Amber Smith, who helped lead Winter Haven to two state titles, is looking to inspire today's youth as her coaches impacted her life.
WINTER HAVEN — Twenty years after winning its first girls basketball state title, the band was back together. Well, part of it.
Amber Smith, the point guard of the 2004-05 squad was back in town and started with former teammate LaQwesha “Moe” Gamble and Crystal “Bird” Campbell for the Winter Haven OGs just over a week ago in the Polk County Alumni Weekend. Miki Best was among the players on the bench. For Smith, taking time to have a reunion with her high school teammates comes at a time when she is making a major change in her career. She had been on a track to eventually become a head coach. But now, she has started Transformative Skills Training, where she will train players of all ages that includes basketball skills as well as mentorship programs.
After winning one more state title with Winter Haven in her senior year of 2007, Smith went on to star at the University of Kentucky then the past decade or so as an assistant coach, including seven years at Kentucky.
Smith then pivoted about a year ago after she left Kentucky to spend a year at Indiana.
“I think it was a big move for me in order to see if I wanted to go be a head coach or if I wanted to get out of it because I had been going back and forth, being a little burned out,” she said. “My priority shifting and starting a family, so I decided to get out of it. And so when I got out of it, it always had been a dream of mine to like have my own facility, my gym facility. And so I had time to like dream up my business, the word transform was my word of the year. I wanted to build my business off something like that and so I thought about transformative and what that, means.”
The impact her own coaches had on her when she was in high school has been an inspiration for her. Athletic director LeDawn Gibson was the head coach with current head coach Johnnie Lawson and Rashad Tyler as assistants.
“They poured into me and, so I want to help transform our youth mentally, physically, emotionally, and relationally to help them become better people, help them communicate better, help them understand this is how time management works, this is how the real world works after college, after basketball,” she said. “Then obviously I train, so it's a lot of aspects of it with consulting coaches, mentorship with players. And then it's basketball training. It's kind of all in one as far as the skills. It's multiple skills and not just basketball skills.”
Smith was in Indiana when she decided on her knew path and returned to Lexington to start the business. She’s renting a facility — it’s a one-woman show for now — but the goal is to have her own facility.
Lexington, she said, has become a second home and with all her contacts there plus Lexington being a bigger market, she said it made sense to start business there. It opened in November of last year.
“It's already situated in market where it's male dominated, so I am like the one female,” she said. “So that is different and so I'm trying to grow that through that.”
After the alumni event, Smith stayed in Winter Haven and held a two-day camp last week and plans to keep returning to Polk County to hold camps.
“Polk County poured so much into me and so me being able to pour into our youth is important to me,” she said.
Smith burst onto the scene in Polk County during her eighth-grade season at Sonrise Christian when she was one of the best point guards in the county — if not already the best at least in terms of dribbling, ball handling and playmaking.
At Winter Haven where she played for four years, she helped take the Blue Devils to the next level by winning state titles in her sophomore and senior seasons. Current WNBA star Tiffany Hayes was a teammate on the both title teams. The ’04-’05 team is arguably the best girls basketball team in Polk County history. It included Gamble, Campbell, Hayes and Brittney Denson as starters with Mikki Best, Ladesha Stoudemire and Tiffany Hamilton — all would have started for any other team in the county — as top players off the bench. Gamble won the Dairy Farmers Miss Basketball award that season, Denson was the Gatorade Player of the Year for Florida, and Hayes was a future Miss Basketball winner.
Smith went on to Kentucky where she earned her bachelor’s degree and played for four seasons. She was second on the team in minutes as a sophomore and her best year was her junior season when she averaged 9.7 point, 4.5 assists and 1.4 steals.
At Kentucky, she helped lead the Wildcats to an SEC title and to the postseason four times, including two trips to the NCAA Elite Eight.
Smith, who earned her Master’s Degree at Morehad State in 2020, got into coaching after a opportunities to play professionally didn’t develop after she graduated from Kentucky.
“I loved it (coaching),” she said. “I enjoyed it. That was my goal that I was working towards, to be a head coach. But it kind of changed along the way and my priorities shifted. I feel like it's hard to have a family and college coaching if you're not already a head coach with the family. You can move from spot to spot when you're an assistant, you might not have a job the next day because the head coach might get fired. And so I wanted more stability. I think that was a big part of it. I did want to be a head coach, but then I think I sat with myself and I just saw, hey, I want to make an impact on the youth more. Right now I'm making an impact on elementary through professional, whereas in college it was very specific to college players and I couldn't even work with the youth. And so now I'm able to come back home and work with the youth and so that brings me joy.”
Expect to see Smith back in Winter Haven in the alumni event — playing with Hayes again when her WNBA career is over — as well as holding more camps in the future. Playing with her former teammates was a blast for all of them.
“I wish I could go back (in time),” she said. “It was so cool just being with Mo, Bird, Ebony (DePriest), Mikki and just reminiscing about them (coaches) making us run, about them making us do certain things. It was just so good to be back with each other and reminisce on the good times. I would go back and do all four years again. It was the best our of the best years of my life. I was really shaped as a person and as an athlete by people that just like cared.”
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Winter Haven, Kentucky grad Amber Smith looks to mentor today's youth
Category: General Sports
