Boulder will be coached by Vincent Smith in 2016. His hire was announced on Saturday. (Kai Casey/CHSAANow.com)
Boulder moved quickly to fill its open football coach position, hiring veteran coach Vincent Smith on Saturday.
Smith has been coaching football in some capacity since 1996, and spent the past two seasons heading Gardena High School in Los Angeles. He will replace Bob Simmons, who resigned in May.
“We’re very excited to hire a coach like Vincent Smith to lead our program,” Boulder athletic director Eddie Hartnett said in announcing the hire on Saturday. “He has a tremendous amount of experience over two decades, and we’re looking forward to what he can do with Panther football.”
Smith is set to meet his new team and their parents at Recht Field on June 13.
Smith is familiar with the Boulder area already. He played high school football in Los Angeles prior to accepting a scholarship to play at the University of Colorado. He spent his freshman season there before transferring to Arizona, where he became a three-year starter on the offensive line.
“I have fond memories of Boulder. It’s a wonderful city with beautiful people,” Smith said in a statement. “I have many great friends in Colorado, lifelong friends. I’m so very excited to be part of the Boulder High School family!”
In an email to the Boulder community, Hartnett called Smith’s hire “a new era” for the Panthers, and wrote, “I believe that we have found a coach that not only will be a wonderful fit for Boulder High School football, but Boulder High School will be a wonderful fit for this coach.”
Smith was an assistant at Los Angeles-area high schools from 1996-2002, including a two-year stint at his alma mater, Locke, from 2000-02. He then became a head coach for the first time in 2003 at Desert Ridge, a school in Arizona which had just opened yet competed at the Class 4A level.
After three seasons there, Smith moved in 2006 to Tucson High, whose campus shares an intersection with the University of Arizona. Smith coached that team for four seasons, and turned the program around from consecutive 0-10 seasons, and a 25-game losing streak, to a state playoff appearance — a first for the program in 20 seasons.
Smith also coached a women’s professional team in Tucson during that time.
From there, Smith became an assistant at Mesa High, also in Arizona, and Cabrillo, in Long Beach, Calif.
He was then hired as the head coach at Gardena, where he went 2-8 and 6-6 in the past two seasons. Last season was just the second time in 11 seasons that the program had won at least six games, and the team reached the playoffs.
In 10 seasons as a head coach, Smith has a career record of 23-81. But, he has a history of taking over struggling or new programs and pointing them toward success they haven’t had in a long time.
He’ll have a similar challenge in his new job at Boulder, which has won more than three games just three times since 2004. But the Panthers are coming off their best season in that time frame — a 5-4 regular season which ended in a playoff appearance — and they return talent at a number of key positions.
Follow all of the coaching movement this offseason in our coaching changes tracker.