Michelle Greer loves being a grandmother. Every time little Alaia visits, they make a beeline for the park together. She’s 3 years old now, but everyone in the central Texas town of Cameron describes her as the spitting image of her father, Traion Smith. Michelle says Alaia is a girly girl, though sometimes in the park when she sees that face light up or those inherited thick calves pumping, she’s transported back to when she did this same thing with dad.

“She brings life to me,” Michelle said. “That’s the best thing that God could have given me, despite everything that happened to him.”

Traion Smith died on November 22, 2020, when he and his cousin’s fishing boat flipped over on a stock pond in Milam County and they drowned swimming to shore. He was 22 years old. Michelle knows it’s strange, but one of her first thoughts was that she wouldn’t have grandkids. Until Smith’s girlfriend found out around Christmas time that she was pregnant. 

Smith never knew, and now Alaia will grow up without meeting the man who meant so much to this community. He was the star of Cameron Yoe’s three consecutive state championship appearances from 2013-15. He rushed for 7,620 yards and 104 touchdowns over three seasons, oftentimes in front of a home crowd so packed that it was standing room only alongside the chain-link fence. 

“You don’t realize it when you’re in the moment,” Smith’s high school coach, Rick Rhoades, said. “But when you look back - holy cow, it’s got to be the best time that I can imagine the Cameron community has ever experienced.”

And now the man responsible for it is gone. The people who knew him won’t let him leave. Reid Nickerson, the quarterback from the 2014 championship squad, still drops flowers off on Michelle’s doorstep. You don’t stop being teammates after high school. Once, Smith carried them to state championships. Now they carry on his legacy for Alaia.

“If she wonders who her dad is and she looks it up, I want her to see, ‘My dad was an amazing guy all around,’” Nickerson said.

…

The greatest running back in Cameron Yoe’s history was an offensive lineman in middle school. He’d shifted to running back by freshman year after shedding some baby fat, but even then the coaches would’ve never bet on what he became. He was only pulled up to varsity his sophomore year because the starting running back got in a car crash the weekend before two-a-days. 

It wasn’t until he ran for 200 yards in each of the first two games he started by default that the coaches knew Traion Smith was the future. 

He rushed for more than 2,000 yards in every season, topping out at 3,010 yards and 49 touchdowns his senior year. He was so good that Nickerson, the quarterback for Smith’s junior season, didn’t even talk trash to the other team. 

“The year before I was actually a safety,” Nickerson said. “So I had to tackle Traion every day. Or, try to. It really humbles you, because you’re not that guy, pal.”

Nickerson threw five touchdown passes in a 70-40 rout of Mineola in the 2014 Class 3A DII State Championship, but to this day refuses to accept the praise people try to heap upon him for it. Cameron Yoe didn’t run play-action passes until the playoffs, and by then all 11 defenders bit on the run fake harder than their pregame meal after watching Nickerson hand it off all regular season.

“Every time there was a mesh, it was a read option, so I’m reading the defensive end,” Nickerson said. “But, no matter what the defensive end is doing - that’s Traion Smith. I’m just going to give him the ball.”

In a senior year bout with state power Refugio, Cameron Yoe’s quarterback was knocked out of the game in the first half with a concussion due to Refugio’s defensive line manhandling the Yoemen. Smith took the game on his shoulders with one of the offense’s favorite plays. He would line up on the quarterback’s heels and take a direct snap, bursting through the line of scrimmage, following whichever offensive lineman moved up to the linebacker. Then, he could either shake the safety or run him over.

Cameron Yoe won 42-27 off Smith’s 262 yards and five touchdowns.

“On one play, I think he broke all 11 tackles,” then-defensive coordinator Tommy Brashear said.

Smith’s presence allowed his teammates to play loose. Even if they messed up, he was a human get-out-of-jail-free card. 

“I was asking our left tackle, ‘What do you remember about Traion?’” Nickerson said. “He was like, ‘Dude, I just knew if I didn’t get my block it might be ok because Traion might still go for a touchdown.’”

Smith powered Cameron Yoe to back-to-back state championships as a sophomore and junior and played in a third his senior year. 

“You would’ve watched him and thought, ‘That kid is going DI,’” said Jessica Morrey, who covered Cameron Yoe in 2015 at the central Texas KCEN. “He was undersized, but he didn’t give up on any plays. I’m sure yards after contact would be crazy if they keep that stat in high school.”

But the gaudy numbers didn’t translate to many scholarship offers, and the 2015 title game against Brock was his last chance to prove he could play at the college level. It began like every other game in his high school career - 15 carries, 133 yards and two touchdowns by the time there was 2:46 left in the second quarter. 

He was two yards away from a third when his life changed forever. 

Traion Smith’s best attribute wasn’t speed, power or size - it was his ability to maneuver his body so he seemingly never took a big hit. This one was no different: a glancing blow on his right side as he streaked down the field. But it caused his feet to click together, then extend his right leg as far as possible to the endzone. It snapped in the wrong direction.

Cameron Yoe head coach Rick Rhoades says he’ll never forget hearing the breath leave the stadium, walking up to Smith lying on his back, writhing in pain, knowing it was bad.

“Why? How did this happen?” Smith said in a KCEN feature. “Out of all the hits I’ve taken, just one little hit to the side caused that to happen. I just started thinking, ‘Is this it? Is it over?’”

They carted him off the field as tears streamed down his face and fans chanted his name. The Yoemen scored on the next play to extend their lead to 20-7. But they couldn’t maintain it with their heart ripped out of their chest and at a nearby hospital.

“Everybody in the stands knew,” Nickerson, attending the game as a fan, said. “We were up, we were winning. But everybody knew, ‘Man, it’s over.’” 

Cameron Yoe lost 43-33, ending a 22-game playoff win streak.

When the Yoemen returned victorious from previous state championships, the entire town would gather at the fieldhouse for a hero’s welcome. It was the same scene when Smith returned from the hospital a couple of days later with a police escort. 

What they didn’t know, and what Smith would spend years hoping wasn’t true, was that he’d never play football again. He’d torn his ACL, MCL and PCL. He sat in his hospital bed and cried with his mother. Plenty of high school boys dream of making the NFL, but few have a career that makes the NFL feel like a real possibility, only to have it ripped away.

“Momma, we was gonna make it,” he said.

…

After the injury, most colleges backed off Smith’s recruitment - except for Division III powerhouse Mary Hardin-Baylor. They knew it would be a long process. The plan was for Smith to take a medical redshirt and live in the training room every day, rehabbing until he could play again. 

KCEN reporter Jessica Morrey kept in contact with Smith after crafting a ‘Minor Setback, Major Comeback’ news feature his senior year. She describes their relationship as a big sister, little brother dynamic. Now all she has left are text messages, bits and pieces of Smith wrestling with his football mortality.

He was part of the program but not on the team, unable to practice and unconfident in the weight room. The tell-all sign of his isolation was when Morrey covered a UMHB game during Smith’s freshman year and texted him before the game asking where he was. He said he was in the student section. She texted him later that fall when then-UMHB head coach Pete Fredenburg told her Smith had suffered a setback to his recovery.

“I’m doing better now, just got into a lost place for a little bit but I’m good now,” Smith responded. “College was just hitting me hard. Typical first semester.”

The bottom line is Smith didn’t hold up his end of the bargain on the rehab front, dropping out of UMHB after his freshman year.

“I think he got lost,” Morrey said. “I think he had this huge thing happen to him where he thought his future was going to be set. After that injury, I don’t think he ever saw the field again.”

But Smith wasn’t done with football altogether. He moved back to Cameron and got a good job with benefits at the Charlotte Pipe and Foundry Company, and in his free time he was a volunteer coach for youth football and basketball.

Every person interviewed for this story believes Traion would’ve become a football coach if he lived longer. When they were in high school, Nickerson remembers when the team would stop for breakfast tacos on game day and all the kids would flock to his table. And the funny thing was, Smith knew them all. The Cameron Yoe Varsity players were coaches for the local youth flag football league. The flag football practices were after the high school’s Thursday practices, when everyone was beat up, tired and sore. Nickerson would lazily snap the ball to his players and look over to see Smith running routes and chasing them around.

“I was older than him, but I still looked up to him in the way he carried himself around the kids,” Nickerson said.

He poured into those kids, whether he was the town’s star running back or living back in Cameron while he tried to figure out his next move. There are tragic aspects of Traion Smith’s life - the injury that ended his football career early and the drowning that ended his life early. But his character prevents those who knew him best from viewing him as a tragic figure.

“It’s a success story, in my opinion,” former Cameron Yoe defensive coordinator Tommy Brashear said. “Even though he had the injury and didn’t get to go play college, to me, Traion Smith was a success in his life.”

A success story, but an unfinished one. That’s why it’s hard for Nickerson to watch his alma mater play football on Friday nights. He hasn’t attended a game since the state championship where Smith blew his knee out, opting instead to stream the games online. He rarely makes it to the end of the game before he closes the laptop.

“It’s not Yoemen football to me without Traion Smith in it,” Nickerson said. “His passion and the way he held his teammates accountable still lives with me.”

Head coach Rick Rhoades left Cameron Yoe after Traion’s final game. He planned to coach for five years at Gregory-Portland and retire. It should’ve been the end of his Cameron Yoe dynasty, with five title game appearances in seven seasons. But then he came back to Cameron Yoe’s football stadium for Smith’s funeral and saw it just as packed as when Smith ran touchdowns on it.

Rhoades returned to Cameron Yoe for the 2021-2023 seasons, three years longer than he thought he had in the tank. Because every time he thought he was running on empty, he’d walk into the Cameron Yoe fieldhouse, put his hand on the doorknob, and stare at a picture of Traion Smith in action. It was the only reminder he needed of why he’d returned.

“People always ask, ‘What’s a Yoeman?” Rhoades said. “You want to know what a Yoeman is? Traion Smith was a Yoeman.”