Kelsey Nunley Named Senior CLASS Award Finalist

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Senior pitcher for the No. 12
Kentucky softball season has been named as one of the final 10 finalists for
the 2016 Senior CLASS Award, it was announced by the Premier Sports Management
group in Overland Park, Kan., on Wednesday.

Fans will be able to vote for Nunley one time
every day beginning on Wednesday through May 9, when voting closes after the
2016 Women’s College World Series.

Nunley leads Kentucky this season with a 1.33
ERA and a 13-3 record. In her 19 appearances in the circle, she has only
allowed 18 runs in 94 innings pitched. She has 121 strikeouts on the year
compared to just 20 walks on the year, and has beaten two nationally-ranked
teams already in 2016.

Fans can vote online one time per day on www.seniorCLASSaward.com for Nunley,
which is a large component of deciding the winner.

Kelsey Nunley’s Senior CLASS
Characteristics

Classroom

Kelsey Nunley already has received
two undergraduate degrees from the University of Kentucky. She has been on the SEC
Academic Honor Roll in 2013, 2014 and 2015 as well as having above a 3.0 GPA in
all of her undergraduate semesters so far. Nunley is the only player on the
team with two degrees already, one in communications and the other in community
and leadership development.

Character

Nunley won the CATSPY Award in 2015
for Ms. Wildcat, which is the highest honor that UK Athletics Director Mitch
Barnhart gives female athletes at Kentucky in the annual awards ceremony at the
end of each academic calendar year. She also was a finalist for Ms. Wildcat in
2014 after her breakout sophomore season. Nunley is an incredibly wonderful
person to be around on a day-to-day basis, and she is always wearing a smile.
She is extremely organized and timely to all team functions on and off the
field, whether it is games and practices or academic and social obligations.
She is always chosen to represent the Wildcats in the media room after wins and
losses and handles herself with grace and dignity on and off the camera and
behind the microphone. She has taken on the role of captain for the second year
in a row, and is continuing to lead Kentucky to places that the program has
never seen before.

Community

Nunley has dozens of community
service hours in the Lexington area, as well as in her home of Soddy Daisy,
Tennessee. She has helped out with the United Way, God’s Pantry, the Lexington
Miracle League, Breakfast with Santa at UK Children’s Hospital, Salvation Army
and the Christian Student Fellowship. In all of her years at Kentucky, Nunley
has assisted in community service with the Kentucky Backpack Program, through
which student-athletes pack lunches for local kids at elementary schools who
aren’t privileged enough to afford their own lunches. Nunley takes the time to
pack those lunch sacks and then deliver them to the schools in the Lexington
area. Additionally, this summer, she spent her break helping clean Commonwealth
Stadium and prepare it for UK’s opening football game after a multi-million
dollar renovation.

Competition

Nunley has achieved essentially
everything she can in the circle for the Wildcats, including leading Kentucky
to its first-ever Women’s College World Series in 2014, pitching every single
pitch of the postseason for UK. This includes every pitch of the 2014 SEC Tournament,
in which the team made the championship game, a four-game NCAA Regional and a
three-game Super Regional win over No. 3 seeded UCLA on the road. She has been
named the SEC Pitcher of the Week on three occasions, was on the 2014 Women’s
College World Series All-Tournament Team in 2014, All-SEC Second Team in 2014
and 2015, and was named to the 2015 SEC Coaches’ Preseason All-SEC Team. Nunley
is 84-41 in her career for the Wildcats with 107 career starts and a career ERA
of just 1.97 in the SEC, which is widely considered the best hitting conference
in the country. Nunley is Kentucky’s all-time wins leader with 74, passing
Chanda Bell in 2015, and also is second on the UK strikeout list with 719 K’s in her
career including 219 of them in 2014. Nunley was named an All-Tournament Team member of the Women’s College World Series, the first in
program history.

For the latest on the Kentucky softball team, follow @UKSoftball on Twitter, Instagram
and Facebook, as well as on the web at UKathletics.com.