Georgia football freshmen in for a whole new world with start of fall camp
It’s never easy to know what to expect from freshmen. Georgia’s Class of 2022 is talented – ranked No. 3 in the country – but will they come in and rise to the occasion or will they fall to the wayside, overwhelmed by the circumstances? After all, it can be a little bit intimidating going up against bigger, stronger, faster players that contributed to a championship a year ago.
Looking back at the Kirby Smart era, players like Brock Bowers and D’Andre Swift made immediate impacts in their freshman campaigns. Though to be fair, those guys made everything look easy.
Christopher Smith, who’s quite a ways removed from his freshman year, recalled what it was like for his first fall camp and shared a bit of wisdom with the new guys.
“The main thing I remember is being severely tired,” Smith said. “I didn’t recognize the importance of sleep, nutrition, hydration, and things like that. That’s really important once you get into these days of camp. So, that’s one of the things that I remember, I was very tired.”
“As you’re going throughout the year, you recognize the importance of certain things, and you get your routine down. You know what works best for you,” he continued. “It gets a little bit easier every year. It’s never easy at all, but it gets a little bit easier as you go throughout the years.”
Zion Logue is stepping into a bigger role than he’s every had before. Losing three defensive linemen to the NFL, Logue – along with others in the trenches will have to up their game.
The Bulldogs are bringing in some talented freshmen to play on the defensive line this fall alongside Logue, most notably players like Mykel Williams and Bear Alexander. Williams, a 6’5, 261 pound lineman from Columbus, Georgia, has drawn a lot of attention heading into the Bulldogs’ fall camp, while Alexander missed nearly all of spring camp with a torn labrum.
Looking back at his first fall Georgia football training camp in 2020, Logue had no idea what it was going to be like
“Honestly, I didn’t know what to think my first camp,” Logue said. “All I heard was we had 18 days, and I was like ‘Where we gonna stay at?’ and everybody was telling me ‘The hotel on campus.’ I thought we were going to be able to go home. No, you’re just walking back and forth across the street. So, you kinda get that feel of being around the guys each day and just working. I just told them, come in and put one foot in front of the other and just be ready to work.”
Kirby Smart even has his own memories from camp. Back in the day, the Bulldogs did a couple of two-a-days. That’s no longer.
“As far as memories of camp, you know, I talked to the team last night about, you know, my memories of training camp. Because everybody has to get into training camp mode. And I always said I would never be the coach that talked about how hard you had it, and you had to walk four miles up the hill in the snow and we had it tougher than them, and Shockley and them had it made and we had to go grind and do all this,” Smart joked. “But, you know, it’s very evident when you see the old schedules and the format of two practices a day, full pads, picture day in the middle. I mean, these guys are never going to have two practices in the same day. And required off time is different. So the demands were certainly more.”
Georgia opened practice on Thursday in helmets and jerseys but no shoulder pads. The Bulldogs won’t have those on for a little while, at least until they’ve gone through the heat acclimation phase of fall camp. And even then, the number of full padded practices is limited. Still, it’s a shock for many freshmen, and this group has its work cut out for them.
