Jen Smith

Passionate, enterprising former sports journalist with more than 20 years of experience, including Southeastern Conference football and women's basketball beats. Journalism lecturer at the University of Kentucky specializing in sports issues, reporting and editing. 

Twitter: @ByJenSmith; email: jensmith712@yahoo.com

A few favorite feature stories

Explore a featured selection of my writing work below. These are long-term features and profiles that give insight into writing style, reporting ability.

Lexington Herald Leader •

Family broken, knees battered, UK football player finds way to ‘just keep living life’

With his fingertips, he gently traces the discolored lines.

Some are older wounds guarded by hardened, darkened tissue.

Some are wounds still soft from his most recent surgery.

These raised dots and lines — scars from five surgeries in three years — tell the story of how Alexander Montgomery’s college football career ended.

But there are other scars, ones that can’t be so gently traced, that have shaped who he is and who he will become.

Those scars tell the story of a lifetime of isolation,
Lexington Herald Leader •

Father of college football’s Stoops brothers an ordinary man with an extraordinary legacy

The blue shag carpet just couldn’t contain the thuds and thumps of four rambunctious boys at bedtime.

“It was quite the rumpus,” said Dee Stoops, a mother of six, including the four brothers who were creating the clatter reminiscent of a Barnum & Bailey circus — elephants included — in their shared upstairs bedroom.

“Their dad would march up the steps and they’d know they were in trouble,” she said, laughing. “He was stern.”

But by the time Ron Stoops Sr. would get back down the stairs of the
Lexington Herald Leader •

Boy's life of desperation changed forever by UK football player's act of love

Landon Foster did everything he could to shake the pesky boy following him around as he delivered bags of food to lepers in Ethiopia.

"Mom, they're pushy here," Tina Foster recalled her son telling her of the people around him on his service trip with fellow members of the University of Kentucky football team.

Spending days in villages filled with people eating from a nearby garbage dump, the trip felt overwhelming for the UK punter.

Foster tried to construct an emotional wall to steel himsel
Lexington Herald Leader •

How Kentucky football’s Gran found faith, perspective

Coaches filed out of the locker room one by one with hands jammed in pockets, eyes surveying the floor.

Their Auburn team had just coughed up a two-touchdown lead in the final three minutes to Mississippi State at home.

Families waited under the bleachers near the door knowing exactly what to expect next: saltiness and bitterness with a dash of woe-is-me.

It’s a familiar wait for those closest to coaches.

“You come out and are a turd to your family,” Eddie Gran said of the postgame pity para

Collection of feature, enterprise, beat stories

Lexington Herald Leader •

Once abandoned himself, Kentucky linebacker never leaves a teammate behind

He stood on the sidewalk outside of a Burger King.

His quivering hands matched only by his quivering lips, the 11-year-old boy held a cup with a few coins in it. He quietly asked for spare change as people went in and out the glass door.

A car across the parking lot idled nearby with his father inside.

Cory Love adored his son, but he had to teach him a lesson.

“You might as well start practicing now,” the former U.S. Marine had just finished telling Courtney, his son.

“He cried and cried.
Lexington Herald Leader •

'Mama Fowler' enters UK football players' hearts through their stomachs

They lean in hesitantly to smell the chunky contents, swish them around like they're taking part in a bad wine tasting contest.

"Just try it," the shot glass distributor urges.

"It's called lentil soup?" a skeptical player asks. "Is that because it tastes like the lint between your toes?"

Monica Fowler tries hard to hide her amusement and stick to the serious task at hand: Getting young men, many twice her size, to drink the lentil soup in their shot glasses.

All of the players comply.

Not
Lexington Herald Leader •

‘The Wildcats are with you.’ A coach, a QB and a special visit to a boy’s hospital room.

A little more than a week ago, Dalton Green was just like any other kid.

He did normal 11-year-old boy things: soccer practice, corny jokes, Nerf gun wars with his dad and quiet moments zooming Hot Wheels across the floor.

“He’s one of those kids that loves to talk,” said Doug, Dalton’s dad. “And I would beg him, ‘Please, please, please just be quiet for five minutes.’

“I will never ask him to be quiet again.”

A silent, unresponsive Dalton in that big bed at the pediatric intensive care unit
Lexington Herald Leader •

Lady Vols teammates happy to be coaching together at Kentucky

Even before they became lifelong friends, Pat Summitt lumped them together.

