How Lacrosse is the Smith Family's Tie That Binds

The goal with the tattered net in the backyard.

If there is one enduring picture in your mind about the sport of lacrosse, that might be it.

Let’s face it, you can’t put a regulation soccer goal, a set of goalposts or a batting cage in the backyard, and basketball hoops are typically in the front or side of a house.

And that backyard goal is where the story of the Smith family begins. And continues.

Youth, high school and collegiate lacrosse were flourishing in Maryland in the 1970s but were slow to come to Prince George’s County, which borders Washington, D.C., to the east.

Jack Heagy would change that.

The son of University of Maryland Coach Al Heagy, Jack Heagy established the Prince George’s County Lacrosse Club in the mid-70s. He loved teaching the game and wanted his students to love it as well. In 1980, he helped get the program on its feet at DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville.

It’s highly likely that Jack Heagy or one of his close associates chained a goal to a fence that backed up to the Smith household in neighboring University Park.

So, brothers Jeff, Jimmy and Jason Smith did what any sports-loving teenagers would do. They kicked soccer balls at the goal but then got lacrosse sticks and balls and started firing away. Shortly thereafter, they got involved with the club and wound up at DeMatha, much more noted for its basketball program under the legendary Morgan Wootten.

“That’s how it all started, it was literally an accident,” said Jason Smith.

Jack Heagy passed away Nov. 22, 2025.

Jeff Smith went to UMBC in the fall of 1986 and competed on Dick Watts’ team during that academic year. Jason Smith had other offers, but with younger siblings Justin, Jameson and Jessica coming behind him, his father advised him to “go to the free one.”  

“Jeff was four years older and was the rock star on field at DeMatha,” Jason Smith said. “He was my mentor, like I hope I was for Justin behind me.”

Steve Marohl was already an established Retriever attackman when Smith got to UMBC in the fall of 1990. Even though the connection between the two needed time and repetitions to evolve, Marohl could envision how the two could potentially create havoc for opposing defenses.

“I knew immediately that this was a guy I just needed to throw the ball to as many times as I could,” Marohl said. “For me, it was just a matter of working behind the goal with the ball, creating some seams in the defense, and he was always there, right in the right spots. Typically, if his hands are free and he’s inside 10 yards, it’s going in.”

There was one week early in the 1992 season which perfectly defined the relationship between Marohl and Smith. In a mid-week March 18 contest against a strong Penn squad — one that featured freezing rain and sleet on UMBC’s grass field — Marohl tied a one-year-old NCAA Division I record by dishing out a dozen assists in a 19-15 Retriever victory. Smith was on the receiving end of five of those assists.

“Steve was on another planet in that Penn game,” Smith said. “That was a good team, too.”

Then, three days later, Smith lit up Colgate for 10 goals, which tied a UMBC school record.

“When I scored that 10, I lost track,” Smith said. “I’m not saying in a bad way; it was just, literally, everything I did worked. So, it was like one of those weird, weird games.”

Marohl displayed remarkable recall of those games.

“The Penn zone defense set up perfectly for what Jason and I did,” Marohl said. “He’s fantastic at finding seams in the defense, and if you were going to try and zone us, it was going to be hard to stop that combination.

“And the Colgate game, I also remember very well. Colgate had a defender who was very good on-ball and gave me some troubles. He was a very physical defender, and we decided it was better off having Jason handle the ball more. They weren’t sliding off me, so Jason showed his ability to take the ball one-on-one and be just as effective.”

The 1992 Retrievers scored a school-record 245 goals (16.3 per game), a milestone that remains in the top spot in the school’s record book.

But that season was the last they would play together in college with Marohl graduating weeks after the season ended. They played club lacrosse together afterward and both cherish the relationship they had on and off the field.

“It was just a dream come true for me,” Smith said. “He was so good at feeding, and I like to shoot. We were perfect peas and carrots.”

Smith set a UMBC single-season record by putting up 47 goals in 1992, a mark that wasn’t broken until 2014. He finished tied for sixth in the country in total goals, while Marohl led the nation and set an NCAA single-season record with 77 assists.

“Steve Marohl is the best player I ever played with; he made everyone on the field better. He made me better,” Smith said.

Smith continued to flourish, racking up 79 goals in his next two seasons and setting the school’s career mark of 141, which still stands to this day.

Smith was inducted into the UMBC Athletics Hall of Fame in 2001, four years after Marohl earned the honor.

