COFFEETOWN HS SPORTS

Kirby Smart still values his high school sports career. It seems like a novel concept now, but players actually stuck together back then.

Not many transfers coming or going, unless someone’s parents’ got divorced or moved in from Tallahassee or Albany.

Nope, just the teammates you grew up with on rec football fields or in Bainbridge summer swim leagues.

The Georgia Bulldogs head football coach has two national titles in as many seasons now

That’s pretty special. His high school career was special in its own way.

It starts with his coach at the time, Sonny Smart.

“I think the most unique thing was my father was my coach,” the younger Coach Smart told me at David Pollack’s Pollack Family Foundation charity golf event.

“To have your father as your coach, have a special season where we made a run to go to the final four.”

Smart and Smart’s Bainbridge Bearcats made it to the 1993 Georgia High School State Semifinals 30 years ago this fall.

I don’t know if all of those words are supposed to be capitalized. I just did it because that’s a string of words that most high school athletes revere in this state and in most of the other ones.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Coffeetown HS Sports (@gocoffeetown)

Kirby Smart is no stranger to postseason success. That isn’t the only thing that underscores his high school sports memories

In Smart’s current profession, a College Football roster operates like a merry-go-round at the Georgia State Fair.

Round and around, up and down.

Some occupants stay on for more rides.

Some hop off and go look for the ones they like better.

But that isn’t the case for so many athletes and teams throughout the history of High School sports.

Your guys or your girls were your guys or your girls.

From middle school to that final varsity snap, pitch or strike.

“(I think of) my teammates,” Smart said.

“I look back and those guys I played with for four, five years in high school and growing up. In a small community, you get that feeling of togetherness. You don’t have as many guys coming in and out, transferring. New guy here, new guy there. It was all us growing up. And we played together, stuck together, and had a good team.”

Smart has a pretty good team now, I think most would agree. And he does it with many, many more moving parts.

But what’s one of the key tenets to Smart’s championship runs over the last two seasons and the years before that?

Togetherness.

And it all started as a Bainbridge Bearcat.