University of Tennessee Athletics
The Butterfly Effect: Smith’s Experiences Shaping Her Future
January 30, 2020 | Women's Golf
By Dom Palumbo, UTsports.com
There's no mistaking it. The life of an NCAA student-athlete is filled with pressure and stress.
The desire to compete at an incredibly high level on the playing surface. The need to keep one's grades up in order to continue competing. All while trying to stay involved in a campus community that will one day be used as a platform to allow them to achieve all the goals they have for their lives.
For junior Mariah Smith, none of this is breaking news. It's the life she's chosen. Yet, when things do start to feel a bit overwhelming, she always finds a way to put what she's going through into perspective.
"I feel like at this age, with all of the pressure on us as athletes, it's really easy to feel like things are falling apart or like nothing is going right," Smith said. "So, I tell (my teammates), when I feel like that, I always go volunteer at the soup kitchens and it's just a humbling experience. It reminds me that my problems aren't as big as they could be."
Smith sees her time serving in the community as a win-win. Not only is it allowing her a space to continue to grow, but she is continually helping the community she has become a part of.
She can regularly be found at one of Knoxville's many animal shelters, helping out with Knox Trees or the Beardsley Community Garden and one of her personal favorites, the Knoxville Soup Kitchen.
Always visible, always wanting to make things better.
Yet, when she isn't in the community, Smith is also making a difference on the golf course.
Last season as a sophomore, she carded 12 rounds of par or better, finishing in the top 25 on six different occasions, including four top-10 finishes.
She fired a career-low 67 in the first round of the FAU Winter Warm Up, where she brought home her first individual collegiate title.
At NCAA Regionals, she put together her most impressive tournament, posting three scores in the low-70s and finishing in a tie for 11th place, helping lead the Lady Vols to a top-six team finish and a spot in the NCAA Championships.
"Playing in the NCAA Championships was definitely a dream come true," Smith said. "Going into regionals we were definitely underdogs, and we just had to power through. Making it to nationals was a great feat for our team. We didn't perform the best there, but making it there in the first place shocked everyone and I think it even shocked us a bit. But it just showed us what we're capable of."
Smith's journey to prominence at UT, however, was a bit different than most collegiate golfers.
She was a late bloomer, not getting into the sport until she was 12 years old through the First Tee program in her hometown of Clarksville, Tennessee.
"Honestly, I had never pictured myself playing golf," Smith said. "I was more into school and music so I always thought I would stick with music. My dad's friend suggested that I try golf. At first, I didn't really want to do it, surprisingly, but I did. I started with the First Tee and I just kept going at it. Eventually I grew to love it. It's kind of a funny story because I never wanted to play golf, and now here I am."
Her potential was not immediately evident, but her dad chose to place her in tournaments that forced her to raise her game and play up to the level of her competition.
"I'm going to say my improvement came from my parents," Smith said. "I don't want to say I got really good as soon as I started playing. It definitely took a lot of time and a lot of hours on the golf course. When I first started playing tournaments, I played in tournaments with people my age and my skill level. Then, after that, my dad describes it as 'throwing me to the wolves.' I started playing in extremely tough fields and playing on the AJGA tour and in select tournaments where I may not necessarily have been good enough to play in them, but it forced me to work harder so I could perform well. So, I credit a lot of my success to that."
Following a successful prep career—where she led Clarksville High School to the 2016 TSSAA Division I Class AAA State Championship—Smith's golf and academic prowess brought her to Rocky Top, where early success once again felt hard to come by.
In her freshman year, she carded just a single round of par or better, finishing in the top 25 only once, when she placed third at the 2018 Bobby Nichols Intercollegiate.
Then, over that 2018 summer, Smith switched to a new swing coach who helped her take her game to the next level and the heights she reached during the 2018-19 season.
"Between freshman and sophomore year I changed swing coaches and just became more comfortable with my swing after working with him," Smith said. "We worked a lot on my mental game and learning to focus more on short game and nit-picking little areas of my game. Whereas, my freshman year I spent a lot of time at the range. Now, I realize the long game isn't what wins tournaments or allows you to play well, it's your putting and chipping. And since I started focusing a lot on that, I think it's really helped me."
As her game began to click and her scores began to drop, just prior to the NCAA Regional tournament, Smith received the offer of a lifetime.
She was selected to participate in the first annual Augusta National Women's Amateur Championship at historic Augusta National in Augusta, Georgia.
The first two rounds were played at the nearby Champions Retreat Golf Course, with the final round being played on the same course graced every April by many of the game's greats.
While Smith fell just short of making the final round, the experience of playing practice rounds at one of the world's most famous courses and getting the chance to compete against the best amateur golfers in the game is something that has and will continue to stay with her.
