One of the most successful high school girls basketball coaches in the area is headed for a new challenge this season.

“I’m just really excited about this opportunity. ... You’re coaching the best. It’s a whole other level,” former Blackfoot head coach Courtnie Smith said Tuesday, shortly after she was announced as one of two new assistants on Idaho State’s staff under Seton Sobolewski.

Smith and former North Dakota head coach Travis Brewster will join longtime associate head coach Ryan Johnson to give Sobolewski a rare level of experience on the bench.

It’s a big leap for Smith, who took the Blackfoot job in 2015. High school coaches don’t often jump into the college game, but Smith can lean on her successes at Blackfoot, where the Broncos won just one game the season before she was hired but have been to the state tournament in each of the last two years under her coaching.

“Courtnie is someone I’ve always respected,” Sobolewski said in an Idaho State press release. “She is one of the best girls basketball coaches in our area. The time and effort she has put in to grow the game of girls basketball in Southeast Idaho is remarkable. I’m glad she’s joining us.”

Smith and Sobolewski have known each other for over a decade. Smith’s daughter Tenleigh was a longtime ballgirl for Idaho State, starting when she was in the first grade and going up through middle school.

“Seton was just amazing with her,” Courtnie Smith said. “She’d start going in the huddles with them, she did it for seven years. We’d go on the road with them. At Big Sky tournaments, Tenleigh would be down there, and that’s just kind of how the friendship started.”

Tenleigh Smith, one of the top girls basketball players in the area, will be a senior at Century this year, showing how far the relationship goes back.

In recent years, Courtnie Smith has run a summer team camp for Sobolewski at Idaho State, bringing local teams in to play at Reed Gym.

When she left the head coaching position at Blackfoot in early May, she texted Sobolewski to let him know that she likely wouldn’t be able to do that anymore.

Sobolewski’s response was to offer her the assistant coach job.

“I know that me being a coach at ISU is going to take me away from my daughters’ games,” Smith said. “We’ll be on the road when they’re playing. So there were some personal family things, I wanted to make sure that it was the right decision that way, but I’ve always wanted to get into the college game and learn about it. I definitely wanted to take the opportunity when it came up.”

Smith and Brewster are replacing Jasmine Stohr and Katelin King on ISU’s staff after Stohr moved on to another school and King decided to move into strength and conditioning. Graduate assistant Bianca Gutierrez’s position was cut.