January 24, 2025 newsletter #2 Volume IX
The link to the full-color newsletter is at https://texaslsn.org?fluentcrm=1&route=email_preview&fc_newsletter=7621c7f1f2295bb4f6d7c386d2123f6b
Below is the newsletter in black and white with some color.
Baseball Longhorn Robert Cuellar has passed away; looking for 1964 freshman class football players for pending reunion: Anna Hiss, Doc Reeves, The Beginnings of Strength coaches
All-American Bobby Wuensch has passed away the link to his celebration page is https://texaslsn.org/all-american-bobby-wuensch-has-passed-away/
The blue sections in the link are remembrances from friends celebrating Bobby Wuensch’s life. As of today, 1/24/2025, Bill Atessis says, “It will be a couple of weeks before Bobby Wuensch’s memorial service is announced.
Longhorn Robert Cuellar has passed away.
Robert Cuellar (born August 20, 1952) is a Longhorn pitcher who played for the Horns in the 1972 College World Series. After leaving Texas, he played professional baseball briefly for the Texas Rangers in 1977. Robert spent his entire professional life in baseball as a pitching coach, bullpen coach, developing players, and as a manager. For the rest of
Roberts story, click on the link https://texaslsn.org/bobby-cuellar-has-passed-away/ .
If you would like to post a special celebration of life moment or photo of Robert, please email Billydale1@gmail.com. It will be posted on Robert’s Celebration of Life link.
1964 was also an orange recruiting year for football in the SWC and the Beatles and one song touched the heart of the world. It is truly a wonderful world https://youtu.be/VqhCQZaH4Vs .
From Gene Powell-
This past August, sixty years ago, my UT Austin football recruiting class reported to DKR Memorial Stadium for our first day of practice (in 1964, it was simply Memorial Stadium). There were 66 scholarship recruits and 33 walk-ons at that first practice (99 players total). By the time we reached our senior year, 12 of us remained on the team out of the original 99!
We are currently attempting to find as many of those original recruits as possible so that we can hold a reunion this spring. In searching the archives, we came across the attached article about that 1964 group of scholarship recruits. We believe the article was written in the late spring or summer of 1964.
Thought you might find the article to be interesting.
Thanks, Gene
PS It has always been a rumor that the 1964 UT class was the largest football scholarship recruiting class in the NCAA’s history. So far, we have not been able to prove that rumor to be true, but we have also not been able to prove it not to be true. We continue to research that rumor.
this request.
Gene Powell
Please send information on the 1964 football recruiting class to Billydale1@gmail, and I will forward it to Gene, Tommy, and Greg. 
Top photo from left to right: Corby Robertson, Marvin Bendele, Charlie Talbert, Chris Gilbert, Mike Perrin in the center is Edith Royal and kneeling is Tommy Harper
left photo is Tommy Harper – right photo are Tommy Harper, Charley Talbert, Greg Lott and Don Talbert.
The photo above is Jack Howe, Greg Lott, and Randy Bishop with equipment manager Jimmy Blacklock.
If you have any information about the 1964 freshman Longhorns, please email Billydale1@gmail.com. He will forward your message to Gene, Tommy, and Greg.
Longhorn Sports Pioneers
1898 Doc Reeves, manager, trainer, and “Doctor”
Researching the true pioneers in each sport at Texas was not easy, so suggestions and criticisms are welcome.
By definition, sports pioneers are risk-takers, and without their vision, there is no beginning. Visionaries move programs forward by the strength of will and a focus on the future and not the present. Where others have failed, sports pioneers are able to successfully implement new ideas and remove obstacles that others could not. Pioneers not only have to deal with the same problems that all coaches must face in athletic departments, i.e., small budgets, recruiting, and/or “turf” wars within the organization, but they also have to overcome major obstacles inherent in changing or creating a new program.
The super sports visionaries from the 50s through the 80s were women. Before a woman could be acknowledged as an athlete, athletic director, or coach, she had to first secure equal rights. Ask Donna Lopiano; her oral history podcast is part of TLSN’s archives. https://texaslsn.org/donna-lopiano-2/
It took many decades to correct “falsisms,” and sports pioneers accomplished these goals. Consequently, pioneers deserve to be judged by a different set of standards than those who had successful Longhorn careers but were not forced to challenge the inherent system during their tenure. Sports pioneers know that in order to create a winning culture, long-term visions are more important than short-term success. Here is my list.
1895- Doc Reeves- Trainer Manager
1901- Daniel Penick click – “tennis”
1911- Billy Disch “baseball”
1913- Theo Bellmont- Coach and Athletic Director
1918- Anna Hiss – women’s sports clubs and a sports facility for women
1919- Lutcher Stark – Board of Regents
1919- Roy McClean- weightlifting
1931- Harvey Penick-” Men’s Golf”
1935- Tex Robertson – “swimming”
1937- Betty Jameson “women’s golf”
1938- D.X. Bible
1945- Frank Medina- “trainer”
1946- Slater Martin “men’s basketball “
1947 Jane Patterson” swimming”
1947 Betsy Rauls ” golf “
1955- DKR – Football- there are 4 sections on DKR.
