Plonsky’s Decades of Dedication to Texas Athletics to be Honored in Sports Hall of Fame

By Luke Lawhorn

Reporting Texas

Chris Plonsky remembers the day she arrived in Austin as a 23-year-old, fresh out of her first job in collegiate athletics at Iowa State University. 

“What drives me is the same thing I felt that day in October of ’81 when I stepped off the plane and got to this campus,” she said. “It was palpable, my skin was tingling. This is athletics at its best.”

Even though she grew up in Pennsylvania and Ohio, Plonsky had grown up with the Longhorns. Her father would watch University of Texas football and head coach Darrell Royal on television, creating some excitement to move to the Forty Acres.

Now 67, Plonsky says she remains as motivated as ever to enrich young students’ lives with the opportunities given to them through UT Athletics.

Plonsky, whose current title is executive senior associate athletics director, is set to be inducted this month into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in Waco for her 48 years in college athletics, including 37 at Texas. Her fellow 2025 inductees include two former Longhorn football players, the late running back Cedric Benson and quarterback Todd Dodge, who has gone on to lead high school teams to state titles.

Plonsky helped grow Texas Athletics in the early 1980s by publicizing the women’s sports programs through contacts with local and national media. She says that led to more exposure and financial support for the program, highlighted by national championships in basketball, volleyball and swimming and creation of successful softball and rowing programs.

Today, Plonsky is still focused on helping to advance the athletic programs. She played a major role in creating and developing the Texas Athletics Hall of Fame inside Darrell K. Royal Stadium and recently had the Olympic room updated to showcase all the current and former Longhorns who participated in the Paris Games.

“Everything that she’s done, whether that’s advancing women’s sports or also being involved in all the committees and associations … just an overall representation of the University of Texas,” said Genesis Moncada, the marketing director at the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. “During the Southwest Conference, the Big 12 Conference and now the SEC, seeing the change in what she’s done has helped contribute to the university and sports, specifically women’s sports.”

With eight new inductees, the Hall of Fame will have 434 members, 42 of them women. Only six Hall of Fame members are nonathletes with Plonsky being the second woman to be inducted for her off-the-field work. 

The first was Plonsky’s old boss at UT, Donna Lopiano, the Longhorns’ first women’s athletic director.

Lopiano, who was inducted in the 2010 class, “had a vision for how we were going to administer women’s athletics” which paved the way for modern success in women’s sports, Plonsky said.

Plonsky takes pride in the university’s motto as she’s seen the growth in women’s sports.

“That phrase, ‘What starts here changes the world,’ I really take it in this way,” Plonsky said. “The things that people are saying today about sports in general now are inclusive of referring to women’s achievements and not just doing it as an obligation, it’s part of the mindset.”

Plonsky served as sports information director at UT in the early 1980s before leaving to work for the Big East Conference from 1986-93 as public relations director and then association commissioner for administration. When she returned to Austin, she moved up through the ranks of the athletics department to become director of women’s athletics. She currently serves as UT’s senior woman administrator for Conference and NCAA governance.

Plonsky also serves on the board of USA Basketball, the finance committee for the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association, the University Federal Credit Union supervisory committee and the development committee for the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. She also works with 4EVER Texas, a program for student-athletes that focuses on career readiness, leadership development, branding and personal development. 

Plonsky has seen many of UT Athletics’ best moments during her tenure as a sports information director, from women’s athletic director to her current position. She was the women’s sports information director when coach Jody Conradt and the Texas women’s basketball team went 34-0 to win the national championship in 1986. Another favorite memory, she said, was witnessing the football team end Nebraska’s 47-game home winning streak in 1998.

But Plonsky said winning more trophies isn’t what motivates her to show up to her office at Royal-Memorial Stadium every day and travel to all the games she can. Instead, it’s to help as many student-athletes as she can.

“You get to know the people behind this greatness, and not only are they great, talented, motivated, dedicated people, they’re good people,” Plonsky said. “They want to succeed and they’ll work their tails off to succeed. They choose to work here because they really want to provide an opportunity for young people. These 17- to 23-year-olds get to compete, train, live in a great city, but get a degree that’ll change the arc of their life.”

“To meet those kids as freshmen and then to see them walk across the stage in four years to graduate and know what they did on the fields, courts, tried to be their best, fill up that hall of fame with trophies. It’s awesome,” Plonsky said. “Who wouldn’t love that?”

UT Athletic Director Chris Del Conte, who’s worked closely with Plonsky for over seven years, knows the passion Plonsky has for the student-athletes.

“That’s all she talks about,” Del Conte said. “She’s constantly on that forefront – making sure that all of our student-athletes have everything they need to be successful. Mental health, the training room, the weight room, nutrition, how we travel, who we hire, that they have all the equipment they need. 

“It’s a constant thread in our department, and it’s because of her.”

Plonsky says she feels “puny” when compared with the athletes being inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. She said such recognition is an honor for women in sports and how they are now being recognized in the proper light.

“It’s like I belong here as much as I belong on a runway in Paris,” she said. “But I’m honored and humbled. I think it’s this notion that if you worked in women’s sports, it used to be an obscurity, and I’m old enough to say it’s not obscure anymore.”

Plonsky was one of five girls growing up in her household, and her father’s passion for sports bled over to the rest of the family. Her father had played football at Louisiana-Monroe on an athletic scholarship, and Plonsky saw what an impact college athletics could have on a young person’s life.

“Many of them might not ever contemplate coming to a place like this if they didn’t have an opportunity, kind of like my dad did,” she said. “If he didn’t get a scholarship, his family couldn’t afford to put him through school. He achieved it through football, and he took every advantage when he got there and helped him have a 30-plus-year career at the company that hired him.”