Strength in numbers: 27 teams, 700 players - a high school senior does all the stats and does it well
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Kevin Smith isn't just a Valley Forge senior.
He's an industry.
He's also a maven.
And a savior.
Kevin Smith is many things to a lot of people, but they all share one opinion about the inexhaustible 18-year-old: He's astounding.
Smith is the official team statistician for 13 varsity, junior varsity and freshman teams at Valley Forge in Parma Heights, and he oversees the stats for every other team in each sport. He's also kept boys basketball stats at rivals Normandy and Padua this school year, for a total of 27 teams under his umbrella. Last year, he personally kept Lakewood's basketball stats.
Smith doesn't just keep a few basic individual and team stats for the coaches. He tracks volumes of stats on every player, from "strikes seen" to "block assists."
If Smith is out with one team, other coaches will drop off their scorebooks or game tapes at his house for him to break down.
At the end of a season, every player, coach, and even the cheerleaders, are presented with their own individualized season recap and stat book and baseball-style card with an action photo.
That's for more than 700 people in a school year. Many also receive souvenir photo DVDs set to music.
"It's ridiculous," Valley Forge baseball player Doug Fox said. "I don't know how he does it."
It doesn't end there. Oh, no. Smith started and runs the school's impressive sports Web site, forgesports.com.
He posts everything from driving directions to box scores to biographies to updated stats and recaps for every team in every sport. If stats aren't updated within a few hours of an event, he'll get text messages from people wondering if he's OK.
He conned his father, Ken, into "taking a few pictures" at the beginning. Ken estimates that, with Kevin assigning him to a different game almost every day, they have posted more than 500,000 photos in four years. Tuesday's softball game against Mayfield resulted in 364 pictures posted.
Kevin spends up to 30 hours a week riding team buses, keeping score, and compiling and posting stats - and he does it while maintaining a 4.1 grade-point average.
He's among the first to school before 6:30 a.m. to tutor fellow students, and he's among the last to get home, where more stat work - and homework - awaits. His dad is there, too, with dinner and some Krispy Kreme donuts.
"No athlete I've ever met puts as much passion and time into what he does as this kid," Padua basketball coach Pat Teresi said. "He's like a LeBron James of this stuff. That's how talented he is. It's sick.
"This kid is irreplaceable, and he's the nicest young man you'll ever meet. He's a very warm, gentle kid."
Coaches and teachers and fellow students rave - effusively - about Kevin's maturity and dependability.
Sound exaggerated?
Two years ago, Valley Forge's star basketball player, Brandon Sopko, insisted Kevin be named the team's most valuable player. At this year's Padua boys basketball banquet, Kevin received two standing ovations.
While the gigabytes of information Kevin produces is staggering, he has plenty of other things going on in his life. He's deeply involved in his church. He's a community volunteer. He recently participated in a national sports marketing competition in California. Also, thanks largely to his efforts, Valley Forge will receive a $5,000 grant from Major League Baseball to fix its baseball diamond.
Then there's a certain college athletic department that can't wait to get its hands on Kevin this fall. But we'll get to that later.
First, a basic question. Is he nuts to take all this on?
Nah. He's just a kid who has learned to live life to its fullest, to never waste a moment of time.
The way this all began might explain why.
Stats, statsman
find each other
In the winter of 2005-06, Kevin was like a lot of freshman boys. He wanted to play sports, and he decided to try out for the baseball team. He attended open-gym sessions with other freshmen who had the same dream. Their parents picked them up after workouts, Kevin included.
But instead of going home for dinner, Kevin and Ken drove to the Cleveland Clinic to be with Margaret Smith, Kevin's mom and Ken's wife. Kevin would do his homework in her hospital room and tell her about baseball workouts. Margaret, a former special-education teacher, was battling ovarian cancer.
When she came home from the hospital, Kevin decided not to try out for the baseball team so he could spend more time helping her. Margaret Smith died a week later, in March 2006, just as baseball season began.
The junior varsity baseball coach, Guy Boulton, wanted Kevin to feel included and asked Kevin if he would like to keep score. He asked the right guy.
As a child, Kevin learned to read with his nose buried in The Plain Dealer sports section. For years, Kevin kept spiral-bound notebooks of sports stats he recorded while reading or watching TV.
"When he was 4 or 5 years old, all of a sudden he'd start a conversation about auto racing," Ken said. "I didn't even know he was following auto racing."
That's why Kevin accepted Boulton's offer to keep score.
