DELRAY BEACH – All across the world sports is beloved.

The athletes are praised and glorified. And in the professional realm some of the coaches are just as big as a star as the players.

You can’t speak about Tom Brady without mentioning Bill Belichick or Tim Duncan without Gregg Popovich. The coach and the player go hand-in-hand.

But before the fame, the money, and sold-out stadiums, who was that coach spending countless hours in the gym, on the field, and around the track making sure that a player’s dreams came true?

Many coaches are overlooked and not even mentioned most of the time. One coach told me, “If I do if for the notoriety or the fame, I would have walked away from it a long time ago.”

He also said, “I do it to watch them achieve their goals and to give them something to work for, so that they don’t have to turn to the streets.”

This brings me to coach Roderick Smith.

“Coach Rod”, as many call him, is a track coach in Palm Beach County. He is the head track coach at Atlantic High School and also has his own track club, Running Fire.

Smith said that he started his business in 1993 due to his experience in high school running for the national team on a Scandinavian tour. From that point on, he has used track and field to teach kids many life lessons.

Smith believes that the sport of track teaches kids time management, responsibility, accountability and how to work hard.

When asked how he feels about the state of track in Palm Beach County, he simply said it’s “very weak due to the lack of support from the ground up.”

There have been times when Smith and his wife, with the help of parents, had to go out and raise money for the track kids who may need the extra help. When asked about why he would go out and raise the money for the kids, Smith said it was something instilled in him from his high school track coach Terry Albury.

Smith recalled how Albury would go the extra mile to raise money for his team, even if it meant that some of the money would come out of his own earnings.

With all that said, the Atlantic track coach believes that with the proper funding and community support in the summer, his track club and many surrounding track clubs can help prevent violence and the ‘summer slide.’

‘Summer slide’ is the tendency for students, especially those from low-income families, to lose some of the achievement gains they made during the previous school year.

Smith believes he can come up with a curriculum where the kids are constantly learning in the summer, as well as getting them out of the house and off the streets to participate in physical activities such as track. His theory is that if the kids are with him, they can’t be out getting in trouble.

But like anything in life, there has to be some give-and-take involved.

All Smith wants is for the kids’ parents to make sure they are on time and they find a way to help fund their children for meets.

“I want to see these kids go to college,” Smith said. “I want a child to leave me as a young man or young woman, go to college, and return to give back to the next generation.”

Smith has a direct message for his kids.

“You don’t owe me anything,” he said. “You don’t have to give me anything. All I want is for you to give back to a child like the way I gave to you.”