Reporting Texas
News and features from UT-Austin's School of Journalism
byGraham Neal
In Lake Travis High School’s football locker room, one locker stands out. It is filled with flowers, teammates’ signatures, letters and equipment left untouched.
The locker belongs to Odin Hensley, a senior offensive lineman who died on Aug. 12, two days after suffering a cardiac emergency during a preseason practice.
Odin Hensley’s locker still sits in the Lake Travis locker room. According to Coach Carter, the locker is signed by the team, and parents come in weekly to place fresh flowers inside. Graham Neal/Reporting Texas
“He’s still with us,” Cavaliers head coach Hank Carter said. “I know if Odin were here… he’d be wanting to work and get after it. So our best way to honor him is to get after it.”
Nearly three months after Hensley’s death, the Cavaliers are playoff-bound, touting a 5-3-1 record, including a 4-2 record in district play after a dominant 58-0 victory over Westwood on Friday. They will enter as the top seed in District 25-6A Division I after winning three of their last four games.
byVikram Sundaram
The day after Bo French lost his bid for Texas Railroad Commission to Democrat Jon Rosenthal, French attempted to spin his widely condemned social post targeting South Asian students at a Texas Longhorns football game — one of many flashpoints this election season that turned Texas blue.
French may be playing coy now, but South Austin candidates running for office certainly felt like he was taking aim at their communities.
“Thanks to Bo French, it’s kind of why we all have to step up and talk about why we’re here and why we’re all Texan and why we’re all American,” said Texas House District 47 Rep.-elect Pooja Sethi, an Austin Democrat who defeated Republican candidate Jennifer Mushtaler on election day.
byIsabella Schultz
Twenty years ago, Tracey Brown and her husband, Steve, opened Austin’s first-ever Miracle League branch.
The Miracle League is a nonprofit sports organization that caters to the needs of those with cognitive and physical disabilities. Participants say it provides them with a sense of community while playing America’s pastime, baseball.
“What we didn’t understand was the impact it would have on parents,” Brown said. “Being the parents of healthy children, we took for granted sitting on the sidelines, eating popcorn.”
byGabrielle Caumon
Rafael, a former Austin middle school theater teacher, heard last year that some of his students from first-generation immigrant families had seen Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids at their apartment complex.
Fear, Rafael told them, should not stand in the way of their future. So he shared his story.
Rafael, 33, told the students that he is a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipient who came to Texas from Mexico at age 6. But Rafael, like other DACA recipients and immigration lawyers, is fearful in the current immigration climate. Recipients are navigating a precarious legal status in the U.S. immigration system as court rulings reshape the legal landscape and deepen uncertainty.
