Camarillo Runners Carry Smith on Their Backs

Camarillo High isn’t expected to have many runners in the lead pack in the Marmonte League boys’ cross-country final at College Park in Oxnard on Friday, but it’ll be easy to spot the Scorpions as they warm up because of the Smitty’s Runners T-shirts they’ll be wearing.

The shirts have been a tradition at Camarillo since 1982, when Mike Smith took over the boys’ program.

Smith, 45, asked team members for their input on a T-shirt design before his first season and they came up with unique design that has become a trademark.

The front of the shirts have a Scorpion where the left pocket would be with Camarillo cross-country written in a circular pattern around it.

The back has a large mug shot of Smith with the words Smitty’s Runners above it.

“I told them back then that it would be pretty dangerous to wear those things because women were going to be tearing them off their backs when they saw my picture,” Smith joked.

The shirts did undergo a change a few years ago when a more recent photo of Smith was used.

The shirts were updated with a photo of a clean-shaven Smith, who wore a beard on the original. A third edition could come out soon if Smith heeds the advice of Agoura Coach Bill Duley.

“He says I should have one with more wrinkles,” Smith said.

Wrinkles or not, the shirts have apparently become popular in the running community.

Smith claims there are bootleg versions of the shirt floating around.

How else do you explain members of a college team from the Southeast wearing the shirts at the Arkansas Invitational a few years ago.?

Josh Gerry, who was a runner at Camarillo, was competing for Lubbock Christian University in Texas when he saw the bootleg shirts.

“It’s like wearing Yankee pinstripes,” Smith said. “It’s a sacred tradition.”