More than half a dozen UNT alumni will be among the athletes and participants at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris -- competing on the teams of their native countries and working behind the scenes, respectively.
Serving as an athletic trainer for the USA Basketball Women's National Team at the Olympics is a "bucket list thing" for Theresa Acosta ('99, '01 M.S.). In fact, she added it years ago to her "goal book" -- an old composition notebook filled with personal accomplishment items. "I wrote in it: One, to attend the Olympics, and two, to be able to work at the Olympics."
She'll check both off that list July 29, when the team opens group play at the games against Japan.
"I'm pumped," she says.
Acosta has more than a quarter-century of athletic training experience. She spent a total of nine seasons on the staff at UNT – first working with the Mean Green football program as a student before being hired as the assistant trainer for the women's basketball program. In 2019, following positions at four other universities, she started serving in her current athletic trainer role for the WNBA's New York Liberty.
In 2022, she began working with USA Women's Basketball, assisting with camps and traveling internationally for games. That ultimately led to her being selected to work with the Women's National Team at the Olympics.
In recent months, Acosta has been prepping for the Summer Games. She's reached out to and fielded questions from other WNBA athletic trainers with the goal of ensuring that players from the league who are also on the national team -- including the New York Liberty's Sabrina Ionescu and Breanna Stewart -- are ready to compete.
"I'm looking forward to watching all of these great basketball athletes," Acosta says. "I'm also excited for the little bit of downtime we may have to just get out and see the rest of Paris -- and also be able to go to some of the other games that are going on around the city."
As a "wide-eyed young guy" studying broadcasting at UNT, Mark Followill ('20, '21) never imagined he'd one day get the chance to call play-by-play during Olympic soccer matches.
This month, he'll do so for the third time in his career.
"It's a broadcasting dream come true," says Followill, who, for 25 seasons, has been the voice of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks on the team's broadcasts -- 19 of those seasons on television, six on radio. For 11 seasons, through 2022, he called the on-field action for Major League Soccer's FC Dallas and now does so for various MLS teams during matches airing on Apple TV.
As he did for the 2016 and 2020 Summer Olympics, Followill will again call men's and women's soccer games during the 2024 Olympic Games. Play is set to begin July 24, in advance of the opening ceremonies.
However, instead of witnessing the action from a press box in Paris, Followill will perform his on-air duties at NBC Sports headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, where he has previously fulfilled his other Olympic assignments.
To participate in one Olympic broadcast is "an incredible honor," he says. "To get to do three is something that is beyond my wildest dreams. It's the focus of the sports world -- the entire globe -- and to be a small part of an immensely large and talented group of people who are putting on this huge production, it's a privilege."
While covering matches during the 2016 games in Rio, Followill announced a goal made by Brazilian soccer superstar Neymar before frenzied fans from his home country. "It was a knockout stage game, and even though I wasn't there in the stadium, feeling the energy of the crowd was really cool."
COVID-19 restrictions prevented soccer fans from attending matches in person during the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, which were delayed until summer 2021 due to the pandemic. "The atmosphere in the stadium helps energize you when you're sitting in a studio on the other side of the world," Followill says. "Not having the crowd certainly was a unique experience."
He is confident the 2024 Olympic Games will be "incredible. I think it's going to be along the lines of what people know and love about this incredible event that brings the world together."
Ted Emrich ('09) is an announcer for college football and basketball television broadcasts on ESPN. For Westwood One, the nation's largest audio network, he also covers those sports as well as NFL games and major championship golf tournaments.
This month, he'll work his sixth Olympic assignment for the latter, updating scores and sharing other highlights from the games.
Like his friend Followill, Emrich won't travel to France to cover the Olympics in person. Rather, he'll work remotely from his Dallas home -- just as he did for the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2021 and the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
"We're boiling down what's happening right now at the Olympics -- the top stories, the top events -- not just for Team USA, but beyond," he says. "We're trying to capture everything that is going on so people don't miss the very best moments."
As a reporter at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Emrich covered about a dozen sports. "I would be at archery one day and weightlifting the next. I'd drop in on Team USA basketball. I'd go to the tennis competition another day. It was a different story every day."
Emrich covered freestyle skiing, snowboarding and four-man bobsled at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. He called the final events of Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt's career at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio. It was "a privilege to be in attendance for an athlete of his caliber, let alone to have the opportunity to call him in action on the biggest stage," he says.
This summer, Emrich looks forward to watching Dallas native Sha'Carri Richardson. After being banned from the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2021, the American sprinter is favored this year to win the women's 100-meter race.
"Her moment was supposed to be in Tokyo. Now she has that chance again, and I just can't wait to see that play out," he says. "Being from Dallas, you can't help but root for her."
