The LaGrange High School pipeline has been a gold mine for the Kentucky football team over the last 15 years.Kentucky originally tapped the pipeline in 1996 with the signing of wide receiver Quentin McCord. UK returned to LaGrange, Ga., in 2003 to sign linebacker Wesley Woodyard, who went on to become an All-Southeastern Conference linebacker and make it to the NFL.Since then, LaGrange has pumped out valuable signees to the University of Kentucky like a football factory. Joining Woodyard at UK has been the likes of Demoreo Ford and Braxton Kelley, as well as current players Tristian Johnson, Randall Burden, Mychal Bailey, Qua Huzzie, Joe Mansour and Patrick Simmons.The one constant of the pipeline throughout the signings was who was on each side of the pipeline. On one end, Kentucky always had Joker Phillips, whether it was as recruiting coordinator, offensive coordinator or head coach. On the other end, LaGrange had Steve Pardue. With the recent hiring of Pardue as UK’s running backs coach, what happens to the pipeline in LaGrange? Without one of the integral parts in LaGrange, does it slowly deteriorate and fail to exist? Or will Pardue’s ties with the community and his longstanding relationship with the high school help strengthen the Kentucky channel?”I don’t know about the LaGrange pipeline,” Pardue said. “I know it’s a good story for the papers and everything, but obviously if they got a player there, we’ll recruit it. Hopefully there will be some other schools that we’ll get into. I think you’ll see that happen. People made a lot about that pipeline deal, but I think that happens at other places too.”Pardue, who coached at LaGrange for 17 seasons, didn’t take a lot of credit for the channel, instead pointing to Woodyard for tapping the pipeline.”Wesley Woodyard, to be honest with you, he’s the architect of that,” Pardue said. “Wes got it going, had a great experience here and he kind of sold it to our kids. LaGrange is a tight community. The kids kind of kept coming up here and liking it. We’ll see what’s down the road there and I’ll obviously recruit them as hard as any other school.”Regardless of what happens in LaGrange, the hiring of Pardue is expected to strengthen Kentucky’s ability to recruit kids from Georgia, a fertile recruiting ground for UK over the years.”One thing that I wanted to do is hire someone that could recruit the southern part of Georgia and also had some Kentucky ties,” Phillips said. “Coach Pardue has been on the Georgia High School Coaches Association for a number of years and was a perfect fit for what we were looking for. We think that Georgia is really important for us and we wanted to branch out and get into the southern part of Georgia. He brings that to us and also has strong ties here in Kentucky being a high school player and coach here at Kentucky.”The move to the collegiate ranks for the Kentucky-born coach will be his first move past the high school level, but Pardue isn’t worried about the change. “I’m not looking at it as going into a college job,” Pardue said. “I’m looking at going into the University of Kentucky working for Joker Phillips. I think the game of football, I’ve obviously still got a lot to learn with terminology and everything, but I don’t think that’s different at any level.”Pardue cited Phillips as his No. 1 reason for joining the UK staff, adding that he had prior opportunities to make the jump to UK. “I’m at a point in my career where I kind of felt like I needed a little recharge, to be honest with you,” Pardue said. “I had been doing high school football for 26 years. A lot of people thought, well, you ought to stay four more and you can retire. That was tempting, but my wife and I have been talking about this for about a year. My mom passed in January, which kind of clouded some things. This came along and I decided you only live once. It’s a chance to coach in the SEC and in my home state. That means a lot to me, the University of Kentucky does.”