John Clay: A small but close Kentucky football senior class wants to leave a legacy

There are not many of them left.

When Kentucky plays Louisville on Saturday, 17 seniors — plus two juniors bypassing their senior seasons — will be playing their final game at Commonwealth Stadium and possibly their final game of college football.

Only 11 of the 17 seniors arrived under the previous head coach, Joker Phillips, before Mark Stoops took over as Kentucky’s head coach in 2013.

“We got whittled out pretty good,” senior offensive guard Zach West said this week. “Not a bad thing. But there’s only a few of us left.”

Some exited on their own. Some were encouraged to seek other places in which they might find more playing time. Some stayed a season or two before departing. And some have stuck it out to make it to Saturday when there is (a) the urgency of UK needing a win to reach a bowl game for the first time since 2010 and (b) the usual emotion of Senior Day.

“It’s my last go-around here at Commonwealth,” West said. “I feel like I’ve been here for a long time. I got to live a dream for a short amount of time, so there’s going to be a lot of emotion to it.”

“I’ve seen it three years,” said senior linebacker Khalid Henderson out of Mableton, Ga. “I’ve seen guys come out there with their families. Now it’s my turn. It’s kind of weird. I’ll deal with that when it comes.”

This senior class has had a lot to deal with, most notably the biggest challenge a college athlete can experience, a coaching change.

“Those guys never asked for any change,” said Stoops this week. “But they’ve embraced us and our staff since we’ve been here and tried to do their part in changing the culture and having a winning attitude and a winning environment. They’ve been very good that way.”

Not that they have forgotten the head coach and staff who brought them to UK in the first place.

“I just know that when Joker was here he was a really quality guy and he tried to make us into outstanding men as well as football players,” said senior offensive tackle Jordan Swindle, who came to UK from St. Johns, Fla. “I was sad to see him go, but when Coach Stoops came in and his staff it was awesome for us as well.”

“It has definitely been a trial,” said senior defensive tackle Farrington Huguenin out of Columbia, S.C. “It’s definitely been a long road but now that we’re toward the end of it, it’s been good.”

To a man, the seniors say that long road has brought this class close together.

“Just the other day we were looking at pictures of when we first came in and all that,” Huguenin said. “It’s definitely a close group. That’s what you do in football, you form a brotherhood.”

How have things changed for that brotherhood?

“You’ve got guys on this team that believe they can win games. That wasn’t the case when we first got here,” said West, who played at Lexington Christian Academy. “When Coach Stoops came in and he asked how many guys think we can win the SEC championship, I bet maybe a handful of guys raised their hands. That’s different now. Now the whole room is going to raise their hands. That’s the major difference.”

Now that class wants to accomplish something the program hasn’t accomplished in five years.

“Hopefully, (we’ll be) the class that turned the tide,” Swindle said. “If we win this last game, when we win this last game, we’re the class that turned it around and went to a bowl game and led classes below us to keep that legacy going.”

“You want to leave a mark,” Henderson said, adding, “We all have a good connection. Even though we didn’t come up with the Stoops era, we understand that we’re part of his organization now and we want to see it build and grow so we can come back and be a part of the family.”

This story was originally published November 27, 2015 at 5:21 PM with the headline "John Clay: A small but close Kentucky football senior class wants to leave a legacy."