There are two things no sports program can do without: athletes and fans. By the early 1990s, the UT Athletics Department had reason to worry about losing them both. Like many universities in Texas, a significant number of UT’s student athletes were African American. But historically UT’s overall enrollment of underrepresented or underserved students had been smaller than most of its neighbors. When new African American student enrollment fell in 1991, Longhorn student athletes joined the public in crying foul at the racist message this disparity sent.
Jody Conradt, then head coach of UT’s beloved Lady Longhorn basketball team, looks back on that painful time. “We had big problems. UT was just not seen as a welcoming place, particularly in communities of color. It hit morale and recruiting hard. We really needed to reach out and show that we cared.”
The Neighborhood Longhorns Program (NLP), devised by Conradt and colleagues Tom Penders, Donna Lopiano, and DeLoss Dodds in 1991, has done much to bridge the gap between UT and the communities that it wants to engage—one child at a time.
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