Mt. Lebanon medalist speaks about Olympic experiences in Rio
Leah Smith greets the dog that was named after her during a visit to the Western Pennsylvania Society in Pittsburgh’s North Side.
Leah Smith of Mt. Lebanon shows off the gold and bronze medals she captured during the 2016 Olympics held in Rio.
Leah Smith poses with her sister, Aileen, and father, Dan, during her first public appearance since winning two medals at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games held in Rio. Smith won a gold medal with the 4x200-meter freestyle relay and a bronze medal in the 400-meter freestyle race.
Dunkin Donuts, on the corner of Washington Road and Conner Road in Mt. Lebanon expressed its gratitude to its citizen gold-medal winner.
Adorned in gold and bronze medals, Leah Smith of Mt. Lebanon addressed an audience of reporters at the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society while her proud father, Dan, looked on and marveled about her accomplishments.
“She’s done things that I only dreamed of doing,” he said of his daughter, who recently competed in the 2016 Olympic Summer Games held in Rio de Janeiro.
A standout athlete in his own right, just as his four other brothers, who excelled in football, track, basketball and wrestling at Mt. Lebanon High School, Dan, like the rest of his siblings – except Patrice, who set swimming standards for the Blue Devils – stopped competing in water sports before heading into ninth grade. However, it is Leah who is the Olympian, with two medals: a gold in the 200-meter women’s freestyle relay and a bronze in the individual 400 free race. Smith is one of 25 Olympic medalists from the University of Virginia, where her father competed in the pole vault.
“When Leah puts her mind to something, it’s almost like she can will it to happen,” said Leah’s father. “She said she’d go to the Olympics and she did.”
For Smith, however, it was a long journey that began with her first swim lesson with the Mt. Lebanon Aqua Club.
“That’s where I learned to swim,” she said, fondly.
Next, she joined the Chartiers Valley Aqua Club but switched “around age 10 or 11” to the Jewish Community Center’s Sailfish. She swam for that team the longest.
She spent her high school days swimming at Chatham University’s pool because Oakland Catholic did not have a swim venue.
During her scholastic days, she set WPIAL and PIAA standards for distance events, such as her specialty, the 500-yard freestyle.
While she loved competing at the University of Pittsburgh’s Trees Pool for championship meets, Smith matriculated to UVA, where she already is a a four-time NCAA Champion, an 11-time All-American and 10-time ACC Champion.
After a whirlwind week away from Rio, Smith begins her senior semester at UVA on Aug. 24. While she is majoring in media studies and minoring in history, the post-Olympic break is really the building toward another competition in four years. Smith said that she is “definitely” going to train for the 2020 Olympics, to be held in Tokyo.
“I think when you go to the (Olympics), it just makes you hungry for more, and it makes you want to do better. I had already thought that I wanted to train after, and I’m going to be swimming until 2017 because of the NCAA season,” said the daughter of Margee Smith.
”People kind of think it’s every four years and wow, it’s so far away. But for the people who are actually doing it and making it a career, there is a meet every summer that is the equivalent of the Olympics.”
So next summer, Smith plans to compete in the World Championships. In the summer of 2018, she will participate in the Pan-Pacific Games, where she won a gold medal in the 4-by-200-meter free relay. In 2019, the World Championships are held again.
“Then the Olympics are back,” Smith added. “So I think for most of the people on the national team, it’s a step-by-step process because there is a meet every summer that you are trying to shoot for.”
Smith’s quest for a spot on this year’s Olympic team began at the U.S. Trials held in Omaha, Neb.. She qualified in the 400 and 800 free races, and earned a spot on the relay.
While Smith admitted there is “a lot of pressure” at the Olympics, just making the U.S. team is the difficult part.
“Basically, what the veterans had told us is that Olympic Trials is sort of like the really hard stuff you have to go through before you get to the fun part, which is the Olympics,” Smith said. “So some of our team captains, they just told us this is the part that you get to enjoy, and so it was a lot of pressure. But it was just, since our team was doing so well, we kind of kept that ball rolling and used that momentum.
“Since Olympic Trials is so fast in the United States, it makes it a little easier to go into the Olympics with such good competition,” Smith continued.
At some points, though, Smith and her roommate, Olivia Smoliga, who swims at the University of Georgia, would look at each other and say: “We’re at the Olympics.” “And it’s just kind of cool to like have it hit you every once in a while.”
Smith still has to pinch herself to realize what she has done is real. In addition to winning a gold with the relay, she brought home bronze in the 400 free and finished sixth in the 800 event.
“It really hasn’t set in that I have a medal,” she said. “It’s pretty crazy to me, but I’m sure it will set in. I’ve been looking up to people who have Olympic medals my whole life, and now it’s weird to be one of the people who have one.”
