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Jake Fromm and J.R. Reed enter new season as Georgia football’s veterans

8/27/2019

If Jake Fromm would watch Georgia’s film from two seasons ago, he would see several handoffs to Nick Chubb and Sony Michel.

As reported in The Red & Black, Chubb and Michel are gone but Fromm is still leading Georgia’s offense into a new season as one of the team’s veterans.

“Now, it’s a whole lot easier to pick up coverages, what they’re doing on defense,” Fromm said.
“You kind of get into a rhythm and understand what certain coaches [and] certain opponents are willing to do against our football program.”

As the Bulldogs get ready for their first game of the 2019 season against Vanderbilt on Aug. 31, Fromm and senior safety J.R. Reed are helping freshmen such as Nolan Smith and Nakobe Dean adjust to the college game. Georgia also has offensive coordinator James Coley and defensive coordinator Dan Lanning as their two new top assistants.

The newcomers have been through fall camp, but have not yet experienced an actual collegiate game. Fromm and Reed, on the other hand, have been around a couple times.

Head coach Kirby Smart sent them to SEC Media Days with junior left tackle Andrew Thomas this summer.

The veterans are partially responsible for letting the freshmen know what’s expected of them in the coming months.

“It starts with our culture,” Fromm said. “How can we get these guys in our culture to understand what we’re about as a football program … It’s win-now, win-now, and hopefully they’re ready for that.”

Reed, who has recorded 145 tackles in the last two seasons, said starting with a conference opponent will be goodl for the freshmen.

“They will learn,” Reed said. “They will be able to get their feet wet … When they go in, I’m just going to tell them to relax and have fun.”

Starting against Vanderbilt might add to the pressure, but Reed isn’t too concerned.
“Pressure is privilege, y’all know this,” Reed said.

In the last two seasons, Fromm has thrown for 5,384 yards and 54 touchdowns. Smart said Fromm’s confidence has been boosted since handing the ball off to Chubb and Michel in 2017.

“Jake is a comfortable quarterback,” Smart said. “He believes in who he is. He trusts in his offense. He has a really good grasp of what plays we’re going to be running versus what [defensive] looks. It’s like having an extra coach on the field.”

Georgia knows what to expect from Fromm and Reed, but there are other unknowns. A new group of freshmen arrive every season and it’s not often that two new coordinators take over.

So how will the Georgia offense look under Coley?

“We’ll see,” Fromm said.

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Oconee County School Demonstrates New Threat Alert System

8/20/2019

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The Oconee County School System recently introduced a new defense against those who would harm students at schools, as reported in the Athens Banner-Herald.

Just a little after 9:45 a.m., an Oconee Middle School teacher quickly pressed a button on a card hanging around her neck, setting several things in motion as part of a lockdown drill and test of the school’s new alert system.

In school hallways and outside in parking lots and athletic fields, red lights flashed and the intercom system told teachers and students, “Avoid. Deny. Defend.”

A large video screen in a conference room showed the school’s layout, and when the teacher pressed her card’s button, a red dot immediately showed up on the map with the teacher’s name underneath it.

Designed to show who has activated the button and pinpoint where that person is located,
the system, purchased from Atlanta-based Centegix with special funds the state Legislature appropriated this year, also took over the school’s computer network to post the alert on computer screens.

The school district chose the Centegix system after evaluating other systems and consulting with school staff as well as the Oconee County Sheriff’s Department, said Dallas LeDuff, the school district’s director of student services.

The system is able to deliver alerts for different emergency conditions including tornadoes, but it’s set up specifically for school shootings.

The system also automatically notifies law enforcement to come to the school. In a real shooting situation, an emergency dispatcher would tap into the school’s network of video surveillance cameras, pinpointing the alarm’s precise location to enable law enforcement officers to respond directly to the exact location the alarm was activated at. The school system also added more security cameras to ramp up safety precautions.

“I’m fired up about it,” said Oconee County sheriff’s Capt. James Hale, who attended Friday’s drill. “The quicker we can arrive on the scene, the sooner we can make bad things stop happening.”

A sheriff’s deputy is within minutes of any of the county’s schools at any given time during the school day, he said.
Friday’s demonstration was the first of many planned as the school year begins, said Oconee County schools Superintendent Jason Branch. The Centegix system is now installed in all of Oconee County’s 11 public schools, and drills are planned in those schools too.

Teachers and other employees got one-on-one training in the system during planning days before students began classes last week, said Oconee County Middle School Principal Keith Carter.

“We’ve gotten great positive feedback from staff,” he said.

The alert system is new, but drills and training about what to do in case someone brings a gun to a school intending harm is not.

This is the fourth year schools have had active shooter training, Branch said.

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Sears to Close Soon at Georgia Square Mall in Athens

8/13/2019

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There is one more department store that will soon be departing from the Georgia Square Mall on Atlanta Highway.

