Here at the Stark Center, we are fortunate to have the Jody Conradt Papers, 1958-2017. Several years ago, Jody Conradt, the University of Texas at Austin (UT) Women’s Basketball Coach (1976-2007) and Women’s Athletic Director (1992-2001) and the first female collegiate coach to win 700 games, generously gifted to the Stark Center documents, memorabilia, and...
William B. Ward Collection, Box 220, Shelf 15-1 As the June days stack up and other sports leagues resume play, there still seems to be no prospect for the game that is most associated with the lazy days of American summers: baseball. This New York Yankees road jersey is made of grey flannel with navy...
Few scholars of physical culture and bodybuilding more generally will be unfamiliar with the name Eugen Sandow. Known by many as the father of modern bodybuilding, Sandow helped to popularize health, exercise and weight training to large swathes of individuals in Great Britain, the United States and further afield. He counted Kings and Queens as...
Strength, first published in 1914, was the channel needed by Alan Calvert to get the public to start using weights. Calvert had opened his business, Milo Bar-Bell, in 1902, on the premise that lifting heavy weights was the key to strength and physical conditioning. His adjustable barbells paved the way for the development of progressive...
One of the many reasons that we are pleased to have the on-going support of the Nelda C. and H.J. Lutcher Stark Foundation is the close connection between Lutcher Stark and UT Athletics. As a member of the UT Board of Regents for 24 years, Stark was a strong supporter of the athletics program, in...
As a devoted weightlifter and physical culturalist, Coulter sought out and collected training guides produced by many of the world’s best-known strongmen, bodybuilders, and trainers. In 1922, K.V. Iyer opened the first Western style gym in India, in Bangalore. He was renowned for his beautifully balanced and developed body, achieved through a mixture of bodybuilding...
Ottley Coulter and George Jowett shared a life-long passion for weightlifting, believing it was not only a means to improve your physique but also an excellent channel for competitive energy. They wanted to see the sport of weightlifting receive national and international accolades; one step in that direction was the codification of competition rules. Their...
As a center for the history of sport and physical culture, the Stark Center benefits greatly from the rich athletics tradition of the University of Texas at Austin. Today’s short post looks at one of the sports in which the University of Texas has excelled for most of a century, tennis. The Stark Center has...
Abbye ‘Pudgy’ Stockton played a central role in popularizing physical culture and exercise for women in the central decades of the twentieth century. Famed for her hand balancing routine at Muscle Beach with her husband Les, Pudgy Stockton has been rightly credited by many as one of the leading proponents of female weightlifting and physical...
