Kentucky Wesleyan College icons Roy Pickerill and Joel Utley have been named the 2020 recipients of the Small College Basketball Lifetime Achievement Award.
“Their impact on the athletic program at Kentucky Wesleyan College has helped make the Panthers one of the elite small college basketball programs in the nation,” said Dr. Jim Poteet, Chair of the SCB Alumni Association National Committee. “Collectively, Pickerill and Utley have spent over a century deeply involved in sports information and radio broadcasting at KWC.”
Pickerill, a Louisville native, graduated from KWC and later retired as Wesleyan’s sports information director on Dec. 31, 2016, after 29 years.
“I’m amazed that my passion and love for small college basketball would draw such national attention,” Pickerill said. “I’m very proud to receive this award, especially with my longtime colleague and friend Joel Utley.”
In May 2018, Pickerill was selected to the Great Lakes Valley Conference Hall of Fame. He has also been inducted into the Kentucky Wesleyan Alumni Hall of Fame (2012), Kentucky Wesleyan Athletic Hall of Fame (2015) and CoSIDA Hall of Fame (2015).
In 2017, Pickerill was presented with the CoSIDA Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1998, CoSIDA also awarded Pickerill with the prestigious Warren Berg Award — presented to a college division member who has made outstanding contributions to the field of sports information.
Utley, a Madisonville native, is currently in his 59th season as the voice of the Panthers and has called nearly 1,700 basketball games. Utley is the only basketball radio play-by-play broadcaster in the nation to call 12 NCAA Basketball Championship games (all levels) including eight Division II titles – 1966, 1968, 1969, 1973, 1987, 1999 and 2001.
“To be recognized in this way is an honor well beyond any dreams I ever had,” Utley said. “What I do as a broadcaster reflects my love for KWC.”
Utley was inducted into the Kentucky Wesleyan Athletic Hall of Fame in 2013 and the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame.
Utley received his first job at the age of 16 with Madisonville’s WFMW, where he started out doing high school basketball play-by-play. Utley attended Murray State and then the University of Kentucky, where he worked at WVLK radio in Lexington.
In 1961, a friend who Utley had worked with at WVLK moved to Owensboro to join the staff of WVJS and mentioned an opening to Utley, starting his 59-year career as the “Voice of the Panthers.”
KWC athletic director Rob Mallory said there are not two more worthy recipients of the national honor than Pickerill and Utley.
“Roy and Joel are pillars of not only Kentucky Wesleyan basketball, but small college basketball as a whole,” Mallory said. “They have served the sport at this level for more than 100 years combined, have witnessed many of the great moments in small college basketball history, and are dedicated ambassadors of the game.”
Pickerill and Utley will be awarded the honor at the Small College Basketball National Awards Show on May 2 at the Starlight Ballroom inside the Crowne Plaza hotel in Kansas City, Mo.
