Welcome to the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports.

The Stark Center is a research center housed within the Department of Kinesiology & Health Education.  We are a unique combination of library, archive, and gallery/exhibit space.

It's a Good LifeBy
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An Unexpected Pleasure: Kissing the Ground in Equilibrium—A Search for the Origins of the Pushup

One of the things I enjoy most about the Stark Center are the requests we often get for information about some aspect of the history of physical culture. Most of those requests are handled by our incredible Stark Center staff but every now and then a request will make its way to my inbox and I find myself so intrigued that I end up doing research that wasn’t planned because the question made me curious too. This past Sunday was one of those days. I got an unexpected email from Denis Blinov, whom I’ve never met. “May I ask if you...

Silent Billy Wasmund: Tragedy Strikes the 40 Acres
News, Blogs & Updates, UncategorizedBy
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Silent Billy Wasmund: Tragedy Strikes the 40 Acres

“The triumph and tragedy of sports,” is a phrase often heard but nothing compares to the tragedy of a team losing a coach to a reportedly freak accident. This was the case in 1911 at the University of Texas. Coach Billy Wasmund was just in his second year as head coach at Texas when his untimely death occurred, shocking both the football team and the community as a whole. Here is a look at his story. William Wasmund was born in 1887 in Michigan to a stone contractor from Germany. He had two brothers and a sister. He first began...

Browse the Complete Journal Archive

The Stark Center features collections from around the world related to all aspects of physical culture and sports.

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