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Made In Clarksville: Sporty’s Awards Daniel Cantey, a former Army officer, then tenured professor at Bethel College, was ready for a career change in 2019. As luck would have it, he was introduced to Troy McNally by a mutual friend, and by October of that year, Cantey and his wife Drue were the proud owners of Sporty’s Awards in Clarksville. “We bought the business in October, 2019,” Cantey said. “The company has been in Clarksville since 1989, and Troy built this into a great business. My wife and I talk about what directions we want to take this in the future, but it was a blessing to be able to purchase a fully functioning business, and maintain it.” Sporty’s makes plaques, acrylic awards, trophies, medals, engraved plates, t-shirts and much more. They also do custom laser engraving on a variety of items. Cantey’s previous experience helped in many ways prepare him for this new venture, but, he says, some of the necessary skills are newly acquired. “I’m able to speak the lingo with the Fort Campbell guys,” Cantey said. “We do a lot with 5th SFG, and we just did a large order of trophies and plaques for Week of the Eagles. My background in management came from my time in the Army. I was taught the finer points of this business by Troy McNally, over a six month period.” “Engraving was a skill I was able to pick up, fortunately. I’m pretty good with my hands. And, I like running a small business. It’s great to develop relationships with my customers, my regulars and I are getting to know each other by name. But, to many, I’m still ‘the trophy guy’.” “We offer acrylics, which are hard clear awards, crystal, glass, premium and standard plaques, and resin awards, which are popular with the t-ball crowd. We work with recreational leagues, high school athletes, everyone really. We do traditional column trophies as well. We also do a lot of custom engraving. People bring in items for us to engrave, for any type of occasion. I did a flask set recently, we actually sell those. We also do tomahawks for 1st Command Financial Group.” “We want people to know we’re here, and that we can help with annual awards, big jobs, small jobs, whatever. We do big jobs for a lot of customers here in town, but we’re here for the small business as well. We can give you a great quality, affordable product. And if you need something we don’t have in stock, we can probably get it for you.”
102 • 3RD QUARTER 2021 CLARKSVILLE BUSINESS JOURNAL
