ATHENS, Ga. - Since being hired Sunday as Georgia's new head football coach, Kirby Smart has made recruiting visits, participated in an introductory news conference and conducted countless phone calls to both prospects and potential staff members.
It's a busy time for Smart, who is also Alabama's defensive coordinator for a few more weeks, but at least he has job descriptions.
Mary Beth Lycett played four seasons of basketball at Georgia from 1999 to 2003 and is now the wife of new Bulldogs football coach Kirby Smart.
Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart listens to a question from a reporter during a press conference where he was introduced as Georgia's new NCAA college head football coach Monday, Dec. 7, 2015, in Athens, Ga. Smart will stay with the Crimson Tide through the NCAA college playoffs. (AP Photo/John Bazemore) Mary Beth Smart has no idea what her duties will entail as the new "First Lady" of the Bulldog Nation.
"I don't see myself on the sidelines as the water girl," she said, referencing a role Katharyn Richt started in 2005 inside Sanford Stadium. "I'm going to do whatever he needs me to do, and I think I'm going to have to learn my role as the head coach's wife.
"I think it's going to be more of a transition for me, because he's been cultivated and prepared for this every single day."
The first objectives for Mary Beth include finding a home and schools for the couple's three children: Weston, Julia and Andrew. She will not move her kids from Tuscaloosa until those transactions are complete, but she intends to get to Athens as soon as possible.
Among the many who have reached out to her so far are Mark Richt's wife, a gesture that was deeply appreciated, but Mary Beth is no stranger to her looming locale.
Several months after Kirby finished his senior season as a Bulldogs safety in 1998, Mary Beth Lycett enrolled at Georgia as a scholarship basketball player for Andy Landers. She competed in 111 career games and was a freshman in 1999-2000, when the Lady Bulldogs went 32-4, shared the Southeastern Conference title with Tennessee and reached the NCAA tournament's Elite Eight.
One of her teammates that season was Angie Ball, now the wife of two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson.
"Mary Beth will be terrific," Landers said. "She's been around this all of her adult life, so she understands how this works and the demands of all of it and the scrutiny of all of it. When it's appropriate, she will own the spotlight, but she's not a person that is going to go look for it.
"She was a brilliant student, and the great thing about her is that she's not only intelligent but common-sense smart and great with people. She's got it figured out."
The Smarts became a serious couple in 2005, when Kirby spent one season as Georgia's running backs coach and Mary Beth was working in the athletic department.
"She is my rock, and as a coach's wife she plays the role of both parents a great deal of time at our home," Kirby said. "The coaching profession is tough on the wives, and she's done a great job with our children. She's raised them in a Christian home, and that makes me proud.
"She's a born and bred Bulldog. We met here in Athens, Georgia, and married here in Athens, Georgia, so it is in a sense a homecoming for our family."
Kirby has coached under Nick Saban the last nine years, so Tuscaloosa is the only home their children have known. Their kids now will be closer to grandparents and cousins, which Mary Beth described as "the most exciting" thing about this sizable change.
Then she paused, looked at her husband surrounded by reporters and made room for another aspect that's just as exciting.
"He has waited so patiently to get a job where he could win," she said, "and this is obviously one where he can win. He hasn't just been waiting on Georgia. That wouldn't be a fair statement, but that it's Georgia and the timing of all this has just been amazing."
Which has all put a spotlight back on a former women's basketball player accustomed to audiences.
"I don't think I was ever on quite this big of a stage," she said, beginning to laugh, "and now I have to wear heels."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.