NTL FOOTBALL: THIS YEAR'S DISTRICT TITLE A FULL CIRCLE MOMENT FOR TROY COACH JIM SMITH (2024-11-16)

BY CHRIS MANNING
Northern Tier Sports Report
MANSFIELD — Troy football coach Jim Smith knows exactly when this year’s District IV title winning team got their start - 11 years ago when the Trojans last won the the Class AA Championship.

“I told the kids that history repeats itself,” Smith began. “There’s probably like 15-20 kids in our huddle underneath the goal post when I came out, and I was looking at their faces, and they were all like, I don’t know, five year old kids, four year old kids.”

Those kids, including Smith’s son Mason Smith, were with that 2013 team every step of the way - through the ups and downs of the regular season as they came up short of the NTL title, the program turning win over Mt. Carmel in the playoff opener, then the big win over higher seeded Montoursville, followed by the district title victory on a soggy night at Danville.

“Spencer Martin called the coin toss when he was two years old,” Smith said about that night in Danville. “He scored tonight. I was just talking to Jed Wright, our quarterback who won that big game 11 years ago, and I said, ‘this journey for those kids started 11 years ago. They were all there…there was a group of 20 of them, and they followed us wherever they went. Their love of the game, and their understanding of the game changed that year, and they’ve been a crazy group of athletes since then.”

It’s been quite the journey for Smith and his staff, as well.

In 2013 they were just in their third year on the sideline, the upstarts in the NTL going against coaches who’d been with their teams for years, if not decades. Now, they’re the veterans of the NTL, with Smith one of the longest tenured coaches in the league. 

After that district title in 2013 they earned the program’s first league title since 1988 the following year, sharing it with NP-Mansfield.

A little bit of a lull followed in the mid-2010’s, but by 2019 things were looking up again with their first outright NTL title in 31 years.

For the next three years, though, they had to watch their rivals in Canton have their run through the NTL, district, and state playoffs.

Finally, last year Troy returned back to the top of the league, and nearly the district. So far in 2024 they’ve checked off two of the three boxes - all that’s left is states.

And, for Smith, this group has gotten this far only because they’ve been able to stand on the shoulders of the giants that came before them.

“It’s that first group that started that,” remarked Smith. “This day has been a long time coming, and it’s pretty special.”

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PHOTOS BY CHRIS MANNING

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