January 10th 2025 Newsletter Ron Baxter, review of last 9 years for TLSN, Ken Gidney has passed away, women’s golf
The Newsletter link #1 to Volume IX, dated January 10, 2025, is provided below in the red link starting with https://texaslsn.org. The topics covered include a podcast from Ron Baxter, a review of the last 9 years for TLSN, Ken Gidney passing away, and women’s golf.
Here is the link to Ron’s podcast
https://traffic.libsyn.com/forcedn/cdogg/TLSNS04E07.mp3
Here is the link to the newsletter. https://texaslsn.org?fluentcrm=1&route=email_preview&fc_newsletter=abaa07be71c169d3a2fde6e56cf89a0f
TLSN Newsletter #1 Volume IX
January 10th, 2025
Reprint from last week- Ken Gidney has passed away
Ken Gidney played Center and Right Guard at the University of Texas at Austin. He contributed to the Longhorns’ impressive 30-game win streak playing for the 1968 Longhorns his senior year.
TLSN has set up a link for fans and teammates to share their memories of Longhorn Ken Gidney at https://texaslsn.org/ken-gidney/ Please send photos or comments to BillyDale1@gmail.com and your remembrance will be posted.
The inaugural edition of the 2025 newsletter highlights the successes, challenges, and setbacks encountered over the past nine years in fulfilling the TLSN website’s mission of forming a tax-exempt organization, sharing the history of Longhorn sports, and providing grants to eligible recipients.
The TLSN tax-exempt website and newsletter were conceived in 2016 by the founders Benny Pace, Jim Kay, and Billy Dale. The mission of TLSN has a historical and compassionate component. In its first year, the website and newsletter garnered 19,000 impressions from readers. The founders’ first and only attempt at reaching their core audience was the Texas Legacy Support Network website. Unfortunately, the newsletters yours truly wrote without professional software, resulting in articles that resembled caveman drawings.
Many were shocked by the unprofessional format and unsubscribed.
But a Loyal base remained and was patient as we began our adventure to fulfill the TLSN mission. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
Building new paths is not easy. There are many obstacles to overcome that take time,patience, and support to complete. Consequently, building the new trail during the first two years of the TLSN website and newsletters was rudimentary at best.
Still, TLSN did leave the established path to build a new Longhorn trail that honors the past, celebrates the present, and empowers the future.
It was only after TLSN discovered Squarespace software that the TLSN website grew exponentially. Squarespace was the concrete we needed to turn our dirt road into a paved highway making it easy for our base of travelers to move from historical point to historical point. After only one month using Squarespace software TLSN made a technical quantum leap into the 21st Century and Google was running scared😎. By 2024, TLSN had established coherent communication channels on Facebook, LinkedIn, the TLSN website, Hornfans, and the TLSN newsletter, generating over a million impressions, up from 19,000 impressions in 2016.
In 2024 TLSN outgrew the very intuitive and easy-to-use Squarespace software, forcing us to migrate all the data to the more powerful but not so intuitive and easy-to-learn WordPress. The data transfer took 7 months of “do-overs,” resulting in many sleepless nights for me.😵💫
Only when TLSN enlisted the expertise of Longhorn All-American and TLSN Board Member Benjamin Adams to assist with the data transfer was the process completed. While many technical issues remain, the TLSN Board of Directors now has the capability to add, edit, delete, and revise the TLSN website using WordPress capabilities. 
Symbolically, Ben #79’s skill set confronted the WordPress difficulties represented by #2.
Ron Baxter podcast and article
is Sponsored by 
John Carsey is the General Partner of MBFC @ jcarsey@mbfc.com
Sharing the history of Longhorn sports by combining podcasts, text, and photos has been a successful format for TLSN. Telling a Longhorn brand builder’s story using sight, sound, and the written word delivers a much more powerful message than just a podcast. On average, the 35 podcasts completed by TLSN have been heard by an average of 22,848 listeners per podcast, with 11 podcasts exceeding 25,000 listeners.
TLSN is looking for sponsors for 2025. The cost per podcast is $500, and you can select the Longhorn sports personality you would Like TLSN to interview. TLSN will contact that individual to determine their interest level.
