The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
Former President gives Retrospective on Texas SAAC
10.09.2020 | Student-Athlete Advisory Committee
For the 2019-2020 school year, Alison Gibson from the Women's Swimming and Diving team served as the President of Texas SAAC. As Texas SAAC embarks on the next chapter with a new Executive Board, Gibson offered her wisdom from her experience with SAAC to inspire the new Executive Board to raise the bar on what the 2020-21 Texas SAAC could achieve while drawing from her experience as part of the organization.
Describe your journey with Texas SAAC:
My sophomore year, my coach asked me if I would be interested in being a SAAC representative. At that time, I hand no idea what SAAC was. He told me that it was a meeting where I could talk with other student athletes about how to make student athlete's experiences at the University better.
I began going to the meetings and discussing interesting topics, but as I got more involved, I realized that SAAC had a significant amount of unreached potential. To me, SAAC was more than just a Monday night meeting where athletes sit in a circle listening to compliance talk about new rules and NCAA legislation votes. I saw SAAC as a place where athletes could come together and dream up big ideas, solve real problems and grow as individuals and leaders.
By the end of my sophomore year, I decided to step up and run for SAAC Vice President. I formulated an action plan, practiced my speech, and was ready to take on the job. Sadly, I wasn't voted in. During my junior year, I attended the SAAC meetings and slowly watched SAAC dwindle as fewer and fewer people came to the meetings. By the end of the spring semester of 2019, SAAC didn't even have an election. Determined to revive SAAC, I asked to be the president for the next year. A staff member and I worked together to gather up a few athletes willing to be on the exec board and prepared for the challenging year ahead.
At Texas, I felt SAAC was something that athletes didn't truly understand. I worked with the Executive Board to build a mission statement and purpose for Texas SAAC. We didn't want SAAC to just be a place to vote on Big 12 and NCAA legislation, we wanted to create an environment for open conversation, idea creation, and athlete engagement. As president, I worked with fellow athletes to design and order custom SAAC T-shirts, had discussions with our athletic directors, began organizing SAAC events, and strategized how to make the Texas student-athlete awards banquet better. By the start of the spring 2020 semester, we had more athletes at our meetings than ever before, people were excited and work was getting done. After COVID-19 hit, we continued hosting meetings on Zoom, created plans for the next year, and kept the momentum going. We even began brainstorming ideas for a Longhorn athlete fund. The fund is an athlete run organization that is focuses on raising money and buying gear for young athletes in need. When I passed the baton on to Logan, the next president, I was proud of the work my team and I had done. I feel like together we truly made a difference at Texas. SAAC is about working together to make a difference.
What has SAAC taught you?
SAAC taught me how to be a better leader. Getting busy athletes from all sports into a meeting, keeping them interested in the conversation, and inspiring them to take action is not an easy feat. I learned how to be patient, how to reach out to people, how to communicate better, and how to get people excited. If you are a part of Texas SAAC and you truly apply yourself and get involved, it will teach you many essential life lessons that will carry over into success in school, sports and life after college. It will teach you how to work with others, think outside of the box, get out of your comfort zone, create short term and long term plans, and push yourself in new ways. SAAC is more than a boring meeting, it is an opportunity to promote yourself and prepare yourself for your career after college.
Describe what you think SAAC can be:
SAAC is a place where passionate athletes come together to do extraordinary things. As president, I did everything from ordering shirts, to getting knives in the Texas Athletics Nutrition Center, to helping formulate a fund to help young athletes in need. Whether an idea is big or small, SAAC is a place where athletes can go to make their idea a reality. It is a group that binds athletes from all sports together and connects the athlete body in a unique and powerful way.