WHEN HE STEPPED INTO the ring for his seasonal shot put debut last March, Ben Smith was just hoping to build momentum for something big later in the year. He accomplished his mission exponentially, unleashing an eye-opening 65-8, adding more than 6 feet to his personal best.
“That just blew me out of the water,” Smith, now a senior at Hortonville High (Wisconsin), says of that paradigm-shifting effort at a low-key indoor meet in Oshkosh. “I was expecting to end the season with that, and kinda work my way up to it.”
That was just the beginning. Later in the indoor season he hit 67-8¼, and by the spring he reached an outdoor best of 68-10½ that would top the yearly prep list. He also landed as the No. 2 discus thrower of ’23 with a 210-4 effort, and was runner-up in both events at the Nike Outdoor Nationals.
Bob Smith, who coaches his son, says it was a “surreal” year. “I don’t even know if we were looking at those kinds of numbers at the end of his senior season,” he admits. “Obviously there’s going to be a progression, because he had a decent sophomore season. But things kept coming. It got to the point where nothing was surprising anymore. It was a fun ride, but kind of a shock.”
As a soph Smith had won Wisconsin Division I titles in the shot and discus and notched bests of 59-5½ and 187-9. Those were promising marks, but nothing that indicated the numbers he’d register a year later.
Still, Smith knew there was potential to improve. “Winning State was exciting, but I didn’t want that to throw me off track and keep me distracted,” he says. “I had to keep focusing on moving forward.” He gave up football to concentrate on track, though he continued with wrestling. (The Wisconsin high school association doesn’t have an official indoor season.)
Of course, it took more than focus. Getting bigger and stronger certainly helped, too. He grew from about 6-0 and 185 pounds as a soph to 6-1 and 225 as a junior “Hitting the weight room was a big thing,” says Smith, who is now up to 6-2 and 250. “I really worked on technique in there and getting strength up, [and] my weight up while staying speedy and flexible at the same time. I’m working on the same thing this year. I got a new lifting program and I’m trying to get big, strong, fast and drop a bomb this…
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