Field Street Forum

Q. Coach Smart, anything you want to say to begin?
KIRBY SMART: The number one thing is the well being of our players, their families, our student-athletes, our students here at the University of Georgia. We’re trying every way we can to make sure they have everything they need because so many of them have parents in harm’s way, they’re in harm’s way taking care of themselves if they don’t respect what they’re being told.

And then a lot of them, they’re concerned about their being in shape, their ability to grow and get better, and that’s not the primary concern right now. The primary concern right now is the health and well-being of all our communities, and that’s really important that we drive that home, that this conference is really — although it should give you information, but it’s also to make sure that you understand that our priorities are in order and we think it’s really important that our players stay safe and healthy, and I think Ron [Courson] and his staff have done a great job of sending out information in regards to that. With that, I’ll turn it over to you so we can do some questions.

Q. How is your organization functioning over the last few weeks? Who’s in the office, who’s mostly at home, and does the coaching staff have daily Zoom meetings?
KIRBY SMART: Yeah, so that’s really like a three-part deal. The way we’re functioning the past few weeks, first of all, it starts back to spring break because we were on spring break, and that’s probably been one of the toughest transitions for us as you can imagine. A lot of schools were in session when this happened, and they were able to have a team meeting, they were able to have a little exit strategy. We were all over the place, and so everybody was out and we couldn’t really feel comfortable about bringing everybody back in together because we couldn’t come back to Athens.

So it’s been hard because we’ve had to call each player individually. We have ways to connect with them obviously through Zoom and FaceTime, but not having that exit meeting to say, okay, this is where we’re headed from this point, that was probably the toughest thing. So the weeks have been different.

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