In 2008, University of Kentucky Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart established an academic target the Wildcats had never reached – a composite 3.0 grade-point average for the students of UK Athletics.
It took four years to accomplish, as UK – at the time numbering approximately 500 student-athletes – scaled the peak by posting a department-wide GPA of 3.03 in the fall semester of 2012.
Now, with grades for the 2022 spring semester finalized, UK Athletics has surpassed its goal of a 3.0 composite GPA for 20 straight semesters, as Wildcat scholarship student-athletes combined to achieve a GPA of 3.