Approaching 77 years old, Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame coach Charles Smith of Alexandria’s Peabody Magnet High School won another state championship over the past weekend, but this one was different than any of the other nine his Warhorses claimed during his 40 years as their head basketball coach.
“My past state championship teams kind of built into that over a two-or three-year period,” Smith said the day after his second-seeded Warhorses whipped 12th-seeded Northside of Lafayette, 82-61, in the Division II Select finals at Burton Coliseum in Lake Charles. “It usually took two-to-three years to mold a team that was championship caliber. But nobody from this team was on the ’24 team when we won our last title.”
His starters this year often included two freshmen, including 6-foot point guard Corey Blake Jr., a remarkable team leader as a freshman.
“He’s the best point guard (at Peabody) to ever come in as a freshman and start from day one,” said Smith. “He was an 8th-grader last year, and this year he’s been leading the team. He’s an exceptional talent. He took the team on his shoulders, showed up and showed out.”
Smith coached in the championship contest against his former player Troy Jones, who just completed his first season as Northside’s head coach. Jones played for two state championship teams at Peabody in 2010 and 2012.
“I talked to him after the game and gave him a big bear hug,” said Smith. “I told him, ‘You should be proud of your accomplishments as a first-year coach, taking your team to the state championship game.’”
Smith will be 77 on May 15, but looked 27 as he ushered his team toward center court to receive their championship trophy last Saturday afternoon.
The Warhorses finished the season with 30 victories (with three losses but only one that counted as an LHSAA game because two were out of state and one was an exhibition). That gives Smith 1,266 career victories, which puts him just nine wins away from overtaking legendary Morgan Wooten, who logged 1,274 victories in 46 years of coaching (1956-’02) at DeMatha in Hyattsville, Md.
That would put him third overall on the national high school coaching career victories chart behind Ft. Worth prep coaching icon Robert Hughes (1,333) and Gary McKnight, who has 1,306 victories and is still coaching at Mater Dei in Santa Anna, Calif.
Along with his 2019 induction in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in Natchitoches, Smith was inducted in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., in 2004. It was the first year he appeared on the ballot.
Shreveport-born Natchitoches Central graduate Joe Dumars, also in the Naismith and LSHOF halls, presented him for induction into what is essentially the world’s basketball hall.
Smith, by the way, has a master’s in education from Northwestern State, and in January 2025, NSU president Jimmy Genovese attended a Peabody home game to present the coach with an elite “Nth Degree” award given to people who have brought credit to the Natchitoches university by their accomplishments.
Smith, married for 51 years to the former Rosa Bynog, is showing no signs of slowing down, and he wants to keep coaching.
“I still feel able to help young boys get to a higher level,” said Smith, who was an assistant coach for 10 years at Peabody under Ernest Bowman before becoming head coach, “and I’m not talking just basketball. I didn’t get into (coaching) to win awards or state championships (11 total with one as Bowman’s assistant). I wanted to move young boys to higher levels in life.
“I’m privileged to have gotten my two seniors college scholarships,” he said. “I tell people all the time what matters most to me is what the kids go on from college to do: work for and be vice presidents of Fortune 500 companies, be lawyers, doctors, engineers, airline pilots and all points in between.”
In the meantime, Smith has built such a fan base spread across the region and even America that he said fans traveled from Houston, Dallas and one alumnus even came from Seattle to cheer on the Warhorses in the semifinals and finals in Lake Charles.
He was told if he needed any inspiration for longevity as a high school basketball coach, there is Harold Mulhearn, who has coached for some 70 years for several schools and is now an assistant coach for Fairchild High School in Osseo, Wisconsin. He is 91 and he’s not ready to call it quits.
“I won’t be coaching that long,” Smith said.