Sports

Jim Green was the first African American track and field athlete in the Southeastern Conference and the first African American athlete to graduate from UK.

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TORI HERMAN NAMED SEC WOMEN’S CROSS COUNTRY SCHOLARATHLETE OF THE YEAR

Kentucky’s Tori Herman has been named the Southeastern Conference Women’s Cross Country Scholar-Athlete of the Year, the first Wildcat to earn the honor since it was first awarded in 2014.

The junior finance major boasts a 3.810 GPA. Outside the classroom, she recently placed second among 173 runners at the Panorama Farms Invitation with a personal-best 5,000-meter time of 16:29.2 and placed third out of 388 runners in the North Alabama Showcase, with a time of 16:33.65. ■

NEW TRACK AND FIELD FACILITY TO BE NAMED FOR NCAA, SEC CHAMPION

A new indoor track and field facility will be called the Jim Green Indoor Track and Field Center, named for Jim Green, the first African American student-athlete at Kentucky and in the Southeastern Conference to win NCAA and SEC Championships.

“The Jim Green Indoor Track and Field Center will highlight the groundbreaking career of a UK alumnus – the first African American student-athlete to graduate from the university of Kentucky,” Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart said. “I am pleased that the facility be named in honor of 1971’s fastest man in the world, Jim Green.”

“I am elated!” Green said. “It is a great honor and so very exciting - to have your name attached to something like this is special. I want to thank the university for everything they have done for me.”

The new facility for men’s and women’s indoor/outdoor track and field and cross-country teams will be adjacent to the UK Outdoor Track and the teams’ locker rooms and strength and conditioning areas in Shively Sports Center. It will feature a high-banked track, enabling the runners to train on a surface that is now standard for NCAA and SEC indoor championships.

Green was one of the SEC’s pioneers of integration and was a 2007 inductee into the University of Kentucky Athletics Hall of Fame. He’s an inductee into six Halls of Fame.

“It will be an honor to send our young athletes out to train and compete in a facility bearing such a prestigious namesake,” said Lonnie Greene, head coach of track and field and cross country. “Mr. Green blazed a courageous path of opportunity for so many who followed him, including our current team.”

Green was the first African American at UK to serve as co-captain on the track team and in December 1971 became the first African American student-athlete to graduate from UK.

Despite facing open hostility at many competitions, Green was a two-time NCAA champion, winning the indoor 60-yard dash in 1968 and 1971.

He earned All-America honors six times and won eight SEC individual events, including the indoor 60-yard dash (1968, 1971), outdoor 100-yard dash (1968, 1970, 1971), and outdoor 220-yard dash (1968, 1970, 1971).

A 1971 UK graduate, Green was born in Eminence, Kentucky.

The UK Board of Trustees approved spending of $20 million for the indoor track earlier this year as part of $30 million in approved funds for three UK Athletics capital projects, including new football scoreboards and the Nutter Field House renovation. The facilities are being financed by UK Athletics fundraising, which is in progress. ■

WOMEN’S GOLF FINISHES FALL CAMPAIGN WITH BACK-TO-BACK WINS

The Kentucky women’s golf team wrapped up its fall season in spectacular fashion, finishing first in back-to-back tournaments in October and marking a few school records along the way.

The team set the school record for the best team round in program history at the Illini Women’s Invitational in October, turning in a 13-under-par 275 in the first round (pictured). The team recorded a 277 in round two and 278 in round three to set another school record 34-under-par 830 to capture the title. The Cats won by five strokes, breaking the previous record, which was set during the spring 2022 campaign, by three strokes.

The Wildcats topped the field at the Ruth’s Chris Tar Heel Invitational at the Governors Club Golf Course in midOctober with a 4-under-par 860, winning over No. 1 ranked Wake Forest and No. 8 ranked Duke.

The team is scheduled to resume competition at the UCF Challenge, Feb. 5-7, in Orlando, Florida. ■

A SEASON OF HIGH EXPECTATIONS FOR MEN’S AND WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

The Kentucky men’s basketball team is riding high expectations into this season. The team was selected by Southeastern Conference media in preseason poll voting to win the conference title, an accomplishment that would be the seventh regular-season title earned under 14-year Head Coach John Calipari.

Senior Oscar Tshiebwe (pictured) was named preseason SEC Player of the Year with senior Sahvir Wheeler joining him on the preseason All-SEC First Team list. Tshiebwe, who is the reigning college basketball player of the year, was voted a unanimous preseason First Team All-American by the Associated Press. Wheeler was named to the watch list for the 2023 Bob Cousy Award, given to the best point guard in college basketball.

Tshiebwe and Wheeler will be joined by familiar faces including senior Jacob Toppin, junior Lance Ware and sophomore Daimion Collins. C.J. Fredrick, a redshirt senior who sat out last season rehabbing a hamstring injury is now healthy.

As always, high-caliber recruits have come into Lexington fighting for playing time.

Freshman Cason Wallace is a McDonald’s All American who averaged 19.9 points, 7.4 boards and 6.1 assists per game as a senior at Richardson High School in Dallas, Texas. Antonio Reeves is a senior transfer from Illinois State who has proven his mettle early by earning Most Valuable Player honors the Big Blue Bahamas Tour in August and the Blue-White preseason scrimmage in October.

