{"id":26018,"date":"2023-06-16T10:22:48","date_gmt":"2023-06-16T14:22:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?p=26018"},"modified":"2023-06-16T11:02:57","modified_gmt":"2023-06-16T15:02:57","slug":"elon-basketball-coach-wants-players-to-know-their-identity-in-christ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2023\/06\/elon-basketball-coach-wants-players-to-know-their-identity-in-christ.html","title":{"rendered":"Elon Basketball Coach Wants Players to Know Their Identity in Christ"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_26030\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-26030\" style=\"width: 768px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/87\/2023\/06\/charlotte-smit_credit-klove-fan-awards-youtube-scaled.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-26030\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/87\/2023\/06\/charlotte-smit_credit-klove-fan-awards-youtube-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"768\" height=\"576\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-26030\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">K-LOVE Fan awards \/ YouTube<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The winningest coach in Elon University\u2019s women\u2019s basketball history says her primary goal is to impact her players with Christ\u2019s love, using her platform \u201cfor God\u2019s glory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Former WNBA player Charlotte Smit, who will be entering her 13<sup>th<\/sup> 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.<\/p>\n<p>Smith told Christian Headlines and other media members, \u201cThe life of sports, it\u2019s a life where you live your life on a performance treadmill. And if you\u2019re 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\u2019t measure up and we feel like we haven\u2019t performed to our best ability.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1oTFS6z1QSU\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Smith wrote two devotion books, \u201cWhen Athletes Pray\u201d and \u201cWhen Coaches Pray.\u201d 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\u2019t who she is. She said, \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Smith continued, \u201cAnd I can just remember one day, I felt like the Holy Spirit was whispering to me, \u2018What have you done for me lately?\u2019 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\u2019s glory? When we surrender to God, there\u2019s nothing in our lives that we lack.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The acronym \u201cLACK\u201d helps her remember her place in God\u2019s Kingdom, Smith said, adding that Christians are \u201cloved,\u201d \u201caccepted,\u201d \u201cchosen,\u201d and \u201ckept.\u201d She added, \u201cAnd so those are things that I try to reiterate to my players so that they know who they are in Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Smith recounted the story of a losing season \u2013 \u201cone of the worst\u201d of her career \u2013 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. \u201cI call that the best championship I\u2019ve ever won right there courtside at Elon University,\u201d she said. \u201cI was able to lead that kid to Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The winningest coach in Elon University\u2019s women\u2019s basketball history says her primary goal is to impact her players with Christ\u2019s love, using her platform \u201cfor God\u2019s glory.\u201d Former WNBA player Charlotte Smit, who will be entering her 13th season at the wheel in 2023-24, was honored at the K-Love Fan Awards last month with the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":26030,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10,1],"tags":[5612,5609],"class_list":["post-26018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","category-sports","category-television","tag-charlotte-smith","tag-elon-university"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Elon Basketball Coach Wants Players to Know Their Identity in Christ<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Elon University women&#039;s basketball coach Charlotte Smith recently discussed how she wants her players to know who they are in Christ.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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