CATSPY Award winners

The CATSPY Awards are about celebrating the year, honoring the achievement of the Kentucky athletes and looking back at the memories made in the previous athletics season. In between, there is a little glitz, glamour and laughter sprinkled in during an awards ceremony that mixes the world’s best sports award shows and transforms them into a college edition of the ESPYs.The CATSPY Awards are also about looking forward to next season. At the end of every CATSPYs, Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart uses the opportunity to springboard into the upcoming athletics year in a state-of-the-department-like speech addressed directly at the student-athletes, coaches and athletics staff in attendance.Last year, Barnhart spoke of “intentional action” as he encouraged Kentucky’s 500-plus student-athletes to become not only role models on the field but off of it as well. The student-athletes responded in the community by participating in a yearlong food drive and a shoe drive headed up by track and field athletes Luis Orta and Josh Nadzam. Just a couple of weeks into the drive, Orta and Nadzam have collected 800-plus pairs of shoes. Barnhart commended the efforts and actions of the Wildcats while urging them to continue forward next year.”We appreciate what you do for us and all the hard work and effort you put into it,” Barnhart said Monday night on stage at the CATSPYs. “It means a great deal to us and means a great deal to the people in this state. The emotions of this state move with this department. Never, ever forget that.”As Barnhart looked ahead to the 2011-12 athletics season, he stressed leadership through actions.”It’s your actions, not your words, that will define you,” Barnhart said. Barnhart spoke a great deal about leaving a legacy. When each and every student-athlete signs with Kentucky, they’re handed a legacy to do something with, he said. “You were handed something when you came here,” Barnhart said. “Many will watch and see what you do with it when you leave. Your name, your number, your event, your team will be left behind at Kentucky and will be remembered.”Barnhart showed a brief clip from “Remember the Titans” to illustrate his point of actions, not words. Many people talk about leading, he said, but some have a tendency to lead down the wrong direction.In a year in which the Kentucky men’s basketball team returned to the Final Four for the first time since 1998 and the rifle team captured its first national championship, Barnhart wants to make sure the program continues to progress and doesn’t “plateau” or “flatline.””Nine years we’ve been doing this, and the first few years were pretty easy to pick out folks that should be up here getting awards,” Barnhart said. “It was a fairly simple process. It’s now becoming increasingly difficult. There are great performances all around.”But to continue the progress will take leadership to be consistent, Barnhart said. He wants to develop “habitual” winning, but he doesn’t want the routine of winning to lead to complacency or “being pleased with yourself,” as Barnhart defined it.To push into the future and to achieve the 15 by 15 by 15 Plan, a department-wide mandate to win at least 15 conference, tournament or national championships and rank among the NCAA’s top 15 athletic programs by 2015, Barnhart is looking for solutions.He met with the captains of all 22 varsity sports at UK a few weeks ago and asked, “What makes Kentucky better?” Barnhart said they’re still working on those answers, but he had one solution Monday night – act on success, not talk about it.”Step out, lead and do the little things that leave a legacy for the people that follow you that’s pretty special,” Barnhart said. “That’s what we’re asking all of us to do, coaches, staff and all of us included. We’ve got to move this thing to a different spot. To do that, it’s going to take a commitment from everybody in this room.”