As the head coach of the Carleton Raven’s men’s basketball team, Dave Smart has become representative of a dynasty.
Smart has been head coach of the Ravens since 1999. Prior to that, he was the assistant coach for two years.
Since then, he’s led the team to 11 Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) national titles in 13 years, as well as being named CIS coach of the year eight times.
From 2003-07 Smart coached the Ravens to five consecutive CIS national titles, Carleton’s first national championships in any sport.
During his time as head coach the Ravens have also won a number of Ontario University Athletics (OUA) championships, taking home the Wilson Cup nine times.
In the 2014-15 season, Smart coached the Ravens to a regular season record of 17-2. In the playoffs, the Ravens went undefeated, scoring 266 total points over the course of three games.
Ravens forward Jean Emmanuel Pierre-Charles has played under Smart for four years and said Smart teaches his players to be competitive and to never take their position for granted.
“He holds you to your standards,” Pierre-Charles said. “If you have high expectations for yourself and you tell him what they are, he won’t let you off the hook. He’s going to push you until you get to where you want to get.”
“It pays off in important games because you always—even when we’re playing teams that are not that good—you have the same competitive approach so I would say that just having a competitive nature is the best thing,” Pierre-Charles said.
Smart’s coaching ability has been recognized on the international scale now as he will be an assistant coach for Team Canada at the 2015 Pan Am Games in Toronto.