While on the UNT men's golf team, Carlos Ortiz ('13) was named to the All-Sun Belt team for three straight seasons.
Ortiz -- whose North Texas teammates included 2016 Olympian Rodolfo Cazaubón and 2020 Olympian Sebastián Muñoz -- was the sixth player in school history to earn all-conference honors in his first three seasons. The sixth Mexican-born golfer to ever gain PGA Tour eligibility, Ortiz -- who now plays for the LIV Golf Tour -- will represent Mexico at the games this year, as he did at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2021.
"Golf is a game of keeping calm and being patient," Ortiz told the North Texan in 2015. "You have to believe that all the hard work will help you in the future."
Karlington Anunagba ('23) will represent his native Nigeria at the games as a member of its 4x100 meter relay team.
2023 was a big year for the sprinter, who broke his own record to set a new UNT record in the 60-meter indoor preliminaries (6.67 seconds) at the Conference USA Championships. Later that year, he ran the fastest all-conditions time in university history (10.08) in the 100-meter outdoor preliminaries at the Conference USA Championships and set the school record (10.17) in the 100-meter competition in the quarterfinals of the NCAA West Preliminary Rounds, qualifying for nationals.
Krum native Jenna Reneau ('15) is among 30 referees – and one of only seven women and three Americans -- who will officiate men's and women's basketball at the Olympics. In 2013, while pursuing a communications studies degree at UNT, the North Texas Basketball Officials Association presented her its Iron Woman of the Year award for officiating the most games that season. She officiated her first NBA G League game in 2015 followed by her first NBA game in 2021. Earlier this year, she officiated the International Basketball Association's Olympic Qualifying Tournaments.
"I love the feeling of getting plays right and still being a part of the game," she told the North Texan in 2019. "Basketball has been a constant in my life and I love it."
John Sponsler ('99), director of broadcasting for the Dallas Stars Hockey Club, worked on his fifth Olympic Games for NBC, handling replays for gymnastics for the Summer Games. He also has covered snowboarding for the Winter Games. Rapper Lecrae ('02) also was in Paris, meeting athletes and serving as a content creator for NBC Universal.
Late North Texas Athletics Hall of Fame member Dave Clark ('60), who was on the school's track and field team, competed in pole vaulting at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome.
Fellow Hall of Famer Bill Schmidt ('70) was a walk-on member of the North Texas track and field team before winning a full scholarship. He earned All-American honors and placed second in javelin at the NCAA Championship in 1970 before graduating. At the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Schmidt took the bronze medal in the men's javelin competition. No American has medaled in the competition since.
"I'm forever proud of the time I spent at UNT and forever grateful for the opportunity they gave me," he told the North Texan in 2023.
Regents Professor David Hill, director of UNT's Applied Physiology Laboratory, represented his native Canada in track and field at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. He competed in the 1,500-meter run and reached the semifinals before colliding with another runner, causing a fall that ended his chance for a medal. An attempted comeback at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow was thwarted when Canada, the U.S. and other nations boycotted the games.
Johnny Quinn ('06) was a receiver and punt returner for the Mean Green football team and also competed on the track team. He was a member of the U.S. four-man bobsled team at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, which finished out of medal contention. But he went viral after getting locked inside his Sochi hotel room bathroom and punching his way out of the door, inspiring the hashtag #Quinning.
Kellie Delka ('11) was the sole athlete representing Puerto Rico in the women's skeleton competition at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. A pole vaulter and member of the North Texas Cheerleaders at UNT, where she earned a bachelor's in kinesiology, Delka first learned about the sliding sport of skeleton via a social media post by 2014 Winter Olympic bobsledder and UNT alum Johnny Quinn. "It's hard competition, and when you finally prove to yourself that you do deserve to be here -- that's an amazing feeling," she told the North Texan in 2022.
Former UNT golf team member Rodolfo Cazaubón ('13), who won three tournaments his senior year, was the only golfer at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio representing his native Mexico. He overcame a difficult start at the games -- which had not seen a men's golf competition since 1904 -- to place in a tie for 30th in the 60-player field at one-under par.
Sebastián Muñoz ('15) played on the UNT men's golf team from 2012 through 2015 -- alongside teammates and future Olympians Rodolfo Cazaubón and Carlos Ortiz from 2011 through 2013. After winning the PGA Tour's Sanderson Farms Championship in 2019, Muñoz represented his native Colombia at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2021 and was among a seven-man playoff for the bronze medal. He and Ortiz now play for the LIV Golf Tour and both competed in the 2023 U.S. Open.
Denton native Jordan Malone, who attended UNT for the 2014-15 academic year, won a pair of medals for men's short-track speedskating 5,000-meter relay -- bronze at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and silver at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