Below is the link to first of 10 podcast planned for 2025. Longhorn basketball great Ron Baxter shares his “Eyes of Texas” story about his teams 1976-1977 NIT national championship.
Interviewer Professor Larry Carlson shares some Longhorn sports history about Ron Baxter followed by his podcast interview.
WHO’S THE FAT KID, ABE?
by Larry Carlson https://texaslsn.org
I was pretty damn fired up when I found out that I was gonna get to interview Ron Baxter for a TLSN podcast last month, thanks to the site’s contacts with John Carsey, one of Baxter’s old basketball teammates at Texas. As a sportscaster for Austin’s KVET Radio, I had a courtside seat for numerous games Baxter played in, plus post-game access to the locker room after all those contests. Ron had always been easygoing, humble, insightful and honest about all questions.
When Ron Baxter finished his four seasons of Longhorn basketball some 45 years ago in 1980, the unassuming 6-4 forward had made his mark on the UT record book in boldface, deeply etching his name into the ledger as the Horns’ most prolific scorer and rebounder ever.
The Californian came to Austin at the heels of a less than encouraging situation.
Coach Leon Black recruited him out of Dorsey High in Los Angeles. But when Black’s ninth season on the Forty Acres became his worst — producing only nine victories, just two years removed from his second Southwest Conference championship — the reserved, gentlemanly 44-year-old UT grad resigned his post.
Black was replaced by a wise-cracking, flamboyant maverick of a coach named Abe Lemons. Baxter shrugged off the coaching switcheroo and headed east. In our podcast he confided not knowing at all if or how he would mesh with the leftovers and new guys at cozy Gregory Gym on the sprawling Texas campus. Team MVP Dan Krueger, a clutch performer who had earned back-to-back All-SWC honors for two less than stellar units, had graduated. That’s about all anybody knew about what Lemons and Baxter were getting into.
Texas showed modest but steady improvement, regardless of the absence of a big man, going 13-13 and jumping to fourth in the conference standings from an eighth place finish in ’76. Baxter — chided early on for not shooting often enough — led his team in rebounding and was impressive across the board, averaging 16.7 points and 8.5 rebounds.
That freshman season was a preview of who Baxter always was on the hardwood. For four full seasons he was going to play good defense, make the right passes, play almost a full forty minutes and deliver roughly those same first-rate stats, game by game, year after year.
Those who closely observed Baxter’s feats of consistent excellent never failed to notice that — while he lacked height as a 6-4 rebounder, what was more curious was the readily noticeable fact that there was no dearth of girth on a dude who ran the floor tirelessly.
This reporter still has never forgotten when somebody in the regular pool of journalists who covered Texas, one day wondered aloud — with Lemons in ready earshot — how Baxter could cover so much basketball mileage daily and still sport the belly of a middle-aged couch potato. Lemons smirked and asked us, “Didja ever see him eat?” He then provided a most colorful mental picture of a man either blessed or cursed with seven, er, outlets.
Ron Baxter is #24
https://texaslsn.org/ron-baxter-podcast-and-article/
Women’s Golf 1998
1997- 1998- Placed 9th in the NCAA Championship- Coach Susan Watkins. Coach Watkins states that Laura Blessey and Salimah Mussani are the leaders of the 1998 team.
It is Texas’s 13th appearance at the NCAA tournament in 17 years. 
top Sowers, Cromwell, Carriker, Watkins, middle, Sewell, Waterhouse, Mussani, Leeds, front, Blessey, Sands.
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 receive no compensation. Each is a dedicated volunteer who contributes their time and effort every day of the year to fulfill the mission of TLSN. For more about the Board of Directors click on the link https://texaslsn.org/meet-the-board-members/
TLSN is seeking one additional Board Member, selected from either swimming, softball, track, or baseball. Currently, football, men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball, managers and trainers, and coaches are represented on the TLSN Board. Interested candidates for this Board seat should contact Billydale1@gmail.com.
TLSN will provide advisory board representation for all sports not currently represented by a Board Member. TLSN needs advocate representatives for each Longhorn sport to act as reporters, capturing information that can be added to the TLSN Longhorn historical website, and ensuring that no one who qualifies for financial assistance falls through societal safety nets.
Horns up !!!!
