Andy Smith was sitting in a Pacific University classroom when he met Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll.

The Super Bowl-winning coach, an alum of the university, was teaching Smith and other Tigers coaches about leadership in 2016. Carroll challenged them to write out a coaching philosophy in 25 words or less.

“I wrote it and I lived by it ever since,” Smith said.

Smith eventually shortened his to E.L.I.T.E., or Everybody Learns In This Environment. It means that all his players enjoy themselves when playing, practicing and learning. The process of developing that ideology began when he took the job at Pacific in 2013, as Smith rebuilt a struggling Tigers team into a dominant force in the America East.

Now the head coach at Cornell, he’s used that philosophy to reboot a Cornell (8-5, 2-2 Ivy) team that finished seven games under .500 last year. Smith brings an upstart Big Red to Syracuse this weekend for a rematch with the No. 15 Orange, having already upset SU on Sept. 7.

“Some people think I’m nuts for coaching that way,” Smith said. “Coaches from other schools around the country wouldn’t believe what we do at practice.”

Smith never runs drills, never tells a player to pass forward, run left or shoot to the bottom right corner. He doesn’t even include conditioning at his practices — no sprints, sit-ups, planks.

If an activity is boring, he doesn’t make anyone do it. Every exercise is a scrimmage or a game-like situation. It’s three-on-ones, two-on-twos, or seven-on-sevens, instead of static shooting or passing drills. He also keeps them concise. Rather than making his players stand on the field two or three hours, Smith never keeps his players for longer than an hour and a half.

“The way practices are run keeps everyone engaged,” junior and leading scorer Grace Royer said, “He’s a one-of-a-kind coach.”

Even before games, Smith keeps the warmups light. His team will play rugby or soccer instead of normal drills like Syracuse head coach Ange Bradley has her team do before games.

Smith’s philosophy developed during his time as an assistant at Dartmouth but came to fruition at Pacific, Smith’s first head coaching job. Pacific was ranked No. 77 out of 79 teams the year before he got there and had one winning season in program history. And the Tigers were the lone D-I program to play on grass, not turf.

“I always joke that I took over a drinking team with a field hockey problem,” Smith said of his first year at Pacific. “We had to start from scratch and we built it into a perennial powerhouse.”

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Smith immediately knew that he needed to establish a culture and create a system where players’ top priority was field hockey. Six games into his first season at Pacific, he cut his captain for “off-the-field issues,” Smith said. He often left players, even seniors, at home for key away games those first three seasons, valuing a tight-knit program over winning.

He focused on recruiting the right people, changing the culture from the bottom-up. He wanted players who could give a firm handshake and hold a conversation without losing attention. He searched for players who had good relationships with their parents or teammates.

“Character-centered is my recruiting and then I’m value-based. You got to have a good value system,” Smith said. “We were always looking into the cracks and the crevices that other people might not have looked at.”

In 2016, the Tigers went 16-5, won the America East regular season and lost to Stanford in the conference finals. Smith didn’t want to leave. He had built the Tigers into a power in the America East, a team that everyone feared. But Pacific lost the funding to keep the team afloat and had to cancel the program.

Now, having rebuilt Cornell from five wins to seven wins in his first year in Ithaca, he’s trying to live in the present, but it’s difficult at times. After the first practice at Cornell, he sat his team down and outlined his goal: to win a national title.

The Big Red, who won one conference game the year prior, were initially startled by Smith’s plans. Smith said they looked at him like he had “three heads.” But after a short internal conversation, they accepted his positivity.

“Unanimously we agreed that we wanted to raise our play and buy into his training,” senior Maddie Henry said.

Cornell has a win over then-No. 18 Syracuse this season and a two-goal loss to No. 14 Harvard. Smith shaped his team around a five-word phrase. Now, it’s closer to his dream than ever before.

Published on October 23, 2019 at 10:12 pm

Contact Adam: adhillma@syr.edu | @_adamhillman