Let me start by saying, I have never met the man, or if I have, it was only briefly and only incidentally. Last month was the five-year anniversary of the passing of Dr. Terry Todd. While I never had the privilege or the honor of sitting down and spending time with the man, I did attend the opening of the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center several years ago when it opened in the DKR Memorial Football Stadium North End Zone. Back then, it was only a casual stroll from my coach’s office on the opposite side of the NEZ and now,...

I’ve walked past her a hundred times since I started working at the Stark Center a few months ago. She’s at the end of a row on the top shelf, housed amongst the trophies, plaques, and awards of iconic U.T. Coaches, seemingly a bit out of place. She’s one of thousands of artifacts hidden behind the archive doors of the Stark. She’s frozen in time, forever suspended in her leap wearing her Texas cheerleading outfit, complete with pompoms and ponytails. Boxed. Untouched. Unplayed with. Perfect. Our U.T. Cheerleader Barbie. The Barbie movie is all the rage right now. You have...

I’ve spent a lifetime around people who passionately pursue the perfect body. In my younger days, I was a dedicated gym rat and trained shoulder to shoulder with Olympians, top college athletes, and professional athletes, all who looked like they were carved out of stone like statues of Greek gods and goddesses. My motivation in those days was to build a machine capable of performing at top gear as a professional tennis player. Later, as a Head Women’s Tennis Coach, it was to teach and supervise my college athletes how to train specifically for tennis. Nowadays, my goals are much...

I am delighted to introduce a new member of The Stark Center staff—Patty Fendick-McCain, who will need no introduction to fans of UT tennis. Patty was head coach of the UT women’s tennis team from 2005 to 2014, and before that was ranked as one of the top players on the WTA women’s pro tour in both singles and doubles, where she was ranked as high as top 20 in singles and #4 in the world in doubles and won the Australian Open in 1991 with her partner, Mary Joe Fernandez. Born in Sacramento, California, Patty was a scholarship athlete...

The Nike story actually begins well before Jordan, however. It began when legendary Oregon track and field coach, and co-founder of Nike, Bill Bowerman began trying to make a better track shoe. In 1948, Bill Bowerman moved his family to Eugene where he took the head coaching job for the track and field team at his alma mater, The University of Oregon. Bowerman led the team to 24 NCAA individual titles and four NCAA team titles over the course of his career, not to mention his contributions to the US Olympic Track program. But Bowerman’s greatest achievement, the one that...

Having brought a rich new color palette to the Stark Center lobby for the past eight months, the paintings of Igor Galanin, graciously on loan from the artist and his family, will be coming down from our walls and returning to their rightful homes in New York. June 9th will be the last day that the paintings will be on display to the public. So, if you haven’t been able to visit The Stark Center and see this show, I highly recommend you do so in the next few weeks. Galanin’s paintings embrace light-hearted nods to Mannerism and Surrealism in...

In celebration of Jewish-American Heritage Month, The Stark Center would like to recognize Joe Weider, the man who made bodybuilding part of global culture. Born in Montreal, Canada, Weider began his athletic career as a competitive weightlifter and, during his lifetime, he led weight training from the closets and primitive gyms of the first half of the 20th century into elegant spas, varsity training rooms, and popular culture. He published his first magazine, Your Physique, in 1940 at the age of 17 with only a few dollars in his pocket. Joe went on to launch many other magazines, including Muscle Power, Muscle & Fitness, Flex, Shape, and Men’s Fitness....

In celebration of Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, The Stark Center would like to recognize the career of weightlifter Walter Imahara. Like so many other families of Japanese heritage, the Imahara family was relocated to an internment camp during WWII while Walter was only six years old. In 1955, Imahara began classes at Southwestern Louisiana Institute (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) and because his physique resembled that of famous American lifter Tommy Kono (a fellow Japanese American who had been interred with his family at Tule Lake), he was recruited to join the collegiate competition weightlifting team....

Last week, much of Texas—and especially the Austin-area—was iced over after winter storm Mara made its way across the state. As a result, The University of Texas campus was closed Tuesday through Thursday as roads were covered in as much as a solid inch of ice; trees and other above-ground appendages wilted and snapped under the weight of their icy burdens, creating headaches and even severe danger for many members of our local community. I’m very thankful that The Stark Center made it through unscathed, but we have not always been so lucky. The last time central Texas was struck...