The winningest coach in Elon University’s women’s basketball history says her primary goal is to impact her players with Christ’s love, using her platform “for God’s glory.”

Former WNBA player Charlotte Smit, who will be entering her 13^th season at the wheel in 2023-24, was honored at the K-Love Fan Awards last month with the Sport Impact Award. Elon won back-to-back conference championships in 2017 and 2018 under Smith and advanced to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in program history.

Smith told Christian Headlines and other media members, “The life of sports, it’s a life where you live your life on a performance treadmill. And if you’re not grounded in your identity and who you are, you can get lost; you can get swallowed up. And too often as athletes, we find ourselves in the measuring up where we feel like we don’t measure up and we feel like we haven’t performed to our best ability.”

Smith wrote two devotion books, “When Athletes Pray” and “When Coaches Pray.” She stood out at the University of North Carolina, where she hit the game-winning shot in the 1994 national championship game. She said although she played eight seasons in the WNBA, basketball isn’t who she is. She said, “I remember my WNBA laundry list; it was like my Christmas list to Jesus. I wanted to be an MVP; I wanted to be an All-Star.”

Smith continued, “And I can just remember one day, I felt like the Holy Spirit was whispering to me, ‘What have you done for me lately?’ Because I had gotten so consumed in worldly success, which changed the whole trajectory of my perspective, in terms of thinking about: I have this awesome platform, what can I do to use it for God’s glory? When we surrender to God, there’s nothing in our lives that we lack.”

The acronym “LACK” helps her remember her place in God’s Kingdom, Smith said, adding that Christians are “loved,” “accepted,” “chosen,” and “kept.” She added, “And so those are things that I try to reiterate to my players so that they know who they are in Christ.”

Smith recounted the story of a losing season – “one of the worst” of her career – when her team achieved very few of its goals. At the end of the final game, a loss, the mother of a little boy told Smith that he wanted her to lead him to Christ. “I call that the best championship I’ve ever won right there courtside at Elon University,” she said. “I was able to lead that kid to Christ.”