John Smith enters his 13th year with the Queens College baseball program and his second season as Associate Head Coach.
On July 1, 2024, Smith was promoted to Associate Head Coach.
Since 2014, Smith has helped guide the program to six East Coast Conference (ECC) postseason appearances, one ECC Championship, and a total of 42 student-athletes earning All-ECC honors, 11 All-Region selections, and two All-American recognitions in program history.
In 2022, the Knights made their first ECC Finals appearance, the program’s first since 1998. The following season, in 2023, Queens returned to the ECC Finals and captured the program’s second ECC Championship with a walk-off victory in Game Seven of the ECC Tournament.
In 2024, the Knights set a program record for single-season wins with 30 and had eight student-athletes earn All-ECC honors.
In 2025, Queens returned to the ECC Finals for the third time in four seasons.
When he accepted the assistant coaching position on Coach Reardon’s staff, Smith was reuniting with the Knights’ head coach after the two coached on the same Team NY Cardinals squad in 2005-06 and worked in the Rising Stars Winter Clinics. Elsewhere, Smith has served as the Hitting Instructor at the Bayside Batting and Pitching Academy since 2009, helping develop several young players to play baseball at the high school and collegiate levels.
Smith has spent time as a head coach as well, enjoying stints with the Bayside Bulldogs and the Queens Knights Travel Team. He was named the Bayside Little League Coach of the Year in 2003 and has won 11 championships including a New York City championship during this period.
As a player, Smith was a member of the Bishop Loughlin baseball team in Brooklyn, New York, where he was named a team captain and received Most Valuable Player Honors. Following his graduation, he moved on to John Jay College, where he played for the Bloodhounds.
Smith resides in Bayside and has two sons, Brian and Kevin, three granddaughters Nora, Olivia, and Penny
