Carlie Smith quietly making history

Carlie Smith has not left Pittsburgh since before January and is sick of the cold, gray… Carlie Smith has not left Pittsburgh since before January and is sick of the cold, gray weather.

The Florida sun last April was a welcome change. Smith and the rest of the Pitt tennis team had a hard time adjusting at first – the Tampa heat was an appreciated but slightly drastic change.

Luckily, the players had their family members in the stands cheering for them at the beautiful USF tennis complex, and they got caught up in the thrill of it all.

It was Pitt’s first time qualifying for the 2006 Big East Championship, and Smith was competing in the singles match.

It’s the most exciting moment of her tennis career.

“It had been our goal all year to qualify for the Big East Championship,” she said. “And we had never done that before, so we achieved our goal. It was a huge reward to go down there and compete against the Big East schools.”

Smith, however, didn’t stop there.

This week she recorded her 100th career victory against Mercyhurst, the first junior at Pitt to reach the landmark win. Senior teammate Annie Davies also recorded 100 wins in the fall, and this is the first year Pitt has had two players achieve the milestone.

“It was pretty exciting to do it in my junior year since no one had done it before,” Smith said. “At first, the match didn’t feel very different. I was kind of nervous about getting the win though because I think everyone was counting on it.”

Smith has notched 37 wins, including three shut outs, so far this season. She’s 20-14 in singles and 17-9 in doubles.

Smith has been playing tennis with her dad and two sisters ever since she was in elementary school, and some of her most fun memories to look back upon are summers on the court with her sisters while her dad threw them tennis balls.

When Smith isn’t on the court, she’s following Pitt’s demanding pharmacy track. Smith is a first-year pharmacy student with three more years to go.

“I chose pharmacy because I really liked science and the health care field,” she said. “But I thought pharmacy was just a good fit with me because I didn’t want to be a nurse, and becoming a doctor requires too much school.

“Pharmacy fit my criteria of combining science and being able to help people,” she remarked.

Smith will work at a local Walgreen’s pharmacy over the summer in her home of Bel Air, Md. She also plans to keep in shape this summer with tennis to prepare for her senior year.

“I usually hit with my coach back home,” she said. “I try and catch up with my tennis friends that I have back home and play a lot of matches. I’ll play in two or three tournaments too, just to get some casual matches in.”

While she’ll be in a community pharmacy over the summer, she hopes to work in a hospital pharmacy after graduation.

“I’m not positive on that yet,” she said. “But I think that might be the area that I’d like. They say you don’t use as much of your pharmacy knowledge in a community pharmacy, whereas in a hospital you really get to apply a lot of the knowledge you learned in school.

“I think it’d be pretty cutting edge in a hospital, they’d be very up-to-date on the latest pharmacy innovations,” she noted.

When Smith is done with pharmacy school, her tennis career will end. However, she said it will definitely be something she continues with for fun.

Before that, she still has some things she’d like to accomplish. The Pitt all-time record currently stands at 126 wins, and Smith has her eye on that number.

“Hopefully I’ll be able to rack up a lot more wins before I’m done,” she said. “I’m hoping to beat the Pitt record for all-time wins my senior year, that’s my major goal.”

In pharmacy and in tennis, she’s well on her way to achieving any goal she sets.