Sombrilla Magazine - UTSA
WINTER/SPRING 2020 Issue
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Bird’s-eye View

Roadrunners Up Close

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Roadrunners Up Close

Sombrilla Magazine keeps track of activities of Roadrunner Nation to document in photos and video the important, the beautiful, and the memory-worth moments of life at UTSA and beyond

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

  • A re-created mural honors a San Antonio icon.
  • Welcoming a new member of  Roadrunner Nation.
  • UTSA’s athletics programs make top ranks.
  • An alumnus brings awareness to ocean pollution.
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An Icon’s Return

A much-loved mural of the late Texas Rep. Henry B. González that once graced the walls of Estela’s Restaurant on San Antonio’s West Side before it was painted over has been restored UTSA’s Analy Diego. The adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Architecture was able to re-create the image of González using software so that it could be reproduced on canvas. González's son, former Rep. Charlie González [pictured], and community leaders unveiled the canvas in its new home at San Antonio’s downtown convention center. The elder González, Texas' first Mexican American congressman, was known for his efforts to end racial segregation and to establish HemisFair.

Ocean Watch

Geared Up for the Gridiron

Jeff Traylor, a former associate head coach at UT Austin, Southern Methodist University, and the University of Arkansas, has taken the helm of Roadrunner football as head coach. Traylor has nearly 30 years of coaching experience, including a highly successful 15-year career as head coach at Gilmer High School, where he led teams to three state championships and two state runner-up finishes, winning more than 87% of his games. Traylor has served most recently as associate head coach and running backs coach for two seasons at Arkansas. Prior to that he served in the same role at SMU for the 2017 season. He began at the collegiate level as the special teams coordinator and tight ends coach at Texas in 2015 before becoming the Longhorns’ associate head coach for offense and wide receivers coach the following year. 2020 marks the 10th anniversary of UTSA’s inaugural signing class of football players.

Inspiring Insignia

At the Top of Their Game

Four of UTSA’s athletics programs have been ranked at the top of Conference USA in their respective sports, according to NCAA graduation data, by posting a graduation success rate of 100%. The programs—women’s basketball, women’s golf, women’s tennis and volleyball—posted the perfect GSR in the NCAA’s latest report. Two additional programs ranked in the league’s top five in their respective sports, giving UTSA Athletics an overall graduation success rate of 82% for the second straight year. This GSR figure arrived on the heels of a successful report for UTSA’s latest Academic Progress Rate. The men’s cross country, men’s golf, women’s golf and volleyball programs received NCAA Public Recognition Awards for having multiyear rates in the top 10% nationally in their sport. All four programs achieved a perfect multiyear rate of 1,000. Read about the long-running academic success of the women’s golf program’s student-athletes.

A Bit of Flash

In Search of a Sea Change

Alumnus Benoit Lecomte ’95 arrives alongside some plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean during The Vortex Swim, his adventure of swimming from Hawaii to California. The Vortex Swim is an abbreviated trip, retooled after Lecomte and his team had to call a halt to his swim from Japan to California because of damage his escort vessel suffered during a string of storms. With the goal of raising awareness of ocean pollution, Lecomte set out on a course last summer that would take him directly through the path of tons of floating plastic and other debris, known collectively as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. On the first day of his swim, Lecomte reported in his online log that he encountered his first ghost net, a free-floating giant net that’s been lost or abandoned by its commercial fishing vessel.