Loran Smith: Based on background, Fox is built for success

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July 1, 2009

By Loran Smith The Dalton Daily Citizen Wed Jul 01, 2009, 10:58 PM EDT

If upbringing and family values hold sway in the life of Mark Fox, and conventional wisdom submits that they do, we can expect the style of Georgia’s basketball coach to reflect energy, humility, and warmth. His determined drive to succeed is obvious and emanates from an old-fashioned work ethic.

Before I met him, I asked a few who should know what the Bulldogs got when Damon Evans, Georgia’s athletic director, picked Fox to direct a sport that has often made two steps forward and three steps back.

“Nobody will out work him,” said Wimp Sanderson, one-time Alabama coach. That endorsement is a nice preface to Fox’s first season.

After Hugh Durham, Georgia’s winningest coach, Tubby Smith gave us reason to hope, but he lit out for a premier job hardly before he had fully unpacked. Later, Jim Harrick, cunning and conning but capable, came with baggage and left under a cloud. However, he was putting down roots that would have made our winters something to match what was taking place with football in the fall. Whatever your assessment, Harrick’s tenure was brief.

You get the drift that the latest man to sit in basketball’s head chair has no recurring itch to look for greener pastures. (Tubby didn’t promote that but naturally aspired for someone of Kentucky’s pedigree to come calling.) Furthermore, Fox will not allow ill-advised management to lead to embarrassment.

I like Fox’s background and happen to think that will influence affirmative dividends for Georgia basketball. He grew up in Garden City, Kan. — there are 14 towns in the U.S. by the name of Garden City, including one in Georgia. His father, Ray, was a high school coach, and his mother, Elaine, was a career kindergarten teacher. You can be sure that Bulldog basketball players will be expected to perform in the classroom.

Growing up, it was year-round sports for Mark, the third of three boys, but he had assigned chores and suffered indignation and rebuke from his parents if his grades failed to meet expectations. Discipline was a family tradition. In fact, when he took his daughter home to be baptized in the Methodist church were he grew up, his daddy admonished him that he needed to “Cut the grass.” Mark was 35 years old, a successful coach with a family, and he gets that directive on a visit home!

“I laughed but got out the mower and cut the grass,” Mark said.

The nearest big town to Garden City, located in the wheat and corn fields of Southwest Kansas, is Wichita, four hours away by car. Life was engaging and fulfilling in his youth, which is why he still gets a thrill returning home.

“You have a few more trees here than we do in Garden City,” he said, “but there are actually a lot of similarities with the people. We say ‘y’all’ in Kansas just like you do.”

Invited back to speak at his high school commencement in the spring, he told the graduating class that success in life would largely be determined by how they respond to crises.

“So many things happen in life over which you have no control,” Fox said. “How you handle those situations determines your future.”

When Mark first hit Athens, he immediately asked for an audience with the Georgia football staff. He wanted to know what the successful football guys did to convince the best players to stay home when they choose a college.

In the spring at Callaway Gardens, I dropped in on a conversation between him and Hugh Durham. Walking away, I overheard Fox say, “Would you come watch practice and tell us what you think?”

It was not patronizing. It was sincere, what you would expect from a small-town Midwesterner who has evolved from an environment of church, family, enduring work ethic, modesty, and a deep and abiding love of basketball, bent on reaching out to his adopted community, which he now calls home.

You can write to Loran Smith at loransmith@sports.uga.edu

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