It was the rubber game of the 2020 conference-opening series against Texas A&M. The Kentucky Wildcats had opened a healthy lead in the game after two early grand slams, but putting a W in the books and cementing a positive start to SEC play was imperative for the squad.
During a middle-inning break, four youngsters took their places at the right field foul pole. Each of them carried an oversized cutout of one of the Wildcats’ four senior student-athletes. At the call of “Go!”, the quartet took off across the warning track, aiming to be the first to reach the left field foul pole and be crowned the winner. Senior center fielder Bailey Vick’s cutout quickly took the lead as the group raced along. From her spot in the outfield, Vick herself paused her warm-up throws with a teammate as the four sped past her position. As the cardboard Vick raced to the victory, the human Vick began jumping up and down, pumping her first and cheering.
That constant level of high energy was a quality that had come to define Vick during her career in Wildcat blue. The occasion never mattered; Vick’s infectious personality was always on display, whether her team had just scored the winning run in a game or a youngster carrying a poster with her face on it had won a race across the outfield.
A native of Paducah, Kentucky, Vick has a family history within Kentucky athletics. “My great-grandfather was the team doctor under Coach Rupp, for Kentucky basketball,” she said. “Pretty much since I was a year old, I grew up going to Kentucky basketball games.” Nevertheless, when it came time to make a decision on college, her initial choice didn’t have her heading to Lexington, but instead about eighty miles westward, at the University of Louisville.
“I honestly didn’t plan to play softball in college,” Vick recalled. “I had played travel ball, but I didn’t play the across-the-country kind of travel ball, so I was actually going to Louisville just to be a regular student. I already had my class schedule and a roommate set up, and I remember that I was on spring break and coach [Kristine] Himes called me.”
That call from the Kentucky associate head coach changed the entire trajectory of Vick’s collegiate plans. The Wildcats needed a speedster to run the bases, and they wanted Vick to fill that role. “I remember telling her ‘I would literally do anything to wear that jersey,'” Vick said recently. “When I was little and would see coach Lawson at travel tournaments, I would always think to myself ‘I would be the bat girl to get to wear that jersey.'”
In her first year wearing the Kentucky blue, Vick did far more than just run the bases. She started every game for the Wildcats during her freshman season and batted .321 on the year, earning All-Conference Freshman & Defensive honors following the season. “After I agreed to go [to UK], I kinda thought, ‘well, I don’t want to *just* base run. That would stink. And the rest, as they say, I guess is history,” Vick noted with a chuckle.
As impressive as her on-field achievements were during her four years in Lexington, perhaps greatest of all were Vick’s academic advancements. A walk-on for her first two years on the softball team, she received only academic scholarship dollars for both her freshman and sophomore years. Selected to the CoSIDA Academic All-American 1st Team following her sophomore season in 2018, when her playing career ended in March of 2020, Vick had received just one grade lower than an “A” during her entire college carer. That one grade? An 89-B.
In mid-May, she was named the 2020 SEC Softball Scholar-Athlete of the Year, officially ending her collegiate career with a 3.972 grade point average.
Despite the NCAA’s granting of extended eligibility for seniors whose seasons were cut short, Vick recently announced that her playing career at UK has ended. She will begin a career with an accounting firm later this year, immediately utilizing her degree in that field.
Reflecting on her career as a Wildcat, Vick listed her favorite memories as her team’s 11-run comeback over Marshall just days before the 2020 season ended, as well as “being on base whenever Alex [Martens] hits a home run.” With her playing career now done, Vick’s multi-faceted, stellar career in blue and white assures that her legacy as a Wildcat will be remembered for so much more than just running the bases.
