#BevoInRio: Longhorns at the Olympics

Put your horns up while following the Olympics this summer — when the games start August 5, a handful of elite Longhorns will be in Rio de Janeiro.

They’re leaving the Forty Acres not only in search of gold, but also to help bring the Olympic action to you.

While 25 current and former student athletes and coaches from UT Austin try to bring home gold, four student journalists from the Moody College of Communication will be reporting on the games both for the official Rio 2016 website and for publications across the U.S.

Like the Longhorns who now have the opportunity to compete against the best athletes on Earth, these student reporters will be working alongside — and learning from — top journalists.

140 athletes from UT Austin have competed in the Olympics — and they’ve won 130 medals. Visit TexasSports.com/Rio to follow Longhorns competing in Rio.

The team of students from the Moody College will travel with Kevin Robbins, a senior lecturer who teaches sports reporting and spent more than 20 years working for newspapers across the country.

Robbins and R.B. Brenner, director of the School of Journalism, worked with Professor Rosental Alves to set up the team as volunteer workers for the Rio 2016 website.

They then raised $40,000 — in part with generous gifts from both The Friends of The Daily Texan and Brenner — to get the team to Rio de Janeiro, where they’ll live and work for about a month. After gathering applications from interested students, the professors selected four students based on experience and expertise to make the trip.

In addition to reporting, writing and editing content for Rio2016.com, the team will complete assignments for newspapers across Texas and the U.S., including the Austin American-Statesman, Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Express-News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Orlando Sentinel and others.

While you check headlines and read articles about the Olympics, look for these bylines:

• Cat Cardenas, 19, is a rising sophomore from San Antonio, Texas. She is the editor of the Life & Arts section of The Daily Texan, and has written about topics such as local entertainment, sexual assault and discrimination in the transgender community. A Mexican American, Cardenas is interested in stories about the Hispanic and Latino communities worldwide. Her project “The Music Men,” which traced the evolution of the music culture in Austin, won third place in the Hearst Journalism Multimedia competition.
• Jasmine Johnson, 22, is a spring 2016 graduate from DeSoto, Texas. She covered women’s basketball last season for The Daily Texan. She also has reported on men’s tennis and the Big 12 Conference for the newspaper. She is an intern with 104.9 The Horn and previously wrote about the 2015 NBA playoffs for 247Sports.
• Jacob Martella, 22, is a spring 2016 graduate from Arlington, Texas, who has worked for The Daily Texan since 2012. He was the sports editor in 2015-2016, and he’s reported about the volleyball team, the 2014 Final Four, the baseball team’s tumultuous 2015 season and the first season for men’s basketball coach Shaka Smart. He is fluent in web design and creating WordPress themes and plugins that can serve journalists.
• Akshay Mirchandani, 21, is a rising junior from Allen, Texas. He covered men’s basketball last season for The Daily Texan, for which he also is the social media editor and associate sports editor. Mirchandani transferred from the University of North Texas, where he was the sports editor of the North Texas Daily. He interned with the Dallas Morning News in 2013.