By Al Camp
Chronicle staff

     A love of coaching will bring Gary Smith back to the sidelines next winter when he returns to run the Okanogan High School girls’ basketball program.
     Smith, who is in the WIAA state hall of fame and has guided Omak and Tonasket to second-place state finishes in girls’ basketball, was confirmed as coach at a May 28 school board meeting.
     The Bulldogs gain a coach whose resume includes more than 40 years of coaching not only basketball but also football (state title in 1979; 171-70 record) and girls’ track (state title in 1983, several athletes with state records still standing).
     Though Smith, 67, retired from teaching in 1994 after 34 years in education, he continued to coach high school hoops until 2005 with Tonasket girls’ basketball his last high school position.
     Since then he’s lowered his blood pressure by tearing out his apple orchard and spending his spare time fishing for triploids in the Columbia River.      He’s also been working with his grandsons while coaching boys’ elementary school basketball teams at AAU tournaments.
     “I really have not been retired,” Smith said. He coached 27 games last year, winning 24 of them with a fifth-grade boys’ basketball team.
     He talked with several Okanogan girls and their parents, along with the administration to see if he could get the support needed to improve the Okanogan girls’ basketball program.
     “I struggled with it,” Smith said of his decision. “It’s a big challenge. But I liked the work ethic of girls in track.
     “In retirement, you like to do what you want to do when you want to do it,” Smith said. “Basically, I enjoy doing coaching and am good at it. So why not?”
     Okanogan, as it turns out, gave Smith his first shot at coaching in 1962 under the tutelage of Jim Derting.
     Smith said he was assisting Derting with junior high football and basketball, then got paid to coach the track team after the superintendent spotted him working with athletes.
     He said he’s not only found the going good as he plans camps and games for the girls this summer, but also seeing a few familiar faces. He will coach Jim Townsend and Jill Townsend, Derting’s grandchildren. Plus, he’s familiar with Gordon Pitts, whom he used to shoo off the basketball court when he was a kid to get more playing time.
     “It’s kind of like déjà vu,” the veteran coach said.
     Smith helped coach football, basketball and track for two years at Okanogan before moving to Bridgeport (four years), where he was head basketball, boys’ track and assistant then head football coach.
     He coached a year at Castle Rock before taking on the head football coaching position at Omak in 1971.
     When not coaching high school sports during the year, he coached summer AAU basketball, often with top regional players in national tournaments. In 1989, one of those select teams took first place at the Oregon City Tournament.
     His record at Omak in girls’ basketball was 59-15, with the best team going 26-1 in 1989-90. The lone loss came in a close state championship game.
     At Tonasket, Smith led the Tigers to a 23-5 record and second place in 2002-2003, 24-4 in 2003-2004 when they finished fifth, and 20-8 and fifth in state in 2001-2002.
     His teams typically play hard and fair - Omak received the Caribou Trail League’s sportsmanship award five straight years and Tonasket earned the award four straight years.