Sonny Smart won historic championships at Bainbridge, Rabun County

Sonny Smart was best known in recent years as the father of Georgia football coach Kirby Smart, but Sonny Smart was an outstanding high school coach for more than 30 years and left a legacy with historic championships at Bainbridge and Rabun County.

Sonny Smart retired in 2005 before his son rose to coaching fame at Alabama or Georgia. He died early Saturday morning after being hospitalized Tuesday for a broken hip suffered in a fall while in New Orleans for Wednesday’s Sugar Bowl.

Sonny Smart was an Alabama native who worked 11 years in his home state, spending his first season out of Samford, where he was a starting football linemen, working at alma mater Houston County. He coached 10 seasons at Holtville High near Montgomery, the final five as head coach, winning titles in 1980 and 1981. Smart also won a state title as Holtville’s baseball coach in 1982.

In the fall of 1982, Smart came to Georgia as Bainbridge’s defensive coordinator, and his new team immediately won its first state championship in history. Coming off a 5-5 season, Bainbridge went 14-1 and defeated Gainesville 7-6 in the Class 3A championship game. With Smart running the defense, Bainbridge allowed just 8.3 points per game.

Smart succeeded Ralph Jones as Bainbridge’s coach in 1988 and led the Bearcats for seven seasons. Smart’s 1993 team – featuring all-state defensive back Kirby Smart - finished 10-3 and reached the semifinals of Class 4A, then the highest classification.

The ’93 Bainbridge team also won powerful Region 1 that year, beating out Valdosta, Lowndes and Colquitt County, schools that claimed five of the 10 state titles in the highest class that decade. Bainbridge also broke a 14-game losing streak to Valdosta that year in a 10-7 regular-season victory that remains the Bearcats’ only on-field victory at Valdosta’s Bazemore-Hyder Stadium.

Smart went to Rabun County in 1995, a moved partly made to get him closer to Athens, where Kirby Smart was a redshirt freshman. Rabun County was a Class A school that had never won a state playoff game. Smart’s 1998 team broke through, advancing two rounds to the quarterfinals, finishing 11-2 and winning the first region championship in school history.

Smart’s career record as a head coach was 90-78-1. He lived in Rabun County in his retirement. He was inducted into the Decatur County Sports Hall of Fame in Bainbridge in 2019.