POPULAR SPORTS PSYCHOLOGIST ACCENTUATED THE POSITIVE
With Oilers and U of A, Smith was able to get into athletes’ minds
After he was inducted into the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame in 2006, educator, coach and sports psychologist Murray Smith said the voters had kindly overlooked that “I was mediocre as an athlete.”
Smith’s self-deprecating analysis forgets the fact he was a wide receiver on the 1947 University of Alberta Golden Bears football team with another kid named Peter Lougheed, who was a running back and would one day carry the ball as premier of the province.
If Smith, who passed away on Feb. 26 at 92 years of age, never graduated to the pros as an athlete, he had so many other skills and interests.
He could be found in the front row of many a jazz club, he counted the late Tommy Banks as a good friend. He went to Oxford for his post-doctoral work, he taught Inuit kids how to swim after going to where they lived.
He taught high school at Strathcona Composite with Hockey Hall of Famer Clare Drake before they both were hired by U of A dean Maury Van Vliet at his phys-ed faculty in 1958.
Smith coached the junior football Edmonton Huskies and coached swimming and football at the U of A.
He later gave psychology advice to famous young pros with the Edmonton Oilers from 1990 to 1994, again jokingly saying “a lot of them are very sensitive and if they have a guaranteed three-year contract for $15 million you have to be very careful how you talk to them.”
He loved working with juniors in Kelowna and Kamloops, B.C., in the Western Hockey League as a sports psychologist, many of whom would go on to be NHL players.
He worked until he was 84. Smith was born Aug. 5, 1925, in Dauphin, Man., the second of six children. He moved to Edmonton in the early 1930s and went to school at Eastwood, which would later become Eastglen High School. In 1948, he married Rean Elston, a fantastic dancer, and they had a full house, looking after six kids: Bruce (construction engineer at NAIT), Murray Jr. (school principal), Devon (school principal and now a school psychologist), Carla (wine merchant), Cameron (advertising in Dallas) and famous dance artist Peggy Baker, who was bestowed the Order of Canada.
Smith graduated from the U of A in 1948 with an education degree and did post-doctoral work at UCLA and in England before starting his multi-faceted teaching career, never stopping his learning as associate dean academic from 1958-89.
He was a wise, interested and interesting man whom Drake’s wife Dolly Drake said was very much a mentor to her husband. Same goes for former Bears’ hockey equipment manager Derek Drager, who said he was forever indebted to Smith for his help on Drager’s excellent book on Clare Drake, The Coaches’ Coach.
“Murray helped Clare with his coaching philosophy. The Golden Bears’ toughness list of what a Golden Bear athlete should be, how he should compete on and off the ice. Ten or 12 things. They developed that list and I actually put the list on my son’s wall when he was young. It was a part of life,” said Drager.
Smith had an infectious laugh, he tooled around town in a sporty black car with tinted windows as he got older, wearing a black leather jacket and dark glasses.
“He was a cool guy,” said Drager. “He always used to say, ‘Be cool and do what you gotta do.’ ”
“I really do think Murray was kind of a renaissance man,” said Larry Dufresne, a defensive back, high school track coach, accomplished painter and assistant coach on the 1980 Golden Bears team that had Smith on the staff as running backs coach. They won the Vanier Cup as best college team in the land.
“With the Bears, Jim (head coach Donlevy), Clarence (Kachman) and myself all had big egos and Murray came in and developed rules for the players and the coaches. We’d be arguing on the field at the start of the season and he’d say, ‘Look guys we have to change this right now.’ The reason we won the College Bowl in 1980 was because Murray was a sports psychologist.’’
“Murray’s strength was talking to individuals not teams, though. It was that way when he worked with the Oilers too, getting into the nitty gritty of what a person is about,” said Dufresne.
As a sports psychologist, Smith hated coaches of all persuasions who berated athletes like college great Bobby Knight at Indiana. He felt athletes responded considerably better to positive reinforcement and he always preached that.
He tried to live that philosophy, too. Concerned with a spate of drownings, he organized a barge to travel to the Northwest Territories so residents could take swimming lessons.
“He got this barge with a pool on it and he’d stop at an inlet and teach kids how to swim. It was part of the Red Cross, a really innovative way to do it,” said Murray Smith Jr.
Former Oilers equipment manager Barrie Stafford had Smith as his professor at the U of A when he played hockey for the Golden Bears.
“I remember distinctly that the Golden Bears players would change their course load at the beginning of a term to make sure they took Dr. Smith’s courses. He had a certain approach to teaching that was different than any of the other professors. Treated everybody like they were adults. Down to Earth,” said Stafford.
“More than anything, Dr. Smith was a humble, kind person. I always looked at him as my grandpa. He had a way with people. You have a lot of professors in school but he stands out for me. He helped changed my life. That’s a gift if a teacher can do that,” said Stafford.
Smith’s wife Rean died Jan. 13 at 89 years of age. A celebration of the couple’s life was held April 21 at the Derrick Golf and Winter Club.
Murray’s strength was talking to individuals not teams ... getting into the nitty gritty of what a person is about.