40 Hours for the Forty Acres Spring 2023

Who We Are

Our student organization is the UT Racquetball Club. As Longhorn racquetball players, we are the primary representation of UT all throughout the racquetball community. We compete for both ourselves and our schools all over the state of Texas and beyond; from the Battle of the Alamo in San Antonio to the northern reaches of Wichita Falls, we play the game we love and represent our school with pride. We compete against our rivals in our conference, with tournaments against Texas A&M, Texas State, and Sam Houston State. Additionally, every year in January we host the Longhorn Open, the nation's largest racquetball tournament. We love to get new players involved, and by taking our team to numerous tournaments per semester, we constantly see beginners fall in love with the game we play.

What We’re Fundraising For

We are fundraising mainly to help the club grow and recruit new members. We are lucky that UT is able to rent out racquets to students, but often times on busy days they run out, leaving new members stuck watching on the sidelines. Ideally, we want the club to have a couple of racquets on hand to give to new players when they arrive for the first time and are unable to check one out. Additionally, UT does not have any eyewear available for rent; we would like to have eyewear available to give our new players a feeling of safety.

This fundraising would also help lower the initial burden of entry to tournaments. While we raise money during the Longhorn open, our newcomers would be extremely appreciative of any additional support we can receive, since it means we are more likely to attend even more tournaments each semester, giving new players a chance to see how fun our tournaments can be.

Your Impact

This year, we have first hand experience with how philanthropy has benefitted our club. A member of Gearbox (think racquetball's Nike equivalent) has graciously sponsored 3 members of our club with their latest racquets, and even more with new eyewear and glasses. In these cases, the representative met with our club to ask us about which members were the newest, most passionate players who did not currently own a good quality racquet. She wanted to sponsor them and reward them with something that would make their everyday play simply better. You cannot beat the excitement that filled their eyes when they realized that their love of the game was getting them a brand new racquet on behalf of our club and Gearbox. We are hopeful that once they graduate, they will pass on these racquets to the club, so even more new members can experience the same thrill that they experienced.