1957- Pat Weis – “Women’s golf”
1964- Charlie Cravens – Trainer and “Rehab”
1964- James Means – “track”
1967- Betty Thompson, Interim Women’s Athletic Director
1967- Coach Cliff Gustafson- “baseball”
1968- Coach Leon Black “Men’s Basketball”
1970- Julius Whittier -“Football”
1971- Melvin “Pat” Patterson- men’s and women’s swimming
1972-Carl Johnson – “track”
1975-Rodney Page – Women’s Basketball
1975- Donna Lopiano – Women’s Athletic Director
1976- Jody Conradt- basketball
1976- Rheta Swindell- Women’s Basketball
1977- Dana LeDuc – first strength coach
1980-Mick Haley -“Women’s volleyball
1982- Terry Crawford -” Women’s Track ”
1983- Jeff Moore -women’s tennis
1993-Beverly Kearney “women’s track”
1993- Chris Plonsky – Executive director and chief of staff
1994- Dang Pibulvech 1994- “Women’s Soccer ”
1998- Carolyn Graves – Rowing
1998- Rick Barnes- basketball
1998- Mack Brown – football
Photos of each of these pioneers are at the link https://texaslsn.org/texas-longhorn-coaching-pioneers/
TLSN is a Longhorn ethos-driven sports history site with a compassionate component that captures the character, attitude, and principles of our great university.
Please send donations to:
https://texaslsn.org/donations/givewp-donation-form-2/
The TLSN Board of Directors receives no compensation. Each is a dedicated volunteer who contributes their time and effort every day of the year to fulfill the mission of TLSN.
1918 Pioneer Anna Hiss
Anna Hiss, a Longhorn professor in 1918, played a significant role in the field of women’s physical education by establishing courses necessary to receive a degree.
The link to Anna Hiss is at https://texaslsn.org/anna-hiss/
What Anna Hiss had to overcome
Women were the super sports visionaries in the 1900s. Before a woman could be acknowledged as an athlete, athletic director, or coach, she had to secure equal rights. Ask Donna Lopiano; her oral history podcast is part of TLSN’s archives.
All University administrations (not just Texas) were slow to accept change. It took UT 50 years to finally accept the scientific fact that women can tolerate physical punishment in competitive sports. Tessa Nichols states that in the early years of the 20th century, women’s sports were “circumscribed by gender norms and restrictive ideologies which delineated the acceptable ways in which women could perform in sports”. During those years, “excessive” competition for women was considered too “masculine” and harmful to a woman’s ability to reproduce. During the early years of the 20th century, physical educators’ main goal was “to ensure that the health and educational “best” interest for a women student was sacrosanct.” To do so required the elimination of the masculine aspect of sports and the elimination of record-setting and personal athletic glory.
In the 1940s, Algier Hiss was convicted of perjury because the statute of limitation for spying had expired. He served four years in prison.
Roy J. McLean, born in Austin in 1897, grew up on the edge of the campus and was a “mascot” for the UT football and baseball teams from 1906-1911. McLean entered the University of Texas in the fall of 1913 at age 16. In his first semester, in the afternoons, he had only one class, Physical Training. That class met at the University YMCA building on Guadalupe, where Mclean began spending most of his free time and met the newly named athletic director, L. Theo Bellmont. Belmont and Stark were weightlifters and invited McClean to join them in workouts. For more about this story that eventually led to strength coaches, click on the link https://texaslsn.org/the-precusors-to-longhorn-strength-roy-mclean/
Roy McLean, Lutcher Stark, and Theo Bellmont were the Precursors to contemporary Longhorn strength coaches
In most cases, Texas coaches in all sports did not believe in weightlifting to enhance performance until DKR hired Longhorn Coach Dana LeDuc in August of 1977. After graduating, Charlie Craven convinced Athletic Director DKR to hire Dana LeDuc as the first full-time strength and conditioning coach. He was a perfect choice, combining his personal experience in weightlifting, Olympic training, and the knowledge he gained from Eastern European and Russian masters of bodybuilding to revolutionize full-body training at Texas. https://texaslsn.org/dana-leduc-first-official-longhorn-strength-coach/
But way before Dana, with no endorsement, was a skinny guy named Roy McClean, who, in 1919, started swinging the pendulum toward more weightlifting as a statistically proven enhancer performer.
1933-1934-top row Johnson, Cox, Coach McLean, Blitch – bottom row Archer, Blakeney, Captain Cohen, Storm
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