BOZICH | Sydney Smith has bigger plans for Derek Smith Shootout basketball tournament | Sports

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Sydney Smith played tennis, not basketball. Sydney Smith is also a gym rat.

Those are her words, not mine. She is the daughter of Derek Smith, the former University of Louisville men's basketball star and NBA player.

In 1997, less than a year after Smith's tragic death when he was 34 years old, Kris Vance launched a local basketball tournament in Smith's name in Louisville, his adopted home. It ran for more than a dozen years. It became one of the must-see events on the summer circuit.

"There were a lot of summer league games, but the Derek Smith tournament was the one you wanted to play in and definitely the one you wanted to win," said Matt Thomas, head coach at Holy Cross High School.

Summer basketball is ferociously competitive. And expensive. And time-consuming. More than a decade ago, the Derek Smith Shootout ended. Summer events often do.

Vance was a former U of L student manager who was close to Smith as well as Sydney, her brother, Nolan, and mother, Monica. His dream was one day the Smiths would return to Louisville and re-energize the Shootout.

On Tuesday, at Louisville Male High School, that dream was realized.

With the assistance of several friends and area high school coaches, Sydney Smith launched the rebirth of the Derek Smith Shootout. A dozen local high school teams played six games from 2-8 p.m. at Male High School.

Let it be known that Holy Cross guard Wes Meiman made the first field goal, a three-pointer, from the left wing. But Moore High School, getting a dozen points from Jacob Forney, won the first game, rallying to beat Holy Cross, 50-45.

"We want to be part of this tournament every year," said Brandon Lefler, who coached Moore on Tuesday. "That's the goal. You want to be part of the best tournaments and play the best teams, and they plan on making this one of the best tournaments."

Sydney Smith plans to make it more than that. She plans on making it three of the best tournaments. Smith said that she was finalizing her plans for in-season team tournament Dec. 2-3. It will feature national programs like Prolific Prep from California; St. Francis Academy from Baltimore, Maryland, and Shabach Christian Academy in Landover, Maryland, as well as a strong collection of teams from Kentucky.

Those dates are important dates. They are during an open recruiting period. That means college coaches, like Nolan, who is an assistant coach at Louisville, can attend. It was Nolan's decision to leave the staff at Duke to work for Kenny Payne that brought the Smith family back to Louisville last year.

In 2024, Sydney Smith also plans to create a girl's high school component of the Derek Smith Shootout.

"There's an opportunity to bring in talent from around the country and see how the local basketball programs stack up," she said.

"We want to create a really fun basketball culture here. We want to make it exciting, something that people look forward to where everybody is having fun watching good basketball.

"And we'd like to get my Dad's name out there because he loved this community. It's just an opportunity to bring everybody together for something we all love, which is basketball."

How important is this event to people who knew Derek Smith?

Beau Zach Smith played at Louisville more than a decade after Smith. He remembered encountering Smith at Crawford Gym, which was the Cards' practice facility, not long after he arrived on campus.

"Derek told me that when he got on campus that playing pickup ball in the first week that he bloodied somebody's lip," Beau Zach Smith said.

"He said he told the guy, 'I didn't come out here to be your friend. I came here for business.' I never forgot that. Derek was special. He cared about the program and players who came after him."

Smith signed up to officiate a pair of games Tuesday afternoon. It was his way to contribute to the basketball community.

Vance cut short his summer vacation to fly home from Los Angeles on Monday night so he could be at Male for the opening game.

"I think about him nearly every day," Vance said. "There was only one Derek Smith."

And, soon, there will be three Derek Smith basketball events on the local basketball calendar to honor him.