All in the family: Smithwicks carry love for sports, water sports life
Published 12:01 pm Wednesday, June 25, 2025
Austin Smithwick was a talented athlete at Washington High School who has reached big heights with Park Boat Company and Inner Banks Marina. His son, Braden, has become a big deal himself with his talents as a wakeboarder on the water. He’ll attend NC State this fall. (Jason O. Boyd | Washington Daily News)
Braden Smithwick has developed an incredible passion and love for wakeboarding. He competes in events and has quite the following with photos and videos on his social media. (Contributed photo)
Austin Smithwick was a busy athlete at Washington High School, but football was where he had the most success. He played college football at Duke. (Matt Smithwick Facebook photo)
Austin Smithwick, owner of Park Boat Company (Jason O. Boyd | Washington Daily News)
Braden Smithwick has developed an incredible passion and love for wakeboarding. He competes in events and has quite the following with photos and videos on his social media. (Contributed photo)
Braden Smithwick has developed an incredible passion and love for wakeboarding. He competes in events and has quite the following with photos and videos on his social media. (Contributed photo)
|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
There was a pro athlete named Bo Jackson who took the sports world by storm in the 1990s, right around the time Austin Smithwick was a senior at Washington High School.
The phrase that paid was “Bo knows …” So “Bo knows baseball” and “Bo knows football.” He was also a huge marketing success because Bo seemingly “knew it all.”
Smithwick knew a thing or two about sports at Washington and carried his football talents to play at Duke. He took over the family business, Park Boat Company, and turned that into an even bigger success, along with management of Inner Banks Marina. He also has a busy family with his wife, Kristen, and three children: Sydney, Isabella and Braden.
You could say, Austin knows sports … and boating … and business.
“One day my dad called and said, ‘We’re getting old and tired’,” Austin said. “‘We don’t really want to do this anymore. Do you have any interest?’
“It’s a neat lifestyle. You know, but my wife and I, at the time, we didn’t have any kids. We started having those discussions.”
Those discussions eventually led to a return to the original Washington in 2004. They started a family and success followed. His children all have a love of many things of their own and help out with the businesses. Braden is no different.
He just graduated from Washington, having played basketball, baseball and tennis. He’s also become quite a sight as a wakeboarder, participating in and drawing a lot of interest with his talents. His Instagram has many photos and videos of him wakeboarding and just having fun on the water.
So, you could say, Braden knows sports … and boating … and business … and wakeboarding.
“I always enjoyed boating and those things, but I was never quite like Braden,” Austin said. “Braden, he loves boats. He really does. I mean, I was a good water skier, and I enjoyed it, and my brothers and I have spent a lot of time on the water. It was neat, but it was not like my thing.
“And I really enjoy running a dealership. There’s a lot of moving parts, a lot of different things. It’s a lot of fun. So I have really, really enjoyed the business aspect of it.”
Austin has made a good thing even better as Park Boat Company is one of the best-known retail outlets for boats in this part of the state and beyond. When you mix in Inner Banks Marina, it’s truly a family affair, from Kristen serving as finance director at IBX Development, LLC, to owning Smithwick Consulting, LLC.
Like his sisters, Braden does his part to help with the business. His love of boats, wakeboarding and all kinds of other sports serves as a spark, his father said. And during the coronavirus pandemic, his story really started to expand.
“I guess I started looking into the boats a lot, into the boat brands, parts, pieces,” Braden said. “I used to watch YouTube videos on how to fix boats on all the different kind of boats and walkthroughs.
“I’ve probably watched thousands of videos of different boats being explained and different features on those being explained, and how they work. I guess shortly after that, maybe some in the middle of it, I started working a little bit at the businesses.”
When he’s not wakeboarding, Braden is helping with the business or just enjoying the brief amount of time between graduating from high school and going to NC State in the fall for agricultural business management.
Austin said that, in a way, he felt kind of bad that he couldn’t help his son pursue wakeboarding further, like moving to Orlando or going pro. Despite that, it all seems to have worked out for him and the family.
They love what they do and it shows in their personality, work ethic and when it’s time to just enjoy the water and have some fun.
“Over the summer this year I just want to soak it all in and come out here and do a little bit of work, do a little bit of playing and wakeboard as much as possible,” Braden said. “It is still one thing that I really, really love a lot, but I’ve got other things that I really love, too. And so I kind of find a way to balance all of it, you know, I don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket.
“I like to do a lot of different things and, you know, live as freely and as happy as I can for these next couple of months while I’m still here on the water. Because next year at NC State, I won’t have access to a boat or a wakeboard.”
More Sports
-
Polls
Loading ...-
-