Josh Smith... Meet Josh Smith
Programming Note: The full piece aired on KUSA-TV/9News’ “Overtime” program on Sunday, March 23, at 10:35 p.m. Click here for the link to the video.
In a program with some 325-plus student-athletes, not everyone gets to know or necessarily meet everybody, especially when they are two classes apart academically, and even when they share the same name, Josh Smith. “Ski Josh” is a junior from Vail, “Football Josh” a true freshman from
Sports information director David Plati, who handles the publicity needs for both sports, was writing a story in January about CU’s performance in the Utah Invitational, and wondered if anyone might wonder if “Ski Josh” was “Football Josh.” He ran into the gridder a couple of days later and found out the two had never met. An idea was born to introduce the two, and that grew into the thought of putting one into the other’s shoes for a day.
CU has had other instances with athletes with the same name before, most notably in 1990, when they were on the same national championship team in football no less. Charles S. Johnson was a junior quarterback who was the MVP in the Orange Bowl win over Notre Dame, while Charles E. Johnson was a freshman wide receiver who would eventually finish as the school’s second all-time leading receiver. In 1980, future U.S. Open winner Steve Jones was on the Buff golf team, with his namesake a split end on the football squad. There are likely other sporadic instances through the years, but it’s not been overly common.
As for the Josh’s, they are two of almost three million people named Smith in the
Ski Josh qualified for the NCAA Championships, but teams are allowed a maximum of three skiers and other teammates earned higher seeds and did not participate. He still had his best year as a collegian, with seven top 20 finishes, including two in the top 10 and a career-best fourth in the freestyle at the New Mexico Invitational.
Football Josh caught 23 passes for 451 yards for a team best 19.6 yards per catch, and picked up another 34 yards on assorted running plays. He likely never thought he would pull off his first “180” on skis before scoring his first college touchdown, but that’s exactly what happened.
Both were educated and impressed on the other’s speed relevant to their sport. Football Josh has 4.4 speed; Ski Josh regularly performs over distances up to 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) at four-and-a-half miles per minute or less.
With a camera rolling and reporter (and CU grad) Rod Mackey present from KUSA-TV (9News) in Denver, the two met for the first time at CU’s ski building on the morning of March 20, the weather perfect as winter prepared to turn to spring the next day. Cranmer had some ski team equipment that fit Football Josh and he drove the group the 20-plus miles to CU’s home mountain at Eldora Ski Resort outside of
Cranmer let his junior coach his namesake, enjoying the whole process. Football Josh nailed the wardrobe for the most part, bringing his own goggles and borrowing only Nordic ski boots and a ski team jacket to wear. It was 35 degrees at Eldora, some 9,300 feet above sea level at the base of Continental Divide. He put the skis on like a veteran, and he had good balance from the get-go. Ski Josh walked him through the basics, and the two took off on the flattest area of Eldora’s Nordic course.
Ski Josh was a good coach, showing him how to move, how to skate, how to turn, how to climb a hill, and most important, how to stop.
“I was surprised. I didn’t know what to expect,” Ski Josh said. “He said that he had snowboarded once before but he took to it. I was most surprised by the 180. That was definitely the highlight.”
“When I was out there I really didn’t know what to expect myself,” Football Josh said. “I was like, 'Oh man I just have to think of it as white grass.'”
“He did a good job teaching me,” he continued. “He didn’t go too far ahead and took some baby steps with me so I could get a feel for it. Then he taught me how to use the sticks (poles). And then once I started coordinating both of them I started doing well. That’s when I built up enough confidence to go for the 180.”
The 180 wasn’t supposed to be on the agenda, but we’re talking teenagers here. Ski Josh showed him the move, and Football Josh followed and pulled it off perfectly. He fell on occasion, but by the end of the session, you never would have known that he had only put skis on for the first time that morning. And the skinny Nordic skis at that. He was a bit winded, but after all, he was at 9,300 feet elevation, something Ski Josh was used to.