The Tennessee coach had heard in the breeze that one of her players might have been spotted at the football dorm, a no-no for the Lady Vols.

So instead of summoning Kyra Elzy for an old-fashioned talking-to, the coach grabbed teammate Niya Butts instead.

“Coach Summitt comes to me and was like, ‘If she does anything else and gets in trouble, you’re going home,’” Butts recalled with a laugh some 20 years later. “I look
Lexington Herald Leader •

‘Nothing ever comes easy.’ That lesson has forged a potential UK superstar.

In a multitude of minuscule ways, Josh Allen has been training his entire life to be an outside linebacker.

Rarely has there been a direct path, or a path of least resistance in front of him.

The Kentucky senior always has had to twist and turn, to contort his body to get around a 320-pound guy — whether real or metaphoric — standing in the way of his desired destination.

Allen, whose name is being mentioned among potential first-round NFL Draft picks next year, has had plenty of bypasses and
Lexington Herald Leader •

UK player’s father is gone, but his memorial is a comfort. ‘I was meant to be here.’

LaShae Halsel was playing with friends on a day off from school when she saw a shiny car pull up in front of her house just down the street.

“Two men in uniform got out,” she recalled. “I just stopped. Then I started running to the house.”

By the time her 9-year-old legs got Halsel to the front door, the men were gone and she found her older brother, Donovan, there in tears. The men had come to speak to their mother, but she was at work.

“He said the men were crying. He knew,” Halsel said of
Lexington Herald Leader •

When Cats were backed into a corner, Mark Stoops came out swinging: ‘I’m not going to go down easy’

The roar of the jet engine helped drown out the overwhelming silence.

The quiet ride gave Kentucky’s football players and coaches plenty of time to absorb the loss they’d just experienced at Florida.

“They beat us bad; they beat us so bad,” said UK wide receiver Alexander Montgomery, who was on the sideline for the 45-7 loss at The Swamp on Sept. 10. “That was embarrassing for all of us. They embarrassed us on CBS.”

It was the second straight week of angry, long faces in the Cats’ locker room
Lexington Herald Leader •

One of Cats’ key coaches is a guy often seen, barely heard

Close your eyes and imagine a football strength and conditioning coach.

Imagine the backward hat and the whistle around a thick neck, nose centimeters away from the player’s nose, obscenities flying.

That is not Kentucky’s Corey Edmond.

That is the opposite of Kentucky’s Corey Edmond.

“Everybody’s trying to make YouTube videos, trying to pump up what they do,” he said of the strength coach archetype. “I’d rather be here doing what I do.”

And what he does is quietly make a difference.

In Ed
Lexington Herald Leader •

Akhator a positive force for Kentucky amid a life of hardship

As her clothes whirled around and around in the dryer nearby, Evelyn Akhator’s world turned upside down.

She had noticed the multiple missed calls from her family that day, but she decided not to call them back until she had finished her laundry.

When she saw that her brother was calling again, she answered.

“Mama just had an accident,” he told her.

Akhator’s mind started to spin like the clothes in the dryer. There were scarce details available, so maybe it was all a misunderstanding, a mis

Sports business, facilities stories

Most of these stories were enterprise features, which I got before all other outlets covering the University of Kentucky at the time

Lexington Herald Leader •

Commonwealth Stadium suites paying off big for Kentucky football; see who’s in them

When Kentucky unveiled its plans for renovations at Commonwealth Stadium in 2013, the goal was to give the aging football venue a new personality.

As long as he’d been the athletics director, Mitch Barnhart never felt as though the massive structure had much of a Southeastern Conference stadium feel to it.

A $126 million renovation that included premium seating and new luxury suites on the south side of the stadium has changed the way Barnhart — and many others — view Commonwealth Stadium.

“W
Lexington Herald Leader •

An inside look at proposed Memorial Coliseum upgrades and their possible price tag

If the University of Kentucky gets key items on its Memorial Coliseum renovation wish list it will cost the school about $15 million, according to documents released to the Herald-Leader.

A feasibility study commissioned by the UK Athletics Department says that renovating the 68-year-old building at the center of campus could have a big price tag.

Updating the aging facility probably will be an important part of the university’s upcoming capital campaign, which has not kicked off yet.

