On Fruitport’s first possession of the third quarter, a Comstock Park player picked off a pass and returned it for a touchdown, and suddenly the home team led 27-17. Smith admits he wasn’t sure what to expect at that point.

“Right after we threw the pick-six, I felt like I had nothing to say,” Smith said. “I didn’t want to yell at them, but I didn’t want to say it was okay, either. Then I heard a few players behind me yell out ‘Let’s focus, clear eyes, there’s a lot of game left.’”

The Trojans responded by scoring two unanswered touchdowns in the second half to regain the lead. Then they capped it off with a late interception in their own end zone, preventing the Panthers from scoring what likely would have been the winning TD.

A few seconds later the score was final – Fruitport 30, Comstock Park 27. The losing streak was over, and Coach Smith was being doused with water in the middle of the celebration.

“They were down 10, then they cleared their eyes and stayed focused,” Smith said about his players “It was a pretty cool win.”

‘Suddenly the room started spinning crazy’

Smith sudden medical problem came out of nowhere.

He had recently been feeling as good as he had in years, after dropping a lot of weight last spring.

“Since March I have kind of changed my eating habits and physical activity,” Smith said. “My new doctor happened to be a former player I had at Muskegon Catholic, and he said ‘Dude, you need to be in better shape.’ I dropped about 110 pounds. I was feeling really good, with more energy, and I was much more alert.”

Trouble came on the morning of Wednesday, Sept. 4, however, when Smith was sitting in a morning staff meeting at Fruitport High School, where he works as a student advocate.

“I was sitting there, everything seemed normal,” Smith said. “I took a sip of coffee from the bottom of the cup, sat it down, and suddenly the room started spinning crazy. I looked at our assistant principal and said, ‘I don’t feel very good.’ I shut my eyes and put my head down, and within five or six minutes I was sweating though my shirt.

“They ended up calling an ambulance. They thought I was having a stroke. They gave me meds to stop the room from spinning, but it didn’t help.”

Smith spent two days in the hospital and had all sorts of tests, but they call came back negative.

“The next day the neurologist said all the tests were really great,” Smith said. “It turned out I had a very acute level of vertigo. Apparently, we have crystals in our inner ear, and the balances can get knocked off.”

Smith ended up missing three days of practice and the Week 2 game against Big Rapids, which was Fruitport’s 2024 home opener. Assistant coach Mike Farley filled in as head coach.

Needless to say, Smith was miserable being away from the team as it practiced for and played its second game without him.

“it’s hard to explain how helpless you feel,” he said. “I spoke to the other coaches. I have a great staff. Those guys are phenomenal. Coach Farley stepped in as head coach. He was a natural person to be in that position, because he had been a head coach for a long time.”

Smith sat home during the Big Rapids game, which Fruitport lost 41-14. That followed a 40-6 loss to Spring Lake in Week 1.

“I tried to follow some different apps that gave updates, and some of the staff were texting me as things went on,” he said about the game he missed. “We got down right away in the game, and all I could do was sit there and feel helpless.”

Smith was cleared to return to practice last Tuesday, even though he was still feeling a little wobbly.

“A couple of the coaches were giving me a hard time, saying I looked like I was drunk,” Smith said. “I was still stumbling around a little bit.”

He had another attack of dizziness on Wednesday morning before work, but it turned out to be temporary.

“On Wednesday morning I was taking a shower, and I tilted my head to wash my hair, and bam, it hit again, but not nearly as bad,” Smith said. “I sat home for most of the day, then came to school in the afternoon and sat for most of the practice. Then Thursday and Friday were really good.

“Just being around the guys again was a huge boost.”

Even though he was still recovering, Smith said he could sense a new energy from the team when he returned to practice last week.

Part of it was undoubtedly the players’ relief about having their coach back after a scary episode, but he also thinks they were up for the challenge of playing their first game in their new conference.

“There was a different level of juice at practice last week,” he said. “It was kind of like, we’ve gone through the first two games, let’s make them matter and see how we can get better. The coaches were telling them they were getting better, and they knew they were getting better.

“We were going into a new space and had to define Fruitport football in the O-K Silver. It was time for a fresh start.”

Earning the big win the hard way

Smith thinks the Trojans probably could have put Friday’s game away much earlier, after grabbing a 17-7 lead on a field goal by Riley King and a pair of first-half touchdown runs by junior running back Kalan Teeter.

But in retrospect, he thinks it was more valuable to lose that lead, fall behind by 10 points, and fight back to get the big victory.

The comeback started when senior quarterback Bradon Dornbos punched in a three-yard touchdown run with 2:34 left in the third quarter to cut the deficit to 27-23.

Then the Trojans got the ball back and went on a long 15-play drive that took them to the Comstock Park 15-yard line, where they faced a do-or-die fourth-and-11 situation.

Dornbos rolled out on the big play, changed directions, then connected with junior DayDay Williams in the end zone for the go-head touchdown, and the Trojans led 30-27 with about two minutes remaining.

“We actually dropped a pass on the one-yard line (prior to the touchdown) that would have given us a first down,” Smith said. “So we went on fourth down, we ran a play and it was great. The line gave great protection, I was surprised that Bradon didn’t just take off running, but he fired a bullet, DayDay made a great catch, and it was time to turn the page.”

The drama was not over, however, because the Panthers still had dangerous life in them. They took the ensuing kickoff, gained 48 yards in just two plays, and suddenly had the ball ate the Fruitport 16.

After three incomplete passes, Comstock Park faced a fourth down situation of its own with about 90 seconds left. At first the Panthers sent out their field goal unit, and everybody was assuming they were going for a tie.

Instead they called a time out, talked it over, and sent the offense back on the field. They thew a pass into the end zone, where Dornbos, playing in the defensive secondary, picked it off to put Fruitport’s victory on ice.

“They were going to kick a field goal, then they put the offense back on the field,” Smith said. “I looked at our guys, none of them panicked, they immediately lined up, got some good pressure on their quarterback and we picked it off. It was awesome.

“The guys were coming off the field with these big smiles om their faces. The coaches were all mugging me and about knocked me over! I was like, ‘Hey guys, chill. I still can’t stand up very well!”

A few days later, with the losing streak finally in the rear-view mirror, Smith talked about how painful the long slump had been for everyone involved.

He knows the community had no idea that some of the current Trojans never experienced much success in football.

In fact, many of the Fruitport seniors had never won a single game, going all the way back to their youth league days.

“For a handful of kids, it was the first win they ever had,” Smith said.

Smith learned the hard way that for many people, a coach is only as good as his most recent success. A lot of fans seemed to forget that just two years ago, his Trojans posted a 9-3 record, won a share of the O-K Blue conference championship, and advanced to the second round of the state playoffs.

Much of that team graduated, last year’s Trojans went 0-9, this year’s team was 0-2, and the critics were on the prowl.

“It’s like I have told the players, they want us to win, they want what we want – their angle is just a little different,” Smith said about the fans who voiced their disapproval.

“I’m not going to lie, (the criticism) does hurt. You are human and you feel it in your heart. I think it upsets my wife and family more. They see how much time and energy I put into it and how much the players mean to me. I think it upsets the players too. They think, ‘If we were winning they wouldn’t be saying this crap about our coach or Fruitport.’ It’s not fair to them.

“So yes, it hurts sometimes, but they want us to win. I would rather be in a community that wants us to win than a community that doesn’t care.”