UGA’s Geno Atkins is rare two-sport athlete

ATHENS — Of the hundreds of gifted athletes on the University of Georgia’s various sports teams today, only one is on two.

Geno Atkins, a starting defensive tackle on the football team and a shot-putter on the track and field team, is the Bulldogs’ lone throwback to the days when multi-sport athletes were not nearly so rare.

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Brant Sanderlin/bsanderlin@ajc.com

Geno Atkins’ priority is football, but he also enjoy the shot put.

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Georgia had numerous athletes star in two sports and a few in as many as four in decades past, according to unofficial UGA sports historian Dan Magill. But in this era of specialization and year-round training, such athletes have become almost extinct.

Atkins bucks the trend, at least to a degree.

“I have to always keep in mind football is my priority,” he said. “I can’t get too sidetracked.”

Football, after all, is the sport that provides his scholarship and, he hopes, will provide an NFL paycheck in his future.

But he also finds time — one to two hours a week for a few months of the year— for track and field. And that somehow is enough for him to contribute to the team.

“We don’t demand too much of his time, but he’s made the gains you’d expect from a full-time shot-putter,” said Don Babbitt, Georgia’s assistant track and field coach, who works with the team’s throwers. “The returns have been excellent from the limited time.”

Atkins, in his third year with the track and field team, was away from his second sport throughout spring football practice, which ended April 11. A week later, in his first competition of the outdoor track season, he threw the shot 56 feet, 11 1/2 inches — his career best and at the time the season’s best by any UGA shot putter as well as ninth best in the SEC.

That throw qualified Atkins, a junior from Pembroke Pines, Fla., for the NCAA East Regional May 29-30. He also is scheduled to compete in the Georgia Invitational May 9 and the SEC Outdoor Championships May 14-17.

If Atkins had more time to devote to the shot put, “he probably could be an All-American and finish in the top five nationally,” Babbitt said. “In pure mentality and physical capabilities, he’s way up there with the best shot putters in the U.S. He just spends about 1/10th the time they do training at it.”

So Babbitt tries to make the most of Atkins’ limited time by emphasizing “nice basic technique” and not introducing “big intricate ideas.”

Since the end of spring football, during which coach Mark Richt called Atkins Georgia’s most dominant player, Atkins has been working with Babbitt for 30 to 45 minutes in two afternoons per week. Those sessions generally follow 90-minute football weight-room workouts.

“When they try to break us in the weight room,” he said, “I do get a little fatigued — going out there [afterward] and throwing a 16-pound ball.”

NCAA rules govern the total amount of time he can spend on the two sports.

The shot put is no frivolity for Atkins, who scored a point for Georgia in the 2008 SEC Indoor Championships with an eighth-place finish. He threw the shot in high school and received a commitment from Georgia’s football coaches during his recruitment that he could do so at UGA.

“That was, like, one of the big reasons I came here,” Atkins said. “I do it for the love of throwing. And it’s also a nice get-away from football.”