The sun is setting on the BJ Smithhart era at St. Aloysius.

After nine seasons, two district championships and one state championship game appearance, Smithhart is stepping down as St. Al’s head football coach to pursue coaching opportunities in the public school system.
Smithhart said the move has been in the works for a while, and is part of a long-range plan for he and his family. St. Al is a private school, and Smithhart’s years of work there don’t count toward the state retirement plan. The 38-year-old coached in the public school system for five years before coming to St. Al, and he wanted to get back there with enough time to put in the 25 years needed to become vested in the retirement system.

Smithhart will remain in his teaching position at St. Al through the end of the school year.

“This is home. I’ve been here nine years. That sounds crazy to say,” Smithhart said. “This is something we’ve been planning for the last year and a half. With two kids, we felt it was time to get back in the retirement system. St. Al knew it was coming. I told them back in November it was likely, and then in January I told them it was for certain.”

To replace Smithhart, St. Al’s administration did not have to search far. Michael Fields was promoted from defensive coordinator to head coach. The 51-year-old was the head coach at Hinds AHS from 2002 until the school closed at the end of the 2013-14 school year. He came to St. Al the following year, and has been its boys’ track and field coach as well as on the football staff since.

Fields becomes just the fifth head football coach at St. Al since 1978.

Fields, who has been friends with Smithhart since their days as rival coaches in the same region, said it took him a while to accept the new position because he thought Smithhart might change his mind.

“It was a big surprise. I had no idea. With the success he had and everything seemed to be in order, and even when he said he was thinking about it I wasn’t sure,” Fields said. “That was one of the reasons I was so slow about accepting it, was because I wanted to leave him every opportunity to change his mind.”

Smithhart’s mind was made up, however, even if he was understandably wistful about closing a chapter both in his life and in the long history of St. Al’s football program.

Smithhart, a Vicksburg native and Warren Central graduate, came to St. Al in 2008 after two seasons as the offensive coordinator at Stone County and three on WC’s staff before that. He led St. Al to back-to-back winning records in his first two seasons and was the 2008 Vicksburg Post Coach of the Year.

Smithhart credited his predecessor Jim Taylor for a lot of his success, especially early on. Taylor had been on Warren Central’s staff when Smithhart was in high school, and remained at St. Al as the athletic director after stepping down as football coach. Smithhart said Taylor helped him grow into the job and laid a strong foundation to build upon.

“It’s been great for a bunch of reasons. The first is what kind of shape the program was in when I came in,” Smithhart said. “Coach Taylor mentored me. Usually when you take over a job it’s because something bad happened before you got there, but I was lucky at 29 years old to take over a program in such good shape.”

Several lean years followed Smithhart’s initial success, but in 2013 he got St. Al on the program’s best run in 30 years.

The 2013 team sneaked into the playoffs on the final night of the regular season and then won two playoff games in the final minute to reach the Mississippi High School Activities Association’s Class 1A semifinals. The Flashes let a halftime lead slip away against Smithville, but that run set the stage for an even better 2014 season.

St. Al finished 14-2 in 2014 — the best record in school history — and reached the state championship game for the first time since 1981. The two losses both came against Cathedral, in the season opener and the Class 1A title game, and the 14-game winning streak in between was also a school record.

“It was great. It really started the playoffs before, because we had to win our last regular-season game to get in. Something clicked and the guys played so far up to their potential it was amazing,” Smithhart said. “Those two years, we had some great kids. When they come back now it’s still something we talk about.”

St. Al moved from the MHSAA to the Mississippi Association of Independent Schools just weeks before the 2015 season, and Smithhart guided the football team through the transition. Playing against a difficult schedule pieced together at the last minute, and dealing with a number of injuries all season long, his 2015 team finished 5-7 but won the MAIS District 3-AAA championship and reached the second round of the Class AAA playoffs.

“Even though we had a bad record, we had a pretty good football team,” Smithhart said.

Smithhart finished with a 54-54 record at St. Al — it’s the fourth-most wins by a coach in the program’s 105-year history, just two behind his mentor Taylor — but his tenure will be remembered both for the extreme highs of the 2013-15 run and the number of talented players the school has produced on his watch.

Two offensive linemen, Drake Dorbeck (Southern Miss) and Ben Brown (Ole Miss) have signed with Football Bowl Subdivision programs in the past three years. Before Dorbeck signed with USM in 2015, it had been 14 years since a St. Al player signed with a Division I program.

Former running back DeMichael Harris rushed for a school-record 2,104 yards and 24 touchdowns in 2014, and set Warren County single-game records with 395 yards and six touchdowns in a playoff win over Bayou Academy in 2015. Harris was also a two-time Gatorade Track and Field Athlete of the Year in Mississippi and is currently playing both sports at Hinds Community College. Former lineman Josh Price is also at Hinds, and kicker Casey Griffith is at Southwest Mississippi.

Smithhart credited all of his players, as well as his assistant coaches like Fields, Ben Price, Jimmy Salmon and Russ Nelson, for the program’s success on his watch.

“We’re very proud of, not what I’ve done, but what we’ve done,” Smithhart said, putting extra emphasis on the “we” in that statement. “I’m a Southern Miss season ticket holder and it’s great to go watch a kid I coached and know so well. I told Ben (Brown) I’ve never rooted for Ole Miss at all, but the minute he sets foot on that campus I’m a Rebel. And our coaching staff. We’ve had some turnover like everybody does, but the guys I’ve worked with have all been great. The thing I’m most proud of is our staff and how well we worked together.”

As he heads off to his next adventure, Smithhart said he’s happy that he’s leaving his friend Fields with a program that’s in good shape, similar to what he inherited from Taylor.

St. Al will need to replace a number of key players, including the All-Stater Brown, but has several skill position players returning such as quarterback Antonio Thompson and running back Connor Bottin.

Fields has tackled rebuilding jobs before. When he took over at Hinds AHS in 2002, it was riding a 19-game losing streak. Within a few years he had turned the War Dawgs into perennial playoff contenders even while battling low numbers and miniscule resources at the small school in Utica.

“It’s a good job, a good place to be, and I’m looking forward to the challenge,” Fields said. “I think it’ll work out well. With the support of (athletic director Mike) Jones and (principal) Buddy Strickland, it’ll be OK. If the administration is behind you, you can do what’s needed to be successful.”

Smithhart had plenty of faith in his friend to be just that.

“It’s going to be weird knowing that I’m not going to be coaching them, but it’s great knowing it’s him taking over,” Smithhart said. “I love him to death, and I think it’ll be a good transition.”