Freshman Chris Livingston was added to the preseason watch list for the 2023 Julius Erving Award, given to the best small forward in college basketball.

A revamped roster highlights the Kentucky women’s basketball team for the 2022-2023 season as graduation and transfers took out five key players from last year’s SEC Tournament Championship squad.

Third-year Head Coach Kyra Elzy’s team features 10 newcomers as six first-year students and four transfers join returning players Robyn Benton (graduate), Blair Green (graduate), Emma King (senior), Nyah Leveretter (junior) and Jada Walker (sophomore).

Walker is expected to continue the momentum she gained during her outstanding breakout year, recording 47 steals, 64 assists and 10.4 points per game.

Junior guard Maddie Scherr (pictured), a transfer from Oregon and a former Kentucky Miss Basketball, brings experience and competitiveness to the shooting guard role. Benton is the team’s leading returning three-point shooter.

While Green is still working to get back to full strength after missing last season with a torn Achilles tendon, her contributions as a fifthyear senior leader are seen as crucial to the team’s continued growth. ■

THE FUN OF BEING A MYSTERY WRITER

By Sally Scherer

Police Inspector Agnes Luthi works in the violent crimes’ unit in Lausanne, Switzerland. She is also the main character in two Agnes Luthi Mysteries written by University of Kentucky alumna Tracee de Hahn ’91 DES, ’00 AS and published by St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books.

In “Swiss Vendetta,” Luthi finds herself called to the grand Chateau Vallotton on the eve of the worst blizzard Lausanne has seen in years. She’s sent there to investigate her first homicide case. In the second book, “A Well-Timed Murder,” Luthi is at the world’s premiere watch and jewelry show when the supposed accidental death of a Swiss watchmaker turns out to be something else. de Hahn came to mystery writing — also known as crime fiction, one of the most popular genres read today — with two degrees from UK, one in architecture, the other in history.

She will tell you that her degrees have helped her be a good writer. There are parallels between the study and practice of architecture and writing, she said. Both are creative, involve almost unlimited possibilities within constraints and offer all sorts of areas for preference, from beauty of the building to endless possibilities of where a storyline can take a reader.

“The things I learned at UK certainly impacted me from that day forward,” she said.

Her knowledge of history and many years living in Europe with her husband architect Henri de Hahn, helped her create the Luthi character and the environment in which her novels are set. And, in case you’re wondering, Tracee recently finished writing a mystery that takes place in Lexington, Kentucky. The main character is a woman who inherits a distillery and returns to Lexington after her husband is sent to prison.

Tracee grew up in Madisonville, Kentucky. She wasn’t much of a writer growing up, but she was a reader. When it came to choosing a career path, she was thinking of something traditional, like a teacher or a lawyer, an engineer or an architect.

One summer her father told her that he had an idea for a story and he needed her help to write it. She said she was excited about the idea and together she and her father spent the summer writing in what she calls a self-taught master’s class involving lots of research and lots of reading of other books. The story was completed, but they never pursued publishing it. They wrote two books together.

She practiced architecture after graduating from UK but had fallen in love with writing. But, she said, she didn’t realize she could switch gears and become a writer.

She and her husband moved to Europe where he taught for several years. After returning to the United States, she worked for non-profits including Lexington’s Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation and as assistant vice president of alumni relations at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California.

And she kept writing. She tried her hand at different genres, a thriller, a romance, a mystery. And then she took the next step and attended a workshop in New York City on how to pitch a story to agents and publishers. She met other writers and editors there and she found a woman who offered to represent her and a publisher who agreed to publish her work.

“It felt like a nice pool,” she said. “I was just walking around the pool and the next thing I knew I went off the high dive.”

“Swiss Vendetta” was published in 2017. “A Well-Timed Murder” in 2018.

Tracee is proud to be a mystery writer. She calls mystery writers, “the greatest group of people.” Even best-selling authors like Stephen King and Louise Penny want other mystery writers to do well and have success with their writing and their stories, she said.

“From those who write nonfiction to the horror thriller writers and the stories with the cats who talk and the ladies who knit, everyone is so nice.”

She participates in mystery writing groups, saying they help her learn. She’s a member of the Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers and she is the national membership liaison for Sisters in Crime. She also regularly attends mystery writer fan conferences such as Bouchercon, an annual convention of creators and devotees of mystery and detective fiction named for writer, reviewer and editor Anthony Boucher.

Her advice to others interested in writing? Keep at it, she says, and read as much as you can. Also, listen to criticism. “The best books have probably been edited so many times it would make your head hurt,” she said. “Writing is really re-writing. Prepare for that.”

What about the adage “write what you know”?

“The number of writers of crime fiction who actually commit crimes (particularly murder) is practically zero. I hope that’s enough of an example to demonstrate that writing what you know isn’t true,” she said.

She is doing research for another book that take place in the Baltic states between the first and second World Wars. It’s more of a historic novel, really, and Tracee has been reading memoirs as part of her research for it, one of which was written by her husband’s grandmother who was German and lived in the Baltic states at the time her novel is set.

“I know who my main character is and I know her story,” she said, explaining her writing process. “Now I have to decide who else is going to get a voice.”

“I have so many stories to tell,” she added. “That’s part of the fun of it.” ■