Was Hawkins concerned that his up-and-coming star receiver was off in the hills seeing if he had the desire to pursue a two-sport career at CU?
“I don’t live that way, you can’t live that way. You can’t live in a bubble,” Hawkins said. “That dude (Football Josh) loves to play basketball and if he sprains an ankle playing basketball, so be it. Cody (Hawkins) goes (snow) boarding all the time. When you live in
Later in the day, it was time for Football Josh to teach his new friend the intricacies of playing wide receiver. CU’s equipment staff outfitted Ski Josh in a number 1 jersey (Football Josh’s new number, incidentally, as he switched from No. 9), a helmet, gloves, socks and shoes.
After donning football gear, this is where the size difference between the two was more apparent. Football Josh is listed at 6-foot-0, 180 pounds, while Ski Josh is 5-10, 130. "A few of the other players thought I was a new kicker," Ski Josh said.
The football coaches discussed Ski Josh’s involvement briefly in their morning meetings, and receivers coach Eric Kiesau said for him to be there by 3:45 when the receivers begin their warm up routine. Ski Josh figured he would be thrown a few balls and be done by 4; instead, he participated for 90 minutes, over half of the session, dropping back to even catch some punts at one point.
Kiesau had him jump right in from the start, joining the receivers’ line in catching balls at progressive speeds, though it’s fair to say no one ever fired a John Elway-esque bullet in Ski Josh’s direction. When they broke from those drills, the receivers went over to shag punts, but Ski Josh hung back. Hawkins walked over, pointed to the others and yelled at Ski Josh, “C’mon over and show us what you’ve got!”
Ski Josh’s highlight came when he was inserted into some full, though light, team drills and caught a pass to the applause of the receivers and almost the entire ski team, which surprised him by showing up to watch. Cody Hawkins overthrew him by some 20 yards on his last play, leading some to say that he must have thought the other Josh Smith was running the route.
“The beauty of any program whether it be a music program, drama program or football is that you have the ability to showcase a number of things,” Hawkins said. “The beauty of our football program is that you have the ability to also shed light on the rest of campus and extend a hand to other areas. How awesome was it to have the whole ski team out here at practice watching and supporting their teammate?”
But that’s how Hawkins views things and while probably not alone in his thinking, there probably aren’t many other coaches willing to have a skier, golfer or tennis player join in for the majority of a football practice. The guess here is that Bear Bryant or Woody Hayes would have shot a death glare at their SID for even asking. But as for Hawkins, he even jumped in a couple of times himself to coach Ski Josh.
“I always tell our players to play smart, play hard and have fun,” Hawkins added. “It’s the third practice of spring football and you can’t be slobbering at the mouth so much that you won’t let a guy come out here and participate in some drills. It was awesome to see, if you didn’t know any better you would have thought that J-Fly (Football Josh’s nickname) was with his brother in how he was coaching the other Josh up.”
“It was incredible,” Ski Josh said of his football experience. “Warming up with the ball drills, it was good to get the lessons. I didn’t know how to catch, but it was awesome to learn how to do everything with the timing and all that goes into it. Then I saw the punts coming in and I thought, ?Oh gosh.’ You don’t realize how intense it is until you’re out here trying to catch the ball.”
“The funny thing is that we were exactly equivalent,” Football Josh summed up. “I taught him a couple of catching techniques, the diamond and the web. And he went out there and caught every ball in the ball drills.
“Then we were on the sideline and had special teams coming up and I said, ?I recommend you try to not catch any punts.’ But Coach Hawk yelled out to him to join in. There are not a lot of guys that are going to catch a ball that high in the air, but he went out and caught four of them. And I said, ?Man, that was impressive right there.’
“We tore it up,” Football Josh concluded. “We represented for all the Joshuas and for all the Smiths.”
And as they say in documentaries, “No class time was missed in the filming of this episode.”
(Photos by SID staffers Allie Musso and Erich Schubert)