JOURNAL SPORTS
The event that officially starts the countdown to Shreveport’s annual college football bowl game, the Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl Kickoff Dinner, is approaching on Tuesday, Aug. 30 at the Shreveport Convention Center with another superstar featured speaker.
In the 50th anniversary year of Title IX paving better opportunities for women in America, and certainly in sports, LSU women’s basketball coach and former Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters star Kim Mulkey will be the first woman to be the featured speaker for the 12th annual event. She was enshrined in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2020, introduced by Michael Jordan, and a year later made the move from Baylor to LSU.
Doors at the Shreveport Convention Center will open at 6 p.m. for a cocktail hour, dinner buffets will open at 6:15 p.m. and the program will begin at 7 p.m. with a brief audience Q&A following the program.
Individual tickets to the 2022 Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl Kickoff Dinner are on sale for $50 apiece, while a table of eight is $400 apiece. Tickets are available for purchase at RadianceTechnologiesIndependenceBowl.com/shop or by calling the Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl office at 318.221.0712 or toll-free at 888.414.BOWL.
A six-time national champion as a player and coach, Mulkey is one of the most successful college basketball coaches of all-time. She was an integral part of building the Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters into a national power in the 1980s. After 19 years at Louisiana Tech as a player and coach, as well as 21 years as head coach of the Baylor Lady Bears, the native of Tickfaw, a few miles south of Hammond, returned home to take over the LSU women’s basketball program in April 2021.
In 1990, she became the youngest-ever inductee in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame for her playing career at Hammond High School, Louisiana Tech and as a member of the 1984 USA Olympic gold medal women’s basketball team. She was also included among the Louisiana Sports Writers Association’s Top 25 Sports Figures of the Century selected at the turn of the century in summer 1999.
Mulkey has justifiably earned a reputation for being a dynamic speaker, and someone who will not hesitate to make bold statements. While being enshrined in the Ark-La-Tex Museum of Champions several years ago, she pledged $25,000 toward installation of a statue at her alma mater honoring her college coach, Leon Barmore, and challenged the university’s president to move forward on that front. Barmore’s statue now stands outside the Thomas Assembly Center.
Mulkