 "Photo: Jackie Gilles")
Jill Sterkel and David McWilliams, both former Longhorn players and coaches, bleed orange.
Sterkel, the previous women's swimming head coach, and McWilliams, the former football head coach, both stuck around UT even after being relieved of their coaching duties. These days, their job is to make sure current and former Longhorn athletes are just as passionate about the school as the two are.
The two head the T-Association, an organization responsible for rewarding athletic letterwinners and keeping past letterwinners involved and active in UT Athletics. The organization's motto is "Longhorns for Life."
McWilliams said the organization has been around since 1956.
"Alumni groups like this are the next big thing to hit college sports," Sterkel said. "It's a dream job for me and very rewarding to do this for the athletes. When you show your appreciation to people like this, they usually give something back, whether it is their time, money or support, and in return, it benefits UT Athletics."
Each sport's coach determines who wins a letter from the team. At the end of the season, the T-Association presents all first-year letterwinners with letter jackets at a ceremony. Forty-seven Longhorns were honored at the end of April. The association hopes to have three ceremonies every year.
"It's a great program because we want to get them started on what this really means and the significance of what they have accomplished," said women's athletic director Chris Plonsky. "[Earning their first letter] is really the start of the rest of their career, and you lose some of the importance when you just get a jacket in the mail. The event was all about the reaction and camaraderie in the room, and I think it was very successful."
Junior football player Buck Burnette was among the students honored in April.
"It was great to be honored like this with all of my friends and teammates," Burnette said. "It makes you feel like you're officially part of things, so it's an exciting time and an exciting experience."
The T-Association holds reunions for each sport's letterwinners every other year. They also host a variety of other events to connect past and present letterwinners, including the Hall of Honors event.
One of the biggest perks of the T-Association is providing athletes with T-Rings. Athletes are not active members of the T-Association until they graduate. Until then, the letterwinners are inactive members. Each letterwinner receives a T-Ring upon graduation.
McWilliams proudly wears his T-Ring on one hand and his 1963 national championship ring on the other.
"Coach [Darrell] Royal started the T-Ring tradition as an incentive to get players to graduate," McWilliams said. "Players want that T-Ring, and some of them will come back and finish school after leaving for the pros just because they want that ring. It's a great way to reward their completion of the ultimate goal."
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