Defensive back Kirby Smart, the 1993 Region 1AAAA Sportswriter’s defensive player of the year for his father coach Sonny Smart’s 1993 Bainbridge High School Bearcats, and a 1994 Bainbridge High School graduate, has gone on to achieve great honors as a college player and coach.
The current defensive coordinator with coach Nick Saban’s defending national champion University of Alabama Crimson Tide, Smart was also defensive coordinator on other Saban national championship teams at Alabama and LSU.
He is also a former recipient of the Frank Broyles Award, named for the former University of Arkansas Razorbacks head coach and given each year to the top assistant college football coach in the country.
He helped lead the 1993 Bearcats to an 8-2 regular season record. They defeated Colquitt County High School 21-10, defeated the Valdosta High School Wildcats 10-7 and defeated the Lowndes County High School Vikings 21-6. They went all the way to State Class AAAA semifinals.
Smart went on to earn All-Southeastern Conference and All-Southeastern Conference academic honors as a defensive back with the University of Georgia Bulldogs.
A three-sport athlete at Bainbridge High School, Smart played guard on coach Larry Slaughter’s Bearcats basketball team and shortstop on coach Stan Killough’s Bearcats baseball team.
Killough, now Bainbridge High School athletic director, fondly remembers Smart’s career.
“Kirby was an outstanding hitter and fielder and was also an outstanding bunter,” Killough, an Alabama graduate and former Crimson Tide baseball player, recalls. “If he saw the first baseman and third baseman playing deep, he always had the green light to bunt. No matter what sport he was playing, Kirby was always a great competitor.”
I feel privileged to have had the honor of covering the high school athletic career of such an outstanding athlete. It is just a matter of time until he becomes a successful college head football coach.