ATHENS — It was the Fourth of July before Aron White’s freshman year at Georgia when he took a trip home to Columbia, Mo., for the holiday. Throughout the visit, he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that he wasn’t supposed to leave. Many of his friends were in school at nearby Missouri, and being home was like old times. He missed family, he missed friends, he missed normalcy. Being home felt right.
Nearly four months passed before White made another trip home, this time during Georgia’s off week in 2007. He hadn’t played a down, while fellow freshman Bruce Figgins earned praise from coaches and fans for his early contributions.
But that second trip home was different. Many of his friends were occupied with school. Most had made new friends he didn’t know. The bedroom he had grown up in suddenly felt foreign. The bed wasn’t as comfortable. The décor wasn’t his own.
Tyler Edgin of Lugoff, S.C., top right, shoots pictures of the Georgia Bulldogs as they take the field to warm up Saturday before taking on Florida in Jacksonville, Fla. When asked if it was tough to be a Georgia fan living 30 miles from the University of South Carolina, Tyler said, "It's pretty easy when you have bragging rights."
- Grant Blankenship/The Telegraph /Grant Blankenship/The Telegraph
He missed Georgia.
“It was home, but it was just like, I knew by the end of that weekend I wanted to go back, I missed people,” White said. “I went home and slept in my old room, and it wasn’t the same. ... That was definitely the point I realized that if I were to leave Georgia, I’d definitely miss it.”
White’s story is hardly unique. It’s an annual rite of passage for Georgia’s freshmen, but it’s never a simple process, and the transition can be tough.
“You definitely second guess yourself sometimes,” freshman tight end Arthur Lynch said, his words tinged with a heavy New England accent. “It’s not the easiest thing, and it’s something you can’t really adjust to because it’s so different than where I’m from. But you get used to it after a while.”
Athens may be one of the most beloved college towns in the country, but for players like Lynch or place-kicker Brandon Bogotay, a San Diego native, it’s a world apart from where he grew up.
For other players, however, the culture shock isn’t so much about the weather or the slang. It’s about family and security.
Defensive end Montez Robinson grew up in Indiana, then moved to Alabama when he was in grade school. His family life was difficult, but he was always close with his brothers. His father died when he was young, and he and his brothers became wards of the state. After his sophomore year in high school, he moved back to Indiana. He committed first to Auburn, then to Georgia, and through his first few months in Athens, home seemed a world away.
“At first it was hard being away from home,” Robinson said. “There’s a couple other guys that are far from home, and we were always talking about how much we missed our families.”
As many times as coaches have seen it happen, tight ends coach John Lilly said there’s no universal solution to getting a player past that point. They’re all different, but there is support.
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