Brantford Red Sox announced the sale of the team to Terry Smith and his family on Tuesday, March 4, 2025.
With deep roots dating back to 1911 and 15 Intercounty Baseball League (IBL) championships to their name, the Red Sox are a cornerstone of the Brantford community. Under Terry Smith’s leadership, the team is poised for an exciting new chapter while staying true to its rich tradition of excellence and community engagement.
“We couldn’t be more excited to welcome Terry Smith to the Brantford Red Sox family,” said Connie Pomerleau, former co-owner of the Red Sox. “His passion for sports, commitment to community, and inspiring leadership make him the perfect fit to carry on the legacy of our historic franchise.”
Smith is the inspiration behind the beloved character Ted Lasso. Smith is a multi-sport athlete, head coach, educator, and entrepreneur with an extraordinary career spanning football, baseball, track, soccer, and business. A record-setting athlete at Furman University in football, baseball, and track, he batted over .400 as their MVP centrefielder, and is the second leading career hitter in the 100-year history of Furman baseball.
“I am incredibly proud for my family and I to join the Brantford Red Sox organization. The Red Sox and Brantford have an extraordinary history, and we are going to work extremely hard every day to build a Red Sox team and a Red Sox organization that everyone in Brantford and across our entire region will be very proud of for both our performances on the field, and especially for our performances off the field where we will always focus our maximum effort on contributing in a very positive way to every person, every family, every young baseball and softball player, and every child in Brantford and in our region,” said Smith. We are going to have a team of players who many years from now will look back with great fondness to their cherished memories of playing for the Red Sox, and who will also look back with even greater fondness to their most cherished memories of the incredible days they got to spend in our community with the wonderful people, families, and children of Brantford.”
Smith went on to say he and his family will be involved in the community and will build a foundation for baseball in Brantford.
“We greatly look forward to working closely with everyone in our community, to making it very fun and enjoyable for you to attend Red Sox games, to partnering with all the Brantford children’s baseball and softball leagues, teams, and players, and to building a Red Sox team both on the field and off the field that Brantford can continue to be proud of. We will also utilize our large amount of baseball and sports experience and contacts to build a strong and powerful developmental and scouting program for our players so that we create a pipeline for our players to professional baseball,” Smith said. At the same time, we will nurture the dreams of our young Brantford children who dream of playing on their youth teams, then playing on our Red Sox Junior team, then playing for our Brantford Red Sox team, and then playing professional baseball in the Major Leagues. We will make those dreams a reality.”
Smith then went on to thank the Pomerleau family for their passion and dedication to the Red Sox.
“We want to sincerely thank Connie and Rick Pomerleau and the entire Pomerleau family for all the very hard work they have put into the Red Sox for many years to hold the fort and to keep this historic franchise going and building. There is a huge amount of hard work and effort that goes into running a team every day and year after year, more work than it is even possible to imagine, and Connie, Rick, Chad, and their entire Pomerleau family always worked with their absolute maximum effort, they always displayed their complete and deep love for the Red Sox, and they always came through when the Red Sox needed them the most,” Smith said. “We are also very fortunate to be working with Cary Kaplan and his tremendous team at Cosmos Sports and Entertainment, whose incredible amount of sports knowledge and skill will be a huge asset and benefit for us and for every Red Sox fan.”
Smith said he and his family are very excited to become a part of the storied and historic baseball league.
“The IBL is a tremendous baseball league, the highest and most outstanding baseball league in all of Canada. In recent years, the IBL has been growing very rapidly and achieving even a far higher level of greatness than ever before because they have put together an amazing group of outstanding owners and an extraordinary Commissioner who are all visionaries. My family and I are very excited and very proud to be a part of such an incredible and historic league, and we are going to give our absolute maximum effort with these Amazing Owners and Commissioner so that all of us working together will help the IBL to achieve its highest and greatest-ever level of success and achievement.”
Ted Kalnins, Commissioner of the Intercounty Baseball League, expressed his excitement about the new ownership.
“Terry Smith has an extensive and diverse background in the sports industry, with an impressive track record of success at every stop. The IBL is thrilled to have someone of his stature and character join our League as we continue to achieve unprecedented growth and fan interest,” Kalnins said.
Cary Kaplan, President of Cosmos Sports and Entertainment, who helped facilitate the sale, also expressed his enthusiasm for the future of the Red Sox under Smith’s leadership.
“There are few sports business executives globally that are as accomplished and as diverse in their experience as Terry Smith. For Terry Smith to join the IBL in Brantford is another testament to the startling recent and rapid growth of the league. We look forward to the Brantford Red Sox reclaiming their position as a cornerstone of success,” added Kaplan.
More about Terry Smith
Smith also played professional football in the NFL, was a professional baseball player, and played professional football as a wide receiver and free safety in Britain and Europe for ten seasons where he set many national and European receiving and interception records.
Smith went on to achieve American football coaching success in the U.S. and in Great Britain, where as head coach he led his British teams to five National championships and European championships.
He was also chosen by the sport’s governing body in Great Britain to serve as the American football head coach of the Great Britain National Team, where he led the Great Britain Team to their first-ever European Nations Championship. Thereby becoming the only person in European history to coach two different teams to European championships. As a result of his playing and coaching successes, he was selected to the Great Britain and International Hall of Fames, and he was nominated to the Queen of England for honours.
His inspiring leadership and charismatic approach served as the basis for the fictional character Ted Lasso, the title character in the very popular TV series that was nominated for 61 Emmy awards.
Throughout his coaching career, as well as in the motivational books he wrote that were published in Britain and Europe, Smith always emphasized and highlighted his Believe philosophy, including writing his Believe philosophy in his books, writing Believe every day in his daily journal, talking to the British soccer media about his efforts to get his players and his Club to Believe, putting Believe on the wall in the stadium, and writing the single word BELIEVE on the front page of every game plan and every scouting report that he gave to his soccer players and to his American football players.
Beyond sports, Smith is an accomplished entrepreneur, having owned a European champion American football team, owned and managed a Cup-winning English soccer club, launched a television network, authored motivational books, been a college football coach and record setting head baseball coach, been a business professor and head of two departments in the School of Business, including the head of the Sport Management department, and been a director at a high school where in his first year he built the school into being recognized as one of the top 10 Super Schools in the United States, and where he was one of only four people in the entire United States to be invited by the U.S. Congress to Washington DC, for Smith to present to Congress on Capitol Hill his school’s innovative and successful education methods, and to help Congress to build a plan for the future of education in America.
For the past two years, Smith was the president of the outstanding non-profit NFL Alumni Association for the Washington DC area, and he is currently the president of the Women’s Football Alliance, which is the NFL of the women’s game, and has 60 teams spread across the entire U.S. The WFA plays their National Championships at the NFL Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio, in games broadcast on ESPN, and Smith works with the outstanding league executives and team owners of the WFA to help to achieve tremendous growth for women’s tackle football and flag football across North America and Internationally.
