Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 26, 1993 TAG: 9306260145
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RAY COX STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Let's see now, Dr. James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, probably rode a horse at some point, being the 19th century sportsman that he was.
P.T. Barnum used to have horses jump through hoops.
Muggsy Bogues of the Charlotte Hornets hoopsters, at 5-feet-3, could have made a nice jockey.
Then, there are those barnstorming outfits that appear at high schools and armories so that local "celebrities" can mount up and make absolute fools of themselves as they try to play hoops on horseback. This in the name of charity.
Those are donkeys and not horses, you say? Most basketball players wouldn't know one from the other.
All merriment aside, let's consult with a real expert on the matter: A woman who has ridden horses for almost her entire life, who has been in the business for more than 20 years and who has trained champion after champion. Yet, she can explain the peculiarities of the zone press, the judicious use of timeouts and effective recruiting presentation techniques in a pressure-packed home visit.
Who has command of such a body of knowledge? Meet Mary Jo Schmidt, expert trainer and rider of saddlebred horses, businesswoman, empress of M. Jo Stables of Tampa, Fla., and wife of University of Tampa basketball coach Richard Schmidt.
"There are so many similarities between basketball and horses," said Schmidt, 48. "You have horses and athletes who have great ability but don't want to be great. Then you have athletes and horses who may not be that talented but they want to be great and they'll work at it. They have that spark that you have to learn to recognize.
"I've spent so much time at high school basketball games with my husband trying to find that special player, that player you can develop. You have to be able to see it in a player or in a horse. Molding and channeling, that's what make a great coach. That's also what makes a great trainer."
If success is the yardstick, then both she and her husband are doing splendidly. She trains horses and riders who come from as far away as Tennessee. She travels the country, doing shows from March through November. He's landed Tampa in the NCAA Division II tournament on an annual basis. Together, they run a lucrative side business in exotic birds and animals.
The major question is, do they ever see each other? After all, she's gone for weeks at a time all through the show season. During the same months, he's off to some place like Hong Kong or Jakarta for a month to buy rare and exotic birds that are brought back to reside at their 12-acre farm, ultimately to be resold to zoos around the country.
"We don't see a lot of each other at this time of year, but it is fortunate that when my [horse] season is winding down, his basketball is cranking up," she said. "I've seen all his games except when he has a March tournament game that conflicts with a show. We go to high school games to scout players together. I've even been on home visits with him. That's fun. I'm almost as good a coach as he is."
Richard Schmidt coached Jeff Lamp and Lee Raker at Ballard High in Louisville, Ky., before all three came to the University of Virginia - Lamp and Raker as players and Schmidt as an assistant to Terry Holland.
Later, Schmidt moved on to a two-year stint at Vanderbilt before landing at Tampa for the past 12 years. He and Mary Jo met four years ago at a Republican Party fund-raiser social at her farm.
Mary Jo Schmidt has been interested in horses since she was a child in Minnesota. She got a math degree from the University of Minnesota and proceeded almost straightaway into the life of an owner/rider. Her father always wanted to know when she was going to get a real job.
Training came later.
"I had some horses where I lived and I had some others under training," she said. "I was wondering why the horses I had at home were doing better than the ones I had in training. Then I started thinking that I might be better off as a trainer than a owner."
In time, she gravitated to the saddlebreds because she loved their style and flamboyance.
"And when you're riding them and they're right, they are absolutely thrilling," she said. "There is really nothing like it."
Except, perhaps, a buzzer-beater from the top of the key to win it.
\ SHOW NOTES: A roadster horse named Oprah Winfrey, owned by Dr. and Mrs. Howard Six, broke down in competition earlier this week and later was humanely destroyed. "It's been a bad year for that sort of thing," said show manager Bill Munford, noting the two thoroughbreds that had to be put down as a result of injuries in Triple Crown races.
Keywords:
ROANOKE VALLEY HORSE SHOW
by CNB