Larry Gardner came out of “semi-retirement” in 2001 – after working as head athletic trainer for two Super Bowl champions and working in sports ranging from rodeo to auto racing – to help start Texas-Dallas’ athletic training program.

He is ready to give retirement another try and will end a career of almost 50 years following one last basketball doubleheader this Sunday, when Texas-Dallas hosts McMurry.

In 2001, the Texas-Dallas athletics program was beginning to expand and needed a full-time trainer to handle a growing number of student-athletes.

“It was an opportunity to start a program from the ground up,” Gardner explains. “It’s not hard to be pretty good if you’re the first.”

Never mind that Gardner already was 60 years old and long since had wound down a career that includes trips to three different Super Bowls and the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.

“I missed the athletic training part of it,” says Gardner, who explained his career had evolved into more administrative and clinical roles while working with various local treatment and orthopedic organizations.

“Training and treatment was what I did best, and what I enjoyed the most,” he says. “This became one of the best jobs I ever had.”

Gardner first became involved with the North Texas sports scene 1964, when the Dallas Cowboys were training in California and looking for a new head athletic trainer.

Though only 25 years old at the time – “I told them I was 26 so they wouldn’t think I was too young,” he says – Gardner impressed coach Tom Landry and the team brass and stayed with the team through its 1972 Super Bowl championship. Gardner still knows enough humorous, behind-the-scenes stories about Cowboy characters like Don Meredith, Walt Garrison and others to fill several volumes.

Gardner left the Cowboys in 1973 to join the Miami Dolphins, just after the Dolphins’ still-unmatched 17-0 season.

“Though we won a Super Bowl in 1973, (Miami coach Don) Shula used to joke that I was the only difference between the team that went undefeated, and the team that lost just two games that next year,” Gardner said. “He said it must have been my fault.”

In 1974, Gardner left professional sports and worked through the next 26 years with various local sports medicine facilities and orthopedic manufacturing companies. During that time, he occasionally dabbled in contract work with the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association and the Championship Auto Racing Team.

“By 2001, I was mostly retired, but saw the listing for the job at UTD,” he recalls. “I remembered how much I liked working one-on-one with athletes, and thought this sounded like a unique opportunity to get back into the work I loved.”

Gardner’s obvious credentials made him a perfect candidate for the position.

He built a staff that now has two full-time assistant trainers and supports more than 225 student-athletes. Recently, the staff won its third American Southwest Conference East Division staff-of-the-year award in five years.

“This job has given me the opportunity to work with a great group of people – coaches and student-athletes who are truly appreciative of what we can do for them,” he said. “You can’t ask for much more than that.”

Gardner, who also served on the athletic training staff at California and was head athletic trainer at Stanford before joining the Cowboys, has been active for many years with the National Athletic Trainers’ Association. He served as NATA’s vice president of research and education in 1993, and was inducted into the organization’s hall of fame in 1989.