THE SOCIALIST OF THE FAMILY

Smith and ex-wife (but lifelong friend) Kathleen had three children, Jensen and her two younger brothers, Jack and Jamie. There was little doubt what sport the children would eventually migrate toward.

Jensen Smith played lacrosse and field hockey at Kent Island High School and chose to attend college at the University of South Carolina. They had a top-ranked women’s club program at the time, and she made the team, but the program was discontinued shortly thereafter. She remained in Columbia, S.C., earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in international business and is currently a Fulbright Scholar studying in Madrid, Spain.

Jason Smith coached all three of his children on the lacrosse field. He was not a yeller, but he did have certain rules for the kids, and one in particular that Jack and Jamie remember well.

“If you dropped your stick and went low-to-low, he would not acknowledge that you scored a goal,” Jack Smith said. “He would rather you change levels and finish the ball the right way as opposed to scoring the wrong way. And I think that’s built a lot of really good habits.”

Jack Smith attended DeMatha, and even though he was a very good point guard on the basketball court, he did not have a future with the nationally renowned Stags’ program primarily because he was barely 5-feet tall as a freshman. He did possess good speed and considered soccer as well, but he instead focused on lacrosse.

Jack Smith hit a growth spurt before his senior season and was looking forward to a great season and perhaps even getting on the radar of some Division I programs, but that’s when the pandemic hit the world and the vast majority of 2021 high school spring seasons were cancelled.

So, he focused his search on all Division III programs in Maryland and Virginia and recalled one afternoon in the parking lot at DeMatha when he and lacrosse-playing friends Ryan Pritchard, Patrick Moyer and Bubba Bowen made a special pact.

They would all attend Randolph-Macon together. It was a great decision for Jack Smith.

But a horrifying thing happened to him. Jack Smith became … a feeder. Jason Smith uses another non-flattering political term that starts with “C” and rhymes with “mommy.”

“I like to think I tried to be a goal scorer, but I wasn’t good enough at it, so then I had to start passing the ball,” Jack Smith said. “I never possessed that gift that I guess my dad and brother had.”

Jack Smith wasn’t built in the lumberjack-fashion of his father and brother, but he did possess superior speed, which he put to great use at Randolph-Macon.

In four years, he produced 139 goals and 150 assists and became the Yellow Jackets’ all-time leading scorer. He earned All-America honors as a junior and senior and helped boost the program to a 38-18 record in his last three years. Randolph-Macon has continued to build and was nationally ranked during the 2026 season.

“Me and my dad like to joke about it when we say he might not be a Smith,” Jamie Smith said. “He likes passing more than shooting, but growing up, it was just always me and my brother playing. It always ended up with him passing me the ball and I’d score, and it just happened over and over again. If we were playing together, he was passing and I was shooting.”

Jack Smith parlayed an extra year — due to the pandemic — into an opportunity to play at the Division I level. He tallied 20 goals and 21 assists at Mount St. Mary’s in 2025 and finished his college career with 330 points. He also earned his master’s degree in business administration while in Emmitsburg and is currently a financial services officer at Ernst & Young in Charlotte, N.C.

“I definitely think I got to make the most of my lacrosse career and get a little bit of both,” Jack Smith said about his experiences at the Division III and I levels. “So, I would not have changed anything about it.”

He tries to get to as many of Jamie’s games as possible.

MIRROR IMAGES

The similarities between the careers of Jason Smith and his youngest son, Jamie, are striking.

They both had breakthrough seasons in their second full years of competition at the collegiate level. They both enjoyed the good fortune of being paired with an ideal running mate on attack. They both would rather visit the dentist than be credited with … an assist. They shared the same physical characteristics and mentality to get into a position to score goals — and lots of them.

Jamie Smith attended Kent Island and was the 2022 Maryland 2A Player of the Year as a senior. He considered offers from lower-level Division I college programs, but it was Jack’s influence that lured him to the Division III route and Christopher Newport in Newport News, Va.

“Jack has always been the player I look up to the most,” Jamie Smith said. “Although I didn’t always want to hear it, he’d give me the hard truth, and it made me a much better player. I play with all the lessons I learned from him and my dad, and his influence has been so huge on and off the field. He was one of the smartest players I have ever seen, so his mentoring has been so important to me.”

But Jamie Smith underwent a pair of shoulder surgeries and missed the entire 2024 season.

“I was kind of bitter all year that I couldn’t get on the field,” he said. “I knew what I was capable of, but once I came back, I was just very hungry. I wanted to start on the team.”

