Skip to main content
georgia logo

First day of camp brings back memories, gets competitive juices going for Kirby Smart

Palmber-Thombsby:Palmer Thombs•08/03/23•

palmerthombs

On3 image
Mackenzie Miles/UGA Sports Communications

ATHENS, Ga. — Georgia Football is back on the field today, opening up fall camp ahead of its 2023 season. With that comes all sorts of feelings for Kirby Smart and company who have been through it before.

Smart remembers his playing days at Georgia and what preseason practice was like back then. While things have changed with many freshmen arriving on campus in January and others joining in June, Smart’s sense of excitement is the same it was back when fall camp truly used to be the first time a team was together.

“I get excited, yeah. Not so much for today, but for tomorrow, I do, I think tomorrow being the first day we can go out and practice. But the NCAA has allowed you to do so much more in the summer. I was just telling our players, it’s so different,” Smart said. “We didn’t see our coaches when we were here in the summer. We had testing when we got back. It was the first day that freshmen reported for us today. Now we’ve got 19 kids here in the spring. We had four or five show up summer, but they’ve even done workouts. It’s not like the buildup of an NFL training camp where you haven’t seen guys. We’ve seen our guys. They’re here. They work out every day.”

“It’s very important to separate summer to training camp,” he continued. “Sometimes as a kid you can’t see the separation because it’s just constant. It’s just all in a row. So we try to make a clear delineation between this is the end of this, this is the start of this.”

One thing that’s stayed the same over time, the emphasis for fall camp. In his opening statement, Smart shared that the focus is on themselves and not anybody else. Exactly how do they do that? With tons of competition and an emphasis on toughness.

“That’s a goal of training camp is to establish physical and mental toughness,” Smart said. “How do you do that? You don’t go out and say, ‘Oh, please don’t get hurt.’ Football is a tough and dangerous sport, which we practice as smart as anybody in the country. We feel like we have a method that allows us to be physical and be tough and also protect our players.”

“We want to get better, and we want our players to grow and get better, and you don’t get better by not practicing,” he continued, noting that the season is still a month away. “We’re going to be physical, we’re going to go against each other, and we’re going to compete.”

While positions like quarterback, offensive tackle and defensive back are grabs with starters from last season headed off to the NFL, Smart is absolutely wants to create competition at every position. Nobody can slack off and simply coast through fall camp.

Competition and toughness creates connection and culture. Smart said that he’s seen that play out with Georgia’s last two teams, both of which of course went on to win the National Championship. While the talent has absolutely been there, Smart believes that what they went through in preseason camp made a difference down the stretch.

“I think the difference in the two teams from the last two years is they connected well in training camp. That will be a goal in this training camp, to see how well we connect and how well we compete,” Smart said. “We’ve got a lot of jobs that are going to be up for grabs and up for competition, and I’m very eager to see our guys compete for those spots. With that, I’ll open it up.”

Georgia opens its season September 2nd at home, hosting UT-Martin.

You may also like