As reported in The Red & Black, an Aug. 6 press release from Sears’ parent company announced its plans to close 21 Sears stores and five Kmart stores nationwide, including its only Athens location.
The 26 stores will close in late October, according to the press release. Liquidation sales for the stores are to begin this week on Aug. 15 while the Sears Auto Centers at these stores will close later this month.

“Over the past several months, we have worked hard to strengthen our vendor relationships, return our inventory levels to normal, and improve customer satisfaction and operations; however, we have faced a number of challenges returning our stores to sustainable levels of productivity, including differences with Sears Holdings over our purchase agreement and a generally weak retail environment,” the press release stated.

The press release also said the company will focus on growing its smaller scale Home & Life and Sears Hometown outlet stores, which sell home goods products and appliances.

Sears filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Oct. 2018 — Transform Holdco LLC, an affiliate of Connecticut-based hedge fund ESL Investments, acquired Sears Holding Corporation’s assets in Feb. 2019 for approximately $5.2 billion. Edward Lampert, former CEO of Sears Holdings, is the founder and CEO of ESL Investments.

The company said in the press release it “cannot rule out additional store closures in the near term.”
“All eligible associates will be offered the same number of weeks of severance as offered to employees of Sears Holdings Corporation prior to that company’s Chapter 11 filing in October 2018,” according to the press release.

In March 2017, the Macy’s department store closed at the Athens mall. With Sears closing, the mall’s only remaining department stores will be Belk and JCPenney.

Department stores in malls and shopping centers act as “anchor stores,” which are usually large, well-known stores that attract customers. After establishing popular department stores such as Sears or Macy’s, smaller stores pop up and aide the anchor stores and smaller businesses.

With the increasing popularity of online sellers, including Amazon and eBay, traditional department stores have suffered.

Amazon’s net sales hit $232.9 billion in 2018, compared to its net sales in 2004 of $6.9 billion. The online retail company's net revenue increased 31% between 2017-2018.

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UGA’s ICorps helps Athens man’s building idea become reality

8/6/2019

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Josh McCauley is the mastermind behind creating affordable, build-it-yourself housing options using recycled plastic that would end up in landfills.

As reported in the Athens-Banner Herald, McCauley worked in an architectural design and small manufacturing firm where he learned the basics of designing in 3D computer programs. He was a history education major in college, but he wasn’t working in construction. Even after living in Athens for more than a decade, he had no ties to the University of Georgia.

But one conversation with family friend and UGA alumnus Peter Dale helped connect McCauley with the university resources that could help him turn his idea into a reality.

Dale introduced McCauley to David Sutherland, a senior lecturer in innovation and entrepreneurship, and at one of Sutherland’s classes, McCauley met Ty Frix, a UGA alumnus and lecturer in the Terry College of Business.

While Frix was working for Innovation Gateway, UGA’s research commercialization office that helps researchers and community members like McCauley develop their ideas into actual businesses, he introduced McCauley to Tim Martin, the associate director of the UGA Startup Program, and Kevin Wu, a design engineer with the program.

In 2017, Innovation Gateway received a grant from the National Science Foundation to create a program on campus that helps startup businesses. Innovation Corps, or ICorps, assists entrepreneurs with figuring out whether there’s a market for their product and who their potential customers are.

“They say, ‘I’m interested in creating a startup company and this is what the product would be.’ Then we basically tell them not to talk about their product anymore; talk about who you would sell this to, and go talk to them,” said Martin.

During the four-week-long accelerator program, McCauley was to do at least 20 interviews with potential clients. After successful completion, each of the 30 teams receives $3,000 to continue the customer discovery process. Since 2017, 49 teams have graduated from the program.

“That whole process was different to me because I don’t have a business background at all,” McCauley said. “Through the interviews, it really helped shape and narrow down the idea from ‘it would be cool to do this’ to ‘what’s my next step?’”

He printed 3D models before getting involved in the program to show how the plastic blocks he envisioned would snap together to make the walls of a moderately-sized home. The final structures look like a honeycomb, which inspired the name of the company, COMB.

Martin and Wu helped McCauley write a provisional patent and showed him how finding investors could help reach his goal.

“My goal was to see how I could give this tool away to people who need it,” he said. “But I realized through the program that it’s not always an either/or choice of doing something good or making money and that I can use any profits from COMB to give back.”

Now, with Martin and Wu’s guidance, McCauley is going to meet with the Department of Community Affairs in Atlanta to share the project with them and get the office’s input on zoning and building codes before fundraising begins. He already has a manufacturer in Hartwell that can produce the blocks.

“If Josh’s idea takes off, he could develop a company that could hire people locally; it could be a sustainable business,” Martin said. “It could have an economic impact on the community. At Innovation Gateway, we want to be a good neighbor to the community. We want people in the community like Josh to know what we can offer and how we can help them build their company.”

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