And so the partnership began with then-sophomore Kevin Miller.

Miller earned Coastal Lacrosse Conference Rookie of the Year honors in 2024 but took his game to a new level and assisted with Smith’s miraculous progress in 2025.

In the 2025 season opener — a 24-8 win over Hampden-Sydney — Smith scored eight goals, and six came off Miller feeds. Smith tallied 84 goals — the 20th-most in NCAA D-III history — while Miller dished out 81 assists — the ninth-highest figure in NCAA D-III history — as CNU vaulted to No. 2 in the nation before an upset loss to Bowdoin in the NCAA quarterfinals.

The Miller-to-Smith goal-scoring celebrations happened 32 times.  

Miller credits their relationship on and off the field to starting the season that Smith wasn’t playing and carrying over to the first fall practice in 2024.  

“We just became good friends, and they matched us up on the same team in a scrimmage,” Miller said. “I think I had four assists to him — just like crazy goals by him, and it just instantly clicked from there. I mean, he obviously can bury the ball, but what I think really stood out for me at that time was he knows where to be off-ball. He’s always finding cutting lanes, and he’s making a lot of those goals look really easy, so it makes my job a lot easier.”

The duo was even more proficient in 2026 despite seeing a streak of 21 consecutive games of seeing “Smith (K. Miller)” in the box score come to an end in a 12-9 win over Salisbury.  

“Jamie would be the first to tell you that there’s no other there’s no other player that he would rather have throwing him the ball than Kevin Miller,” CNU coach Mikey Thompson said. “They have a really special connection.

“He’ll throw him open. You know, spot feeds, and they just know where each other are at all times, and so having that connection has been a big part of Jamie’s ability to put the ball in the back of the net.”

Sounds very familiar.

IN THE UNOFFICIAL RECORD BOOK

The Lowes (father Alan, Maryland; son Kevin, Princeton; son Darrin, Brown) amassed 687 points during their careers. With Jamie Smith’s five-goal, two-assist effort against Roanoke on April 8, 2026, he pushed the Smiths past the Lowes with 690. The trio is now at 702 ahead of a potential additional season of competition for Jamie Smith.

The mark is unofficial, but all three felt tremendous family pride when informed.

“It’s definitely something I know our family will cherish, and it’s incredible to kind of be in those conversations with such great players throughout the years and father-son duos and trios,” Jack Smith said.

STORMING THE BEACH, FAMILY TIES STYLE

So here is the Smith roster, with high school/college lacrosse participation indicated, if applicable –

• Jeanne and Jack Smith had five sons — Jeff (UMBC), Jason (UMBC), Justin (UMBC, Maryland), Jimmy (DeMatha), Jameson (CCBC-Catonsville) and one daughter — Jessica (Worcester Prep).
• Jeff (and Lori) have one daughter — Joey (St. Vincent’s) and two sons — Jude (High Point) and Jonah (Flagler). Jeff coached all three of his children at the Gunston School and continues to coach and volunteer on Maryland’s eastern shore. Note: Both Jude and Jonah are goalies.
• Jason (and Kathleen) have one daughter — Jensen (U. South Carolina club) and two sons — Jack (Randolph-Macon, Mount St. Mary’s) and Jamie (Christopher Newport). In addition to following his kids up and down the east coach during their playing days, Jason coaches part time in Fallston, Md.

Apparently, there are some grandkids already in the pipeline.

After Jamie Smith’s collegiate playing days are over, Jason Smith may have to wait a few years to pick up the joyful grind of traveling the east coast to support those grandkids.

“I do not miss many of my kids’ games; it’s my favorite thing in life to watch them play,” he said. “I understand why my dad travelled to all my games.”

Each summer, the clan gathers and heads down the ocean to participate in the Ocean City Lax Classic. There are definitely a few bruises (badges of courage) earned, but for each of the Smith trio, it is a highlight of the year.

“That’s my favorite weekend of the year,” Jamie Smith said. “We basically get 20 Smiths out there in Ocean City. I’ll play with my brother, my cousin Jude, my cousin Jonah, and have an absolute blast together. We’ll head over to my dad’s game, watch him play some old-man lacrosse, which is always really fun to watch. Then my sister and my cousin Joey, they’ll be on the girls’ team and we’ll go check them out. So, it’s a lot of non-stop lacrosse, but I get to see 8-to-10 Smiths in action on that weekend, so it’s really fun.”