Rhode Island FC’s debut season in the USL Championship begins tomorrow, and Khano Smith, the team’s coach and general manager, has an appropriate appreciation for what he calls the "incredible responsibility" of leading the club.
"To have people who trust you to go after players and make roster decisions, it’s been a pretty cool experience," Smith said. "To build a team from the ground up with a certain idea of how we want to play and a certain type of person we want to have in the community is a really unique experience that I’ll always remember."
If Smith seems to be setting up an inspirational moment, that might be owed to one of his coaching influences, the late Paul Mariner, who was an assistant coach for the New England Revolution, where Smith played five of his six seasons in MLS.
