis.

Rochester Mayor Trent Odell therefore decided to declare March 20 “Pete Smith Day.”

“It’s very, very cool and humbling,” added Smith of the local honor.

He said the person and coach he became was “formed by my 18 years in Rochester.”

A 1979 Rochester High School graduate, Smith played basketball and tennis and competed in track and field. As a junior, Smith was on the Rochester Zebras’ 1978 sectional championship basketball team, playing next on the Zebras’ 1979 Northern Lakes Conference championship team.

While on the team, he earned the Zebras’ Most Valuable Defensive Player and the Don Smiley Memorial Sportsmanship honor. Smith also won a NLC tennis doubles title in 1977 with classmate Tom Weaver.

Smith said he spent much time taking his “bike from our house on the south side of Lake Manitou, to the City Park to play hours and hours of basketball against the older guys who were basketball players.”

He practiced with Arik Lee, Dave McCarter, David Hiatt, Greg Carr and Mark Wisely.

“Both Arik and I had half-court basketball courts at our house, and we’d take turns going to each other’s court,” said Smith.

After graduation, he headed to then Bethel College to play basketball and tennis, majoring in business education and administration and minoring in economics and physical education.

“I was so lucky that my mother was an accountant, and then I had Mrs. (Joan) Hungerford as accounting teacher and Coach (Phil) McCarter as a general business teacher,” said Smith. “They helped fuel my interest in teaching business after college, although I thought I would follow in my mom’s footsteps the first two years of college and become an accountant.”

“But my college basketball coach, Homer Drew, explained that to be a head high school basketball coach someday, you had to be a teacher back then,” added Smith. “So my junior year in college, I switched my major to concentrate on education as my degree.”

As a college senior, he served as assistant basketball coach at John Adams High School, South Bend, also coaching track and field during his time there.

Smith’s first basketball coaching stint after graduating from Bethel in 1983 was at Warsaw High School under Hall of Fame Coach Al Rhodes. Over four years, Smith helped coach players to wins in three sectionals, two regionals and the state championship in 1984.

Smith said he applied to be a RHS coach in the late 1980s.

“It didn’t work out,” he said. “RHS went a different direction, and Dr. John Eckert, previously the superintendent at Rochester, hired me at Manchester (High School).”

Smith was head coach at Manchester for four years, then Noblesville High School for three years, Penn High School for four years and Carmel High School for four years.

While at Penn, Smith was selected as the school’s 1998 South Bend Teacher of the Year.

Smith then helped new Guerin Catholic High School in Noblesville begin its boys’ basketball program.

“I was blessed with that great opportunity. It turned out to probably be my legacy in high school coaching,” he said. “I had always replaced coaches at my first four schools I was head coach at, and would work to change the program’s identity to my own style and philosophy. At Guerin Catholic, I was the first coach, so immediately I instilled how I wanted teams and players to conduct themselves and play and the program took off.”

Smith won a sectional championship at Guerin Catholic in 2010. Just two years later, the team was the Class 3A state champion, repeating again in 2015.

Smith retired in 2016 from teaching and 2018 from coaching. He works for Performance Services of Indianapolis as a business development specialist along with being on the Kokomo-based Community First Bank Board of Directors and a basketball analyst for the IHSAA Championship Network and ISC Sports Network.

“My heart will always bleed black and gold,” said Smith, referring to RHS. “When asked where I’m from, I tell people, I was a ‘Fighting Zebra’ as I call it, and I’ll always be proud to have been raised in Rochester.”