Rickey Smith, head girls basketball coach at Fort Smith Northside, is one of the most successful coaches in Arkansas in any sport, a straight-ahead, no-nonsense kind of guy who enjoys the challenge of competition almost as much as the win itself. After all, as he’s the first to tell you, it’s those who push you to your limits who bring out your best.
Merrill Mankin, former head coach of Fort Smith Southside, was just that sort of person.
“We were fierce rivals, fierce competitors,” Rickey says. “Many, many times we were one and two in the conference. We even played each other for the state championship in 2001. We wanted to meet against each other. He wanted to beat us, we wanted to beat them, but we always had a mutual respect for one another off the court.”
Rickey’s voice alternatingly sparked and shook talking about Merrill, who died unexpectedly on Thanksgiving Day at the age of sixty-eight. A few months haven’t been enough time to process what the two-time state champion and crosstown rival meant to him, especially over the past eight years as his assistant. Here and there emotion has leaked out – in post-game press conferences and at Merrill’s memorial service, packed with former players – but nowhere like it has on the court, the place he loved most.
In December, the Grizzlies’ funneled their grief into the Taco Bell Tournament of Champions, besting Greenwood for top honors in a bracket they dedicated to their fallen coach.
“This was really big for us, especially considering that we just lost Coach Mankin, and wanted to win this championship for him,” says senior Yonni Releford, who was named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player, in a post-game interview. “This means everything. We put dedication into our defense because he was our defensive coach. We took pride in our defense and wanted to do it for him.”
It was a bittersweet victory for the entire program, and as Northside continues to march toward defense of their 2021 state title – Merrill’s fourth overall and the second he and Rickey won together – the Grizzlies coach feels his friend closer than ever.
“Coach was someone that after every game I would call,” he says. “After things calmed down, I’d call him and say, ‘Okay, what did you think? Good, bad, or indifferent? Okay, tomorrow what are we going to work on?’ I’m not going to lie to you. It’s been difficult. After every ball game, I still reach for that phone to call him.”
Merrill was Fort Smith to the bone, born here, raised here, graduated Fort Smith Northside. After attending College of the Ozarks, he started his coaching career at Foreman, Arkansas, the first of a string of jobs in Texas and Arkansas. As the skipper of Southside girls, where he’d ultimately post a 261-82 record, he racked up numerous conference titles as well as state championships in 1996 and 1998. His team fell to Northside in the 2001 state title game in the opening years of the Grizzlies current run of girls basketball dominance.
Tara Treat, a member of Southside’s 1996 state championship squad, said Merrill was as impactful with his players off the floor as he was on it.
“He treated all his players as if they were his own kid,” she says. “He was hard on you, but he was also very empathetic. He could put you in your place, but then turn around and say something that makes you feel at ease and calm and know that he was right. It was just a matter of he expected so much out of you, he was going to tell you the straight-up.”
Treat, who was all-everything as a senior and now coaches and teaches at Sheridan, had just seen her former mentor about a week before he died. Time had not dimmed the impact of her mentor’s influence on her life.
“We were talking after the funeral, before we all had to go our separate ways, and talking to former players that had him years later, he always came back to the ‘96 team that won state, because we just had a lot of heart,” Tara says. “That’s one thing he and I talked about. I said, ‘I don’t remember you running us much.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I didn’t have to. Y’all just played so hard at practice. You practiced as if you were in a game. I didn’t have to run y’all.’
“If I take away anything from that year or all the years I played with him, it’s just everybody wanted to do one hundred percent what they could to please him, because they had that much respect for him. He was just great.”
Merrill retired once, spending his time fishing, and taking full-time care of his mother Nina. But as his childhood home backed up to the Northside campus, Rickey would often catch sight of him puttering around.
“He’s in his yard right beside the parking lot, so one day I asked him, ‘Hey, Coach. Do you miss it?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I kind of do,’” Rickey says. “I said, ‘How’d you like to come back and help us?’ He cocked his head sideways and says, ‘Go from sitting on the Southside bench to sitting on the Northside bench?!’ I said, ‘Well, that’s your choice. We’d love to have you as a volunteer assistant.’ It wasn’t forty-eight hours and he was here. He was with me for eight straight years.”
Rickey put Merrill in charge of the team’s defense and for good reason: It gave Rickey fits every time his Grizzlies took on Merrill’s Mavericks.
“I told him, ‘Look, man, we’ve always struggled to score against you guys. I think you do a phenomenal job defensively,’” Rickey says. “He thought a little differently than I did and that’s why I think it was such a good fit. We did the same drills. We used a lot of the same terminology. So, it was not a significant difference, but he gave attention to detail that was different than ours.
“Won two state championships. He made the comment once, ‘I’m going to be the only coach in town that has a state championship picture on the wall at Southside and a state championship picture at Northside.’”
Merrill contributed off the court as well, dragging Rickey out onto the water to take up fishing. At first reluctant, Rickey found the activity refreshing, and the two entered many a bass fishing tournament together.
“We probably had more competitive discussions in fishing tournaments about where we’re going to fish than we did on the bench,” Rickey says with a chuckle. “I’d think we would have a hot spot on one bank, and he would say it’s on the other bank. So, we’d kind of argue back and forth on what bank we were going to. As he deferred to me in the coaching realm over here, I deferred to him on the fishing side of it.”
Merrill’s lasting impact from decades of coaching is immediately apparent; all you need to do is visit the tribute Facebook page laden with post after post from former players to see that. And, thanks to a memorial fishing tournament Rickey has in the works, his memory will live on the water as well.
More immediately, a seat on the Grizzlies bench remains empty, set aside by his friend and fiercest rival as a show of respect. Eventually, of course, someone else will sit in his place, but no one can fill his shoes.
“There was never a time where it was awkward or uncomfortable coaching together, because of the level of respect we had,” Rickey says. “One time, we lost a really, really critical game and I’m sitting at the bleachers, just distraught. You can’t describe it unless you’ve been there. And Coach Mankin walked by, patted me on the back and said, ‘Call me later.’
“When I finally left the gym and called him, he said, ‘Rickey, that’s why I’m not the head coach anymore, what you’re going through. When I go home now and take care of my mother, I worry about it, but it’s not the same pressure being the assistant to the head coach. That’s the role I want to be in.’”
A pause, as the tremor returns to his voice.
“It’s like losing your best friend. Coaching, fishing, just a good person. I mean a really, really, good guy. He coached for the right reasons, he really did.”
Read more tributes on Coach’s memorial Facebook page:
Facebook.com/merrill.mankin.5
