Cliff Smith

Title

Assistant Baseball Coach

Cliff Smith wrapped up his ninth season as head coach of the Elizabethtown College baseball team in 2015. Hired in December 2006, Smith led the Blue Jays to Commonwealth Conference Championships in 2007 and 2009.

Smith surpassed Elizabethtown College Athletics patriarch Ira R. Herr as the third winningest coach in program history during the 2015 season when his team went 25-16 and reached the Landmark Conference Championship tournament in its inaugural season as a league member. Smith earned his 200th career victory in game one of a doubleheader at Susquehanna April 25 and enters the 2016 season with an overall record of 201-159.

The ninth head coach in program history, Smith guided the Blue Jays to their 1,000th all-time victory, a Commonwealth Conference title and an NCAA Division III Tournament appearance in 2007 —his first year in the dugout. E-town returned to the NCAA Division III Tournament after winning the conference title in 2009.

Elizabethtown featured one of the best pitching staffs in the Commonwealth Conference in 2014, its final season in the conference spawned off the Middle Atlantic Conference in the early 2000s. With a 3.88 team earned run average that ranked third in the league and 98th in Division III, the Blue Jays went 18-19 overall with three wins against nationally-ranked opponents.

In 2012, the Blue Jays' postseason hopes came down to the final day of the regular season and they swept a doubleheader at Messiah to assure the program its 14th straight conference playoff berth. E-town would up take a game from Lebanon Valley at the conference championships, but came up just shy of reaching its sixth straight championship game under Smith. The team finished with a 20-22 record, giving Smith his fifth 20-win season.

The Blue Jays' 2011 season finished with an even 19-19 record, and featured an equally dramatic regular season finale. E-town took two of three games from Lebanon Valley to claim the conference’s final playoff spot. Once there, the Blue and Gray avenged three heartbreaking, 5-4, losses to nationally-ranked Alvernia in the regular season by eliminating the Crusaders, ranked eighth in the country at the time, from the tournament with wins on consecutive days.

Smith’s club got the job done at the plate and in the field. E-town ranked third in the conference in batting, combining to hit .302 as a team in 2011. The Jays also committed the fewest errors of any league team and had a conference-best .968 fielding percentage.

A 2001 alum of Brandeis University, Smith became the fastest coach in the program’s 82-season history to reach 100 wins, doing so in a 9-3 victory at Arcadia on May 1, 2010. The personal benchmark came in yet another season of accomplishment for the Blue Jays under Smith. In five of his eight seasons, E-town has won 20 games or more. The Jays finished 2010 with a 24-16 record and as the Commonwealth Conference Runner-up.

Prior to joining Elizabethtown, Smith was an assistant coach at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and an educational technician in the special education department at Mt. Ararat High School in Topsham, Maine.

Bowdoin set a school record in wins in 2006, going 28-10, and advanced to the NCAA Division III Tournament with Smith as an assistant. At Bowdoin, Smith was involved in recruiting, fundraising, developing off-season strength and conditioning programs, instruction in skills and strategy, and day-to-day managerial duties. He worked as the pitching coach, managed Bowdoin’s recruiting files and database, and coordinated all recruiting visits as well. The Bowdoin pitching staff had a 3.30 earned run average in 2006.

Smith earned his bachelor of arts in history from Brandeis in 2001 before beginning a five-year minor league career from 2001-05. In the off-season he was also an assistant pitching coach, equipment room assistant and basketball scoreboard operator at Brandeis, as well as a substitute teacher in the Haverhill (Mass.) School Department.

A native of Massachusetts and a resident of New England for most of his life, Smith familiarized himself with Lancaster County as a member of the independent Atlantic League's Lancaster Barnstormers in 2005. He also spent four years in the minor league system of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

Cliff Smith Year-by-Year
	Overall			Conference
Year	Wins	Losses	Pct.	Wins	Losses	Pct.	Postseason
2007	23	18	.561	13	8	.619	Commonwealth Conference Champions NCAA Division III Tournament Qualifier
2008	26	12	.684	10	2	.833	Commonwealth Conference Runner-Up
2009	29	15	.659	12	3	.800	Commonwealth Conference Champions NCAA Division III Tournament Qualifier
2010	24	16	.600	11	7	.611	Commonwealth Conference Runner-Up
2011	19	19	.500	10	8	.556	Commonwealth Conference Runner-Up
2012	20	22	.455	9	9	.500	Commonwealth Conference Tournament Qualifier
2013	17	22	.436	10	11	.476
2014	18	19	.486	8	13	.381
2015	25	16	.610	13	8	.619	Landmark Conference Semifinals
9 seasons	201	159	.558	96	69	.582

Updated on 11/13/15