Georgia OC Mike Bobo on what life is like raising 5 athletic kids while always on the road

Georgia offensive coordinator Mike Bobo always wanted a big family.

But the former UGA quarterback couldn't have pictured a starting basketball lineup with triplets to boot.

"It was just me and my sister (growing up), and I love my sister to death, but I think we always wished, she probably wished she had a sister and I wished I had a brother, that's probably why I was so tough on her," Bobo said. "My wife came from; it was her and her older brother. So, when I met my wife, after we started talking about marriage and a family, we always talked about having more than two kids.

"I never thought we might have five kids, but it's definitely been a blessing."

With that many mouths to feed and bodies to clothe, the villain of stress is everywhere.

And for superhero parents like Mike and Lainie Bobo, their kryptonite is sports.

There's also the fact that two of their five kids attend different schools now that they're back from stints in Alabama, South Carolina and Colorado.

The eldest, Drew, attends Georgia, where his father is the offensive coordinator for Kirby Smart's powerhouse football team and the youngest, Kate, attends North Oconee as a sophomore.

Two thirds of the triplets, Olivia and Ava, are with Kate at North Oconee as juniors. Meanwhile, the third musketeer, Jake, has decided to take his high school experience down the road to Prince Avenue Christian.

When they were kids, they were all part of the Prince Avenue system, attending the private Christian school until Mike took the head coaching job with Colorado State in 2015. When they returned to Athens in 2022, when Mike joined head coach Kirby Smart's roster after stints at South Carolina and Auburn, they were left with a choice: return to Prince Avenue or go somewhere else in the area.

That somewhere else was Titan country.

"We let them visit both schools," Mike said. "They actually all went to North Oconee for the first year (back), and then a lot of Jake's buddies that he kind of reconnected with from before, who he was hanging out with, were at Prince and he decided to go back there. We really didn't like the kids going to different schools, but I want to have a good high school experience. ... The girls love North Oconee and Jake loves Prince and they're having good high school experiences and enjoying playing sports."

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"I chose North Oconee (in the beginning) because we had a good experience when we lived in Auburn at a public school, but it just wasn't the same as what I thought it would be (here)," Jake explained. "I just kind of wanted to go back to a Christian school because that's what we had been in our whole life."

Jake was the backup quarterback for Greg Vandagriff's championship-winning football team and a combo guard for J.D. Powell's basketball team at Prince Avenue.

Olivia, Ava and Kate all play for Erick Willis' basketball team at North Oconee.

"We'd always gone to school together, so it's definitely a little different, but he likes it there and it's a lot better for him," Ava said. "It's always been the three of us and we've always just all been friends, but if he's happy there, and he is, then we are fine with it."

"It's still kind of the same, sometimes, because he's not that far down the road," Kate added.

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Getting five kids to their different practices and games when they were young was tough, Mike said. Especially with his work schedule keeping him on the recruitment trail constantly. But lucky for him, he's aware he has a great wife; Lainie has kept them afloat even in the deepest of waters with her schedule juggling abilities — the girls said she even shocks them sometimes with just how much she handles.

It's a lot easier now that they can drive, of course.

"We tried to put our kids in positions where they've gotten a chance to do what they want to do and they all chose to play sports, whether it was basketball, baseball, football," Mike said. "Growing up, my wife and I wanted to try to let them experience whatever it was they wanted to experience, whether travel baseball or AAU basketball, which we did a lot of in Colorado and the girls did it in South Carolina, too. If they wanted to play in a tournament or play with a team, we were going to find a way to get them there."

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Mike Bobo tries to recruit in the state on Fridays so he can make it back for their basketball games at night. He did that a few weekends ago, spending the day in Atlanta and then catching both schools playing games that same night.

Football season is a bit more difficult for him to navigate, but that's what cellphones are for, he said. If he's not in person, he's streaming games using the NFHS Network or whatever other service he can get his hands on.

"He'll like text us and be like, 'Good pass' or something when he's watching, even though we can't see it," Olivia said.

His spirit is there in the gym, somewhere in their cell phone frequencies.

"He does as much as he can for us and he's always working, and it's always for us," Jake said. "He'll try his best to watch all of our games, mine and my sisters, and after every game he'll call us and ask how we think we did and how it went, he's always on top of it like that."

It's never easy having to miss, or even having to pick one over the others for a night.

"My dad isn't always around, but he's always providing for us and that's his job, like he has to do that," Ava said. "I think sometimes he might get sad that he's not always around, but we know what he's doing it for and...

"Whenever he can be, he's always there," Olivia finished.

Sara Tidwell covers Athens-area high school sports and University of Georgia athletics for The Athens Banner-Herald. Contact her at stidwell@gannett.com and follow her @saramtidwell on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Georgia OC kids play sports at North Oconee, Prince Avenue