Former Georgia football coach Mark Richt is still helping others while coping with Parkinson's

As a music mix from “Walking on Sunshine,” to “Jump Around,” to “It’s My Life,” blares inside the D1 Training facility in Watkinsville, a workout group of six adults in their upper 50s and older are moving on this first Wednesday morning of November.

Running on an indoor turf field. Stretching. Hitting boxing bags. Pulling bands.

A man in a black UGA hoodie tells the instructor: “Reminder here, we have Parkinson’s! You are going at warp speed.”

Mark Richt’s humor is directed at his sister, Mikki, who leads the 60-minute “Rock Steady Boxing” class with her husband, Kevin “Chappy” Hynes, who served as a UGA chaplain when Richt was Georgia football coach.

Richt’s 15-year run in that position ended eight years ago this month and five years ago he walked away from coaching after three seasons at his alma mater Miami.

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By most measures, Richt did his job well. He won two SEC championships at a school that hadn't won one in 20 years, reached the conference title game five times, had seven top 10 finishes and went 145-51 at Georgia, the best winning percentage at the time ever for a Bulldogs football coach.

He remains beloved by a large portion of the Georgia fan base for how he did his job with dignity, respect and kindness while also being more of a competitor than most may have known.

It’s now in his post-coaching life as an ACC Network analyst, public speaker, grandfather of three and once again Athens resident that appreciation for Richt has grown even if the program has risen to greater heights under his successor Kirby Smart.

Richt will be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame on Dec. 5 in Las Vegas.

“Coach is not defined by what he’s done or what he did,” former Georgia All-American defensive end David Pollack said. “That’s not how Coach is going to define success. He’s just a living, breathing, walking example of what it means to have an awesome relationship with Jesus. He’s got so much peace and content because of it.”

The 63-year old Richt isn’t slowing down much with a busy schedule even if he’s moving at a slower pace due to the effects of Parkinson’s.

That’s why he comes to D1 three times a week in the offseason — where he’s a business partner with son Jon and former Georgia fullback Fred Munzenmaier — and twice a week during the season.

“Probably the most important thing you can do with Parkinson’s is exercise vigorously,” Richt said.

Hitting a boxing bag and mitt with Everlast boxing gloves is just part of it and the class for those with Parkinson’s includes aerobic exercise and aims to improve agility and balance. Those in the group do “sit to stand,” holding a weight and standing up since the disease can make getting out of a chair challenging.

“It just tries to train your brain to able to do your normal daily functions,” Richt said. “The thing with Parkinson’s is you have to calculate everything you do even when you walk. … If I am standing still, I’m focusing hard on not tipping over.”

Richt gives himself two hours to put a coat and tie on because it could take him 10 minutes working on one button, but one of the former players on the ACC show will come to his hotel room “to fix what I couldn’t finish.”

Brad Johnson, the former Florida State and NFL quarterback and Richt’s brother-in-law, said Richt “doesn’t complain about the day. It’s there. … He walks a little slower, but he still has the same smile.”

In the two weeks before this workout, he hosted a bowling fundraiser that included Smart and his players, was on site for his ACC show at Miami, had a speaking engagement in Tennessee, went to a Georgia Southern game where his nephew plays, was inducted into the Georgia-Florida Game Hall of Fame in Jacksonville despite a 5-10 record against the Gators ("If I had a better record, I'd probably still be at Georgia,” he said that weekend) and was heading to N.C. State over the weekend.

“I’m more active than I thought I’d be,” Richt said. “Busier than I thought I’d be. I’m too busy quite frankly. I don’t do a good enough job taking care of my health because I’ve got this, that and the other thing going on.”

Richt said he needed to get more sleep, exercise more and eat better.

It's a good thing his 6 a.m. Wednesday men’s prayer group was scrapped on this morning. Pollack, whose relationship with Richt has grown since his college career ended in 2004, reached out to Richt about four years ago for guidance on raising kids and strengthening marriage.

Richt offered to join at Bible study, now held at Graystone Church.

“It’s fun to be around a bunch of younger guys that are kind of going through life with wives and kids and jobs and trying to be men of integrity, trying to stay accountable to one another in their faith,” Richt said.

Georgia fans got another chance to show their appreciation for Richt when he was recognized for going into the Hall of Fame at the home finale Nov. 11.

“I would think the Georgia people are tired of cheering by now,” he said beforehand.