"It was definitely a great experience to be there," Smith said. "Playing in that tournament was definitely a goal of mine, but I didn't quite think that I would get to play in the very first one. I was hoping I would get into it next year or the year after that. So, when I got invited, it was definitely a shock and we were all really excited. When I got there, it was an amazing experience. They took really good care of us. It felt like a professional tournament. The field was stacked. It was filled with some of the best girls in the world, so it was nice to play alongside them. I like to think a lot of them are going to end up going pro, which contributed to the professional tournament feel that I was getting. Being in that environment with such good girls and a stacked field on such nice courses was both inspiring and motivating to me and showed me just how much I love this sport and all of the opportunities it provides."
One opportunity it provided her with was the chance to meet one of the most well-established and accomplished African American women in the nation.
"I think I was doing an interview, and right after, my dad told me, 'Hey, I have someone who wants to meet you.' And I thought it was a reporter or maybe just a family friend or something, but it was (former United States Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice," Smith recalled. "I was really shocked, but she was really nice. She came up to me, introduced herself, I introduced myself and she's just an amazing woman. It was really inspiring and amazing to be able to meet her in person.
"It showed me how big of an impact I'm having on the game and how big of an impact I can continue have on the game over the years."
It's the little changes that have made the biggest impact on Smith's game and how she views her place within the golf landscape. And those changes that haven't gone unnoticed by Lady Vols head coach Judi Pavon.
"When I recruited her, she wasn't the best player, but I really liked her and I loved her parents," Pavon said. "She came on a visit and I thought she would be a great leader, and I wanted her to be a part of our program. Between committing and getting here, she improved a ton. And between her freshman year and sophomore year, she improved a ton again. That's the cool thing about a late starter is there is so much more they can develop as opposed to players who started at three and are as good as they're going to be when they get here. It's been really neat to watch her. She's been a hard worker, her goals are high, she pushes herself and I'm excited to see if she continues to improve this year."
While the 2019-20 season is still in its early stages as Tennessee just recently completed its fall season, Smith continued to improve in facets of her life that were primarily off the course this summer.
"This summer was a very important summer to me," Smith said. "I don't really know what exactly happened, but this summer is the summer where I decided that I wanted to be a more complete person, and I was really focusing on self-growth. I personally get a lot from motivational quotes and speeches. I love those. They really motivate me, and so I decided that I wanted to be that person for other people."
Those actions began just before the summer, as she helped to motivate her teammates for a final push to qualify for this past spring's NCAA Championships.
"We did this thing where we had to share inspirational quotes every day of the regional," Smith said. "I think that it really helped us a lot and helped us stay motivated."
"I personally love quotes," she continued. "They do a lot for me. They may not do a lot for some people, but for me they do a lot. Just getting out of regionals was unbelievable. Going in, we were the No. 11 seed in our region. I remember afterwards I sent the team a picture of a paper I found on Twitter. It was a paper that had all of the teams in our region in order of seeds and they highlighted everyone that had made it to nationals. It was the one, two, three, four, five seed and then it us at 11. I thought it was so cool because it was one, two, three, four, five and then Tennessee at 11. So, I just remember sending that to them and saying, 'Guys, we did it. We really did that. We really came from the bottom and just shocked the world.'"
As the season ended and she was given time to reflect, her growth continued and her reflections went above and beyond what occurred on the course.
She gained a better understanding of the life she enjoys and the current stage she's living in.
Part of that understanding came in the form of a butterfly tattoo. A tattoo that serves as a constant reminder of the position she hopes to one day reach in her life.
"I have a few reasons I got that tattoo," Smith said. "The first reason is just that, that was my nickname growing up. That's what my dad called me, 'Butterfly.'
"The second reason is how the butterfly effect applies to weather. I try to broaden it and say that one small change somewhere can lead to a big change. So, I'd like to think that one day if I can do one small thing for the community, that one action may one day effect the world. That would be cool.
"My last reason is because I'm a perfectionist, and I'm kind of paranoid and feel like I always need to be doing something more. So, another reason I got it was because I feel like life is similar to the life cycle of a butterfly. When you're little, you're young, you're like a caterpillar and you don't know anything. Then, you grow into your cocoon.
"So right now, I would say I'm in my cocoon. I'm still growing I'm still learning who I am, what kind of people I want around me, what I want to be, what I want to do in this world and what kind of mark I want to leave on the world. Eventually, in a few years I'll be the beautiful butterfly I want to be.
"Sometimes I feel like I should be that butterfly right now, and the tattoo reminds me that that's where I'm headed and to be patient and to chill in my cocoon right now."
As she continues to grow through golf and the game that life provides, it is this mentality that will help her navigate the rigors of life both as a current UT student-athlete and in the future as a Vol for Life.
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