Would you like to receive DawgNation news alerts? Excellent! News alerts will be displayed in your browser.

LOOK: Georgia football players visit Camp Sunshine

One of the best things the Georgia football team does every year is its annual trip to Camp Sunshine, which it made once again Wednesday. Pictured here, DE Jonathan Ledbetter visits with campers on the trip in 2017.
DawgNation/file photo
Cy Brown
Cy Brown

Welcome to Good Day, UGA, your one-stop shop for Georgia football news and takes. Check us out every weekday morning for everything you need to know about Georgia football, recruiting, basketball and more.

Dawgs make their annual trek to Camp Sunshine

One of the best things the Georgia football team does every year is its annual trip to Camp Sunshine, which it made once again Wednesday.

For those who don’t know, Camp Sunshine is a summer camp for children with cancer and their families, and it takes place every summer at Camp Twin Lakes in Rutledge. Camp Sunshine is a fantastic organization that positively affects its campers in profound ways, and the Dawgs have been doing their part to make it a special time for campers every summer for most of the last 35 years.

“I want them to appreciate what they have,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said of his players Wednesday, according to DawgNation’s Chip Towers. (Smart’s brother, Karl, was a camper and counselor at Camp Sunshine after he was diagnosed with leukemia in 1989.) “You look at some of these kids and see how they have to struggle to go through things. Some of them are well now and they come back because they’re the hope for so many other kids who are going through what they did.”

Whether it be for the Watermelon Cuttin’ or G-Day victory meal, it’s always fun to watch Georgia football players cut loose. But it’s even more fun for events such as this when you get to see the smiles they bring to these kids’ faces. So in that spirit, I thought I’d share some photos of this year’s trip that folks who were down in Rutledge on Wednesday posted to Twitter. Enjoy and remember there are many things much, much more important than football.

(By the way, if the spirit moves you to donate to Camp Sunshine, you can do so here.)

MORE: Want this roundup in your inbox every morning? Sign up here!

2018 Rose Bowl nominated for ESPY

If you’re a Georgia fan — hell, if you’re just a college football fan — there’s a good chance you consider the 2018 Rose Bowl the best game of the year, in any sport. And now you have a chance to set that in stone.

Georgia’s 54-48 double-overtime comeback victory against Oklahoma in the Rose Bowl is one of three ESPY nominees in the Best Game category. The other nominees are Game 5 of the World Series between the Houston Astros and Los Angeles Dodgers and the 2018 Winter Olympics women’s hockey gold-medal game between the United States and Canada.

Like all awards shows, the ESPYs don’t mean much, primarily there to fill ESPN airtime in the dead months of summer and providing a stage for Norm Macdonald to make athletes extremely uncomfortable. But if you want Georgia to receive a bit of national pub when the ESPYs show airs July 18, you can vote here.

You can also relive the 2018 Rose Bowl with the highlights below because this is as good an excuse as any.

List-O-Mania

ESPN named the most exciting player on each team in its preseason top 25, and running back D’Andre Swift received the nod for No. 4 Georgia.

Sony Michel and Nick Chubb were special. But if you thought they were alone in Georgia’s backfield last season, you weren’t paying attention. As a freshman, Swift showed why coaches have been enamored with his potential, showing off home-run speed with a 7.8 yards-per-carry clip and three rushes of 40 yards or more.

Dawgs on Twitter

Good dog

Miss a previous edition of Good Day, UGA? Get caught up here.

NEXT Camp Sunshine is strictly a Bulldogs thing, and something Kirby Smart loves
Get Breaking News Fast!
Download the new DawgNation app.
Get it on the AppStore
Get it on Google Play

Listen to daily DawgNation podcast

We have a new way to comment on our DawgNation stories. To do so, you must be a registered user on the DawgNation forum. If you haven’t registered, please go to the Forum homepage on DawgNation and look for “register” on the right side.