Cal women's basketball coach Charmin Smith lands extension through 2029

Cal will try and maintain its upward trajectory as Smith continues to rebuild the culture around women's hoops.

Credit: Cal women’s basketball

Charmin Smith will stay on as Cal women’s basketball coach through most of the rest of the 2020s. Cal Athletics announced a significant extension designed to keep Smith in Berkeley through the 2028-29 season.

After a tough start due to many mitigating circumstances (COVID in particular decimated the team, and the Pac-12 remained as strong as ever in its final years), Smith led Cal women’s basketball to significant improvement. The team flirted with the NCAA bubble for much of the season, finishing 19-15, and made its first postseason appearance under Smith, advancing to the 2nd round of the WBIT.

She has also been very active in the community.

During her tenure leading the Golden Bears, Smith has used her platform to raise awareness around the lack of representation in women's basketball as well as social justice issued affecting the Black community.
 
One of the first things Smith did as head coach at Cal was re-branding the long-standing Cal Classic basketball tournament to the Raising The B.A.R (basketball, activism, representation) Invitational to highlight the Black women coaches in the sport and bring awareness to the lack of diversity in women's basketball college coaching.
 
She has also pushed for Cal athletics teams and the local community to join her staff and players in the annual Race For Change event which is used to raise funds for the Cal Athletics' Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging and Justice Office. Those funds are used to provide important programming for student-athletes and staff like the annual Black Student-Athlete Summit that the Cal Athletics department sends a large contingent to every year.

The decision to extend Smith until the end of the decade is an interesting one. Smith has definitely shown enough progress this year to earn a small extension to keep the momentum going into the ACC, but all the way until 2029 seems very much in the pattern of athletic director Jim Knowlton issuing the largest possible reward for one data point of success. While that is a useful benchmark for a coach like Mark Madsen, who made great strides within a year on the job, Smith has not had much success on the court.

Still, Smith is definitely someone who has shown the ability to adapt to the changing realities of NIL and the transfer portal, bolstering the Bears to their best season since her promotion to Cal women’s leader. Hopefully, she continues to make good strides this year and build back Cal to a tournament contender.