Yesterday in the Student Center, Clayton received the 2006 Carol S. Adelstein Outstanding Student Award, presented annually to a student with a disability who best serves as an inspiration to the university.

Clayton thanked every person that has been involved in his life at UK, and those that nominated him for the award. He got choked up toward the end when he acknowledged his most special influences.

"I'm saving my biggest thank you, and last one, for my mom and dad," Clayton said in his acceptance speech, through his interpreter, Dick Purnell. "For raising me to believe that I could do anything if I worked hard enough."

The award is named after the wife of retired UK English professor Michael Adelstein. Nominees for the Adelstein award were selected based on their academic achievement, leadership, extracurricular activities and personal qualities.

"It's very rewarding," said UK linebackers coach Chuck Smith. "You know somebody like Terry works very hard at everything he does. He has had to overcome this handicap all of his life. When he gets a reward for this type of work, it's very rewarding."

Clayton was not born deaf. He lost his hearing at the age of five after falling ill with chicken pox. Although he is legally deaf, and communicates through sign language, in one-on-one conversations, he can speak through lip reading and the little amount of sound he is capable of receiving through his hearing aid.

With his disability, he has an inherently different lifestyle than every other UK student. In class, his two interpreters, Purnell and fellow UK Disability Resource Center employee Diane Cook, sit in front of him and sign to him the lecture. The center also provides him with a note taker, so he can focus on the discussion.

The extra attention in the classroom has been paying off. Last semester, Clayton, a junior majoring in kinesiology, earned SEC All-Academic honors.

"It's amazing, the kids nowadays, they just don't let handicaps stay in their way," Smith said. "Terry is a great role model and a great example of that."

On the football field, you would never know Clayton is handicapped. He flies around just like any other defender that is trying to stop the football.

"He's just like one of the rest of the guys," UK freshman linebacker Maurice Grinter said. "He plays football just like the rest of us, so we treat him like the rest of us."

He has no interpreter on the sideline with him during practices, or games. He leaves game time to his instincts, football knowledge and another sense everyone else on the team has, but might tend to neglect: sight.

"They're very important," he said. "Sometimes I notice things maybe that another person doesn't notice."

And although you may never see Clayton accepting the Butkus Award given to the nation's top linebacker, the impact he has had on his team and the school goes far beyond the game of football.

"The thing that I'm most impressed with," Smith said, "is the way Terry has never used his handicap at all for any kind of excuse to get out of anything or any type of excuse not to know what to do. He has never used it at all for anything.

"It's very impressive because there are a lot of other guys on the team that have more than he has, and he deals with the handicap every single day."

By Jonathan Smith
http://www.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/uwire/041406aal.html