John Schlarman (UK Athletics Photo)
Lexington Herald-Leader columnist Mark Story has spent a lot of years overseeing nominations and votes for the Herald-Leader Kentucky Sports Figure of the Year. He thought Kentucky offensive line coach John Schlarman was the perfect winner for his year’s award.
“John sort of fits the year and the story of somebody battling adversity and in many ways triumphing against adversity,” said Story. “He won by the biggest margin in the last four years.”
Schlarman played at Kentucky, was a graduate assistant coach at UK, and came back to UK as the offensive line coach when Mark Stoops was hired eight years ago. Schlarman was diagnosed with cancer before the 2018 season and died midway of this season. His last game coaching was UK’s win at Tennessee where he got the game ball just like he did in 2018 when the Cats won at Florida.
“The thing that was the most inspirational about John is that he didn’t let it (cancer) cheat him out of his life,” Story said. “He wanted to do what he did until the end and that is what he basically did.
“The adversity he was up against made him the winner but he also did a heck of a job building an offensive line at Kentucky. The conventional wisdom always was you could not play run-oriented football at Kentucky and win in the SEC.
“But in 2018 his line blocked for Benny Snell, UK’s all-time leading rusher. In 2019 they blocked for Lynn Bowden and he led the SEC in rushing as a receiver. In 2020 they won a bowl game again and had three offensive linemen who got all-SEC or All-American honors.”
Schlarman got more first-place votes than any winner in the past four years had.