“I don’
Lexington Herald Leader •

Big coaches' salaries could now mean big tax payments for schools like Kentucky, Louisville

Earlier this summer, Mitch Barnhart balked at the rising cost of college athletics.

“We’re growing faster than we have in the past and a lot of that is things we can’t control,” the Kentucky athletics director said in an interview with the Herald-Leader.

He rattled off a list of logical culprits: “Travel expenses have become difficult (and the) cost of higher education has become significantly more.”

And then Barnhart mentioned one new operating expense that isn’t getting a lot of attention,
Lexington Herald Leader •

New cost-of-attendance payments to athletes not as large at Kentucky as some of its competitors

Imagine pulling up to a drive-through and seeing a Kentucky football player waiting there with your shake and fries.

"I think about it all the time," the UK defensive back said, "maybe just work at McDonald's for two days a week or something, then maybe I'll have some money in my pocket for extras."

A decision this spring by UK Athletics officials will put a bit of extra money in the pockets of McClain and every other scholarship athlete at the university starting in August.

The decision is n
Lexington Herald Leader •

What should UK do about ‘antiquated’ Memorial Coliseum? Even Barnhart’s not sure.

Walk with Kentucky’s athletics director through the concourses of Memorial Coliseum and you will see the past.

Not in the dated trophy cases or the yellowing, cracking ceiling tiles.

No, the past would be present on brand-new, state-of-the-art video screens side by side with trophies dating back decades to great moments in University of Kentucky history.

“A walking tour of the building,” Mitch Barnhart offers. “How cool would that be? Really cool.”

In his mind, Barnhart sees history come to
Lexington Herald Leader •

What’s in a name change? A lot more than you think

It was like a magic act performed on campus last week when officials yanked a sheet off a large picture of Commonwealth Stadium to reveal the rendering of the new name: “Kroger Field.”

But it takes quite a bit more than that to formally alter the name of a 44-year-old venue that sits in a conspicuous place in the city and on campus.

There’s quite a bit of physical, emotional and digital magic still to be done.

“Obviously there’s a lot of roads to go down, but we’re doing our best to figure ou

Coverage of player exodus under Mitchell at UK

I broke news almost daily on a developing story around coach, player departures

Lexington Herald Leader •

UK’s Mitchell takes responsibility for basketball team ‘upheaval’

Four Sweet Sixteen trips in the past five years.

Seven straight seasons with 24 or more victories.

All of those numbers mean something to Kentucky Coach Matthew Mitchell.

But there are other numbers swirling around the Cats coach these days.

Six players who have parted ways — five who transferred out and one dismissal — with the Kentucky program since October.

Two commitments, including a McDonald’s All-American, who have backed out of their promise to play for UK in the last two days.

And
Lexington Herald Leader •

Q&A: Kentucky’s Mitchell discusses his issues, departures, plans for team’s future

University of Kentucky women’s basketball coach Matthew Mitchell spoke with the Lexington Herald-Leader on Wednesday morning about the season-long spate of player and coach departures that have plagued the program and led to doubts about incoming recruits.

Mitchell, contrite and quiet in the interview, has watched three assistant coaches and two players depart in recent weeks. He rehired friend and former assistant Kyra Elzy on Wednesday and expects more familiar faces to return as he attempts
Lexington Herald Leader •

UK assistant: Moving on from Cats’ coaching staff is ‘best thing for me’

Camryn Whitaker will always be a Kentucky fan, but she needed to move on from Kentucky’s staff.

The Cynthiana native, who is the third and final member of Matthew Mitchell’s UK coaching staff to depart in the last two weeks, said she’s looking for another job.

“The best thing for me and for everybody is that I’m pursuing other opportunities,” Whitaker told the Herald-Leader on Wednesday, declining to go into details surrounding her departure.

“That’s about all I can say right now. … I don’t w
Lexington Herald Leader •

UK resignation letters, personnel file offer little insight into women’s basketball turmoil

The resignation letters of two assistant coaches offer little insight into the turmoil within the Kentucky women’s basketball program the past few months.

In fact, the letters submitted by assistant coaches Tamika Williams-Jeter and Camryn Whitaker and acquired by the Herald-Leader via an open records request are friendly in nature.

Whitaker’s resignation letter, dated three days after Mitchell announced the assistant coach planned to seek other employment, thanked the head coach for offering