Mark Fox was Georgia basketball coach for the final six and a half years of Richt’s time at Georgia and got to know him better from attending more than 80 events together in the state and region, including speaking at Bulldog Club events. They even attended a NASCAR race together and Fox would talk to Richt if he became frustrated by an aspect of his job.

“He made me a better person, a better man and a better coach,” Fox said. “We had fun together. We just had a good time.”

Fox visited Richt in Miami multiple times, staying at his home, watching him teach in the quarterback room and taking in preseason practices. Fox’s wife, Cindy, who became friends with Richt’s wife, Katharyn, joined him in Miami on one trip and they spent time together as couples.

He hasn’t seen Richt in person lately, but maintains their friendship by keeping in touch via calls or texts.

“I think the way Mark Richt has always lived, he’s never made himself the focal point of life,” said Fox, now on the Georgetown basketball support staff. “It’s always been about somebody else. The amount of people that he’s helped I think is remarkable, but he’s also impacted so many others who have never really had a chance to interact with him by the way he lives. I just think he’s made a remarkable impact on the world. He’s really going to leave a legacy of being a great man."

His impact includes atop the Georgia athletic department with Josh Brooks who is finishing up his third year as AD.

“He’s an inspiration for me and many others,” said Brooks, hired by Richt as football operation director in 2008 from Louisiana-Monroe. “He’s had such an impact on my life not only in my career but as a personal nature as well. He’s the model of how to be a father, how to be a husband, how to be a man of faith and a man of the community.”

Richt got the word he would be inducted into the Hall of Fame in January when a box was delivered to his home with a football with his record on that included a letter.

“We got emotional when we got the word,” Richt said. "I got hit up a lot, a lot of text messages and people just saying congratulations.”

A player from his Florida State days when Richt was offensive coordinator in the 1990s recently reached out to thank him for a hand-written note he wrote that encouraged him after he got injured. Richt sent similar notes even to media members for winning awards.

“He really dove into us as kids,” said Johnson, a former NFL quarterback who Richt coached as a young Florida State assistant. “He impacted us on the field and off the field in every way. When he went to Georgia, I was just happy for him. The thing about Mark is he really cared about kids and the transitions about what they’re going to go through in life and that showed that he cared not only about the hard work and wins and all the above but as human beings. Times have changed as college football has gone on. He had an incredible run at Georgia as a head coach.”

Richt was diagnosed with Parkinson's in May 2021 and went public that July after symptoms of balance issues, slow movements and tight muscles.

He’s taking Levodopa, which makes dopamine “to replenish the brain's dwindling supply,” according to the National Institute on Aging.

“He’s doing the best he can to live his life and to do the things that are important to him,” Pollack said.

Said Fox: “He’s got an unbelievable attitude. I think he’s always been a very grateful man. He obviously has a great faith, but he’s always lived very gratefully and I think even in the face of this, I sense that. There’s no feeling sorry for himself, I can promise you that.”

Richt helped raise about $767,000 from more than 1,300 donors for the bowling event for research for Parkinson’s and Crohn’s disease — which his granddaughter Jadyn has. The funds went to the Isakson Center for Neurological Disease Research at UGA which seeks to find new treatments and a cure for Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases and investigating its link to gut inflammation conditions such as Crohn’s disease.   They are using a multidisciplinary approach to try slow down the disease.

“He’s really interested in fighting this disease,” said Dr. Anumantha Kanthasamy, the center’s Johnny Isakson chair who came to UGA in 2021 from Iowa State. “As a coach, he’s a fighter. …That coach has Parkinson’s shows this can affect anybody at any day of their life. He wanted to really address this.”

Richt seems more relaxed than in the grind of his coaching days.

On the ACC Network, he did a Miami cheer after the Hurricanes beat Clemson.

When he joined Smart to announce the bowling event, Richt made a comment about the NCAA that was hard not to notice.

“If I had to go back and do it again it would be lie and deny,” Richt said. “Prove it.”

Richt lost star players Todd Gurley and A.J. Green to four-game suspensions for selling a bowl jersey and taking money for autographed memoribilla.

“As a head coach, I would be very measured in what I would say,” Richt said weeks later. “I would hold back those urges of what I thought might be funny. The words of a head coach are a little more powerful than the words of a TV analyst.”

Richt, who never won a national title as a head coach, said in reality, he doesn’t go back and wonder what could have been.

He’s living in the now. A planned trip with Katharyn for March to Israel was postponed after the war there started, but he still hopes to go.

“Just truly excited for him,” Johnson said, “because he did it the right way.”

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Mark Richt still helping others while coping with Parkinson's