Self-published memoir about golf ’s enduring impact of showing up
St. Cloud’s Bryan Smart admits he’s one of the last people he’d expect to write a book.
And that’s asking the people he lives with.
Nonetheless, the longtime St. Cloud High School Bulldogs football coach and current Athletic Director has penned and self-published “First of Many,” which delves into his place in a family from Williamstown, New Jersey that roots passionately for the Philadelphia sports teams to this day, who competed viciously amongst itself—and along the way experienced memories that are cherished, re-told and remembered to this day among three generations of Smarts.
While you’d expect a former athlete and current coach to write a book about sports, it’s really a book about “a” sport, golf. But it’s not a nuts-and-bolts, “I hit this shot, then I hit that one,” among the easy read’s 82 pages. It’s about how the game brought and kept together he and his dad Fred, and then later he and his son Brandon.
“It’s a memoir, really,” Bryan said. The overriding lesson of the self-published work is simple: keep showing up. The Smarts did, and in turn created memories through golf and the other sports the family’s been involved in, creating traditions, memories and values that first shaped Bryan and then Brandon.
Bryan said as he aged he started getting disappointed with his golf game— but kept showing up on the tee. “People were outdriving me, then Brandon takes up the game and a year later he’s hitting it past me,” he said. “It made me question why I like to play golf, and I thought about all the memories I’d created with my dad because of the game, like getting up a 4:30 and being the first ones on the course without anyone in front of us—I still don’t like playing at 10:30 on a Sunday in a crowd.
“It got me reminiscing about those golf stories and ultimately thinking about my dad who would do anything to play. I wanted these stories to be maintained for posterity, so that my dad would remember all the good times we had, and what they meant to me. Now my son can read it and see why it’s important that we play together to keep making those memories.”
For those who enjoy golf and have that kind of bond with their families, it will likely ring pretty true. And with simple stories divvied up into short chapters (“Everything is true,” Bryan points out), it’s a fun and easy read.
“First of Many”—read it and you’ll understand the title—is currently available on Amazon.