"When my mom passed away, I took it up as something to do since I always liked baseball, and I umpire in the summer," he said. "It was interesting and got me involved. I came [to Valley Forge] from St. Charles parochial school, and that way I got to know a lot of the students I wouldn't have known otherwise.
"The thought of how all the coaches and most of the players treat me real well has kept me going in it. Now, they're always there for me when I need stuff, and I'm there for them."
What Boulton and others who reached out to Kevin didn't realize is they also were rescuing his father. Kevin, an only child, needed a driver and a photographer (and financier) as his enterprise grew. Ken became all three, and they became a team.
"I was going through a hard time with my wife dying. I give Kevin full credit because he's the one who got me going," said Ken, a tool design engineer at Lincoln Electric. "I wasn't doing anything. I'd come home from work and he'd be cutting the grass and dusting the house, and I would basically be moping around. I had no ambition."
Kevin fixed that. Ken loves taking pictures and helping Kevin. It has kept them close during Kevin's high school years. They've turned the small paneled den of their Parma Heights ranch house into a makeshift publishing center, where empty ink cartridges are stacked by the dozen and stat sheets are strewn about.
More, more, more
The enterprise expanded quickly into softball Kevin's freshman year, then football and volleyball the next fall. He read a book on volleyball to learn how to keep stats.
Word about Kevin spread through the coaching staffs. John Silva, who was Kevin's biology teacher and the boys basketball coach, asked Kevin to consider creating a Web site for the basketball program.
This is where Kevin's penchant for taking small ideas and turning them into large projects took hold. He said, "Why not do a Web site for all Valley Forge sports?" and he approached Athletic Director Tom Schreiber, who got it approved, and Kevin took it from there.
Eventually, he was involved with every Valley Forge team. In the winter of 2007-08, he also kept track of Lakewood boys basketball as a favor to Silva, who left Valley Forge to coach the Rangers. This past winter, Silva went to Normandy and Kevin did its stats. Meanwhile, Teresi, the former Valley Forge JV boys coach, took the head coaching job at Padua, and he recruited Kevin to do the Bruins' stats.
When Valley Forge, Normandy or Padua played each other, Kevin tracked both teams' stats (but not their scorebooks) simultaneously.
Kevin isn't just all about numbers. He's a character, engaging to be around with a few quirks. He has a distinct voice - clear and confident - and seems to begin and finish every sentence with a smile.
Kevin deals extremely well with adults and freely corrects people, but perhaps not always at the right time. He once told Teresi not to play a certain player because he was shooting 23 percent, and the player was standing right next to him.
"He's so honest," Teresi said.
When Kevin umpires summer baseball games, his calls are delivered without hesitation.
"I've seen him stare down a coach that's four times his age and five times his size. He doesn't back down, and he'll throw them out of the game," Ken said.
Teresi is especially fond of Kevin. "He lives right down the street from me and I got to know him pretty good. We shared some stories," Teresi said. "He lost his mother and took it pretty hard. I lost my dad in 1990, and I had just graduated from Forge.
"He's like a little brother to me. He's the most likable kid in the world, and he works so hard. All the parents love him."
Kevin doesn't get paid, though boosters and coaches have responded in a variety of ways with computer equipment and gift cards, and Teresi bought him a suit to wear to basketball games.
The biggest payback came last month when Teresi and others organized a benefit dinner for Kevin and friend Nick Blum. They raised $2,900 to send Kevin and Nick to Anaheim, Calif., for a national sports and entertainment marketing competition. The duo qualified after winning a regional and placing fourth in a state competition. At nationals two weeks ago, they did not reach the final round.
Taking his ‘game'
to the next level
Kevin said he wants a career in sports information or management, so Teresi set up a meeting between Kevin and an old friend, Rocco Gasparro, the assistant sports information director at the University of Louisville.
As a result, Kevin will attend Louisville in the fall with a partial academic scholarship, and Gasparro already has plans for him.
"I saw a lot of his stuff and his Web site," Gasparro said. "It was very well thought out and organized, and obviously he put an extensive amount of time into it. It was pretty impressive. With a kid like that, we can throw him right into the mix. When he gets here, I might have him work with me on football."
The folks in Parma Heights, meanwhile, are trying to figure out life after Kevin Smith next school year. Some coaches have asked him to do their stats via e-mail, which Kevin calls their "fantasy." Schreiber, the Valley Forge AD, jokes that it's no coincidence he's retiring this spring.
"I told my principal one of the things they're going to have a difficult time with is not how to replace me, but how to replace Kevin because people are so used to what he's doing," Schreiber said. "Louisville is tapping into a gold mine."
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:twarsinskey@plaind.com, 216-999-6177
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