Introducing the Barnhart Family Athletics Complex. See what UK did to make it so.
Cruise out Alumni Drive in Lexington beyond Kroger Field, and you’ll find a fortress of college athletics that serves as home to the University of Kentucky’s baseball, softball and men’s and women’s soccer teams.
That collection of venues, which houses Kentucky Proud Park (baseball), John Cropp Stadium (softball) and the Wendell and Vickie Bell Soccer Complex, now has a name of its own.
UK’s Board of Trustees on Tuesday titled it the Barnhart Family Athletics Complex, in honor of longtime Kentucky Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart and his wife, Connie.
The name was adopted at the request of Vickie and Wendell Bell — whose financial gifts to UK Athletics through the years have totaled more than $9 million — as part of their most recent donation.
University policy does not normally consider nominations to name buildings for active employees except in the most extraordinary cases. UK’s advisory committee on naming university property decided this situation fulfills the “extraordinary cases” clause as the donor’s gift was contingent on the naming.
“Vickie and Wendell Bell root for all UK sports. But they also became deeply devoted to sports that often aren’t played in the limelight, in front of thousands of fans or on national TV,” UK President Eli Capilouto said in a news release. “Mitch and Connie Barnhart’s passion for all of our sports — and all of our student athletes — has inspired the Bells’ giving in this way. That is extraordinary. And, in my judgment, meets the definition of extraordinary asked for in our regulations regarding these kinds of gifts.”
Kentucky Proud Park opened in 2019. John Cropp Stadium and the Wendell and Vickie Bell Soccer Complex debuted in 2013.
Barnhart has been UK’s director of athletics since 2002. He was named the nation’s Athletic Director of the Year by the Sports Business Journal in 2019.
Under Barnhart’s watch, UK Athletics has steadily risen through the Learfield IMG Directors’ Cup standings, which measure success in every sport each school year. Kentucky placed 14th nationally in 2018-19, third-best in school history behind its 10th in 2016-17 and 11th in 2014-15.