Everybody on her team also seemed to have a medal, as the U.S. dominated the swimming competition, capturing 33 medals. The U.S. team also claimed the country’s 1,000th gold medal at the Olympic Games, a modern record. Plus, the swimmers contributed to the nation’s 121 total medals, 46 of them gold, which is also the most ever for a U.S. team in a non-boycotted event.
“It was so cool,” Smith said, to see the U.S. team do so well, and the games filled her with so many memorable moments. Specifically, she mentioned Lily King winning the 100-meter breaststroke and Katie Meili taking third; Ryan Murphy and David Plummer going 1-3 in the 200-meter backstroke; and Simone Manuel winning the 100 free.
“She was not even being predicted to place top eight and then getting the gold,” Smith said in amazement. “There were just so many moments that people defied the odds that it was so cool to be watching it. I lost my voice so many times. It was just electric. Everybody wanted to be a part of it and wanted to contribute to it.”
After she made her own contribution, Smith did get a chance to take in Rio briefly. She spent time at Ipanema and Copacabana Beach. “That was really cool. Really beautiful,” she added.
“When you are swimming you couldn’t really enjoy Rio, because the meet started at 10 p.m. It would end around midnight, and we would get back to the village around 2 a.m. So you are trying to get the most sleep that you can because of the late schedule.”
Since returning home last Wednesday, her schedule has afforded her a few precious moments to “see her family and catch up with them.” Her sister, Aileen, came in from New York, where her degree from Columbia University landed her a job on Wall Street. He brother, Neal, had a 24-hour leave from the Naval Academy.
Smith said that while in Rio, she was unable to see her family, including her other brother, Daniel, because of her hectic schedule.
“I was able to wave to them in the stands but not actually see them in person,” she said. “So it was special to be home and actually see them. It’s great to be able to spend time together with people who have been there for me from day one.”
Mary Withrow was one such person. A fellow Oakland Catholic alumna, Withrow is the director of shelter programs at the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society. She is also a family friend and former Mt. Lebanon resident.
When a stray dog arrived at the organization, located on the North Side, Withrow named it “Leah” in honor of Smith. The dog, a patterdale terrier-lab mix, was put up for adoption.
“When strays come to the shelter, we try to think of a good name. This dog has not had an easy life and she deserved a great name. A name of a hero,” added Withrow. “So I thought Leah.
“What Leah (Smith) has done is pretty amazing, and it’s all very exciting,” Withrow continued. “It makes us proud.”
Area businesses are proud of Smith, who has received more than 300 friend requests on Facebook and more than 400 congratulatory messages on Twitter. The Pittsburgh Steelers – for which Mark Hart, her uncle, is vice president of planning and development – honored her during the exhibition game against the Philadelphia Eagles. The Mt. Lebanon Dunkin’ Donuts recognized her on its marquee.
“That was so cool,” said Smith, because one of her friends obsesses about the bakery such that she walked a half hour to a franchise located in Athens when UVA swam against the University of Georgia.
“‘That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,’ said my friend when I texted her the image. So it’s definitely really, really cool to just see that many people know who you are and appreciate what you did, or even pay attention to swimming.”
Now is the time for Smith to start paying attention to swimming again. She said that she has not taken a week off in the past four years, but she is ready to get back into the pool for the college season, which begins in October.
“My coach wants me to not jump back into things, but I have to get back in shape for (the alumni meet), and I think I will be so excited for fall because it is my fourth and final season, and I won’t mind getting back into things.”
Smith expects her training to be similar to her preparation for the Olympics. She is defending her titles in the 500- and 1,650-yard freestyle events this NCAA season. Plus she expects the next four years to be intense.
“I’m a big believer in what works for you and sticking to that,” she said. “I’m not going to change anything, like make any huge changes to what I’m doing just because I’m training for the Olympics. I think what I do works for me and trusting my coaches works for me.”
Smith’s only dilemma is figuring out where she will train once she graduates and moves into the work force. But one thing is for certain, she said.
“It’s going to be the same thing I did the past four years, which is train hard every single day and take it step by step.”
And that is exactly the advice she dispenses to future Olympians, who dream of doing what she has done.
“It starts with practice,” she said. “That sounds pretty basic. But if you make a lot of excuses about going to practice, it becomes a habit and that’s a hard habit to break. If you make a habit of going to every single practice, every single day, then you are going to get better.
“And at the end of your season, you want to tell yourself that you did every thing possible to get the best results. And I think that one simple thing would be going to practice every single day. And, after that, you can work on giving it your all every single day. It’s little things that you can work on incrementally.”