The Captain's Journal: NaLyssa Smith

She quickly changes out of her uniform and heads to the car because, in the next hour, she’ll pick the team that will don her name.

It’s the quickest turnaround a group of Athletes Unlimited captains has ever had with little time to strategize and mull over picks with their facilitator.

So as Smith drives the 25-minute trip to the studio where the draft is live-streamed, she decides one thing for certain: she’s going to get Kelsey Mitchell.

“Because it was such a short week she wanted to get people she was comfortable with,” Smith’s facilitator Zak Buncik said. Mitchell is a given, they went 2-1 together during Week 1 and are teammates on the WNBA’s Indiana Fever.

Smith went on to draft two more teammates from her Week 1 group and as she looks at her roster, she’s excited.

“I picked a team that knows how to run, knows how to be aggressive,” Smith said after the draft. Her only regret is not going to get Lexie Hull, the third member of the Fever squad, before Odyssey Sims scooped her in the third round.

Comfortability is a recurring theme between Smith and Buncik when they discuss the week. After playing three games in four days, the players needed rest and most teams, including Smith’s, took Monday off from practice.

That left the captain and her facilitator to answer the question, “How quickly can we mesh on a one-day turnaround?”

Turns out for this group, very well.

Smith describes herself as a laid-back captain and she’s right. She casually guides practice along with Buncik on Tuesday and her easygoing attitude leaves space for everyone on the team to give input.

Guard Sydney Colson is directing the traffic of the offense as they install plays. DiJonai Carrington is injured but pressuring her team to focus on defense from the side. Then, Kelsey Mitchell suggests an option, a double brush that really gets everyone really excited.

What started as a quiet practice led by a fairly quiet captain had gotten much louder in two hours.

“You gonna see a lot of times where I’m not the main one talking in the circle ’cause I let them, you know, do what you gotta do,” Smith explained. “We’re all pros so I love having help from everybody else.”

Stepping out of the comfort zone

Technically, Smith isn’t a first-time captain.

Although in the official AU record books this is the first-ever team she’s led, she was a captain during the scrimmage games. Buncik was her facilitator for those games too and said this second time around Smith has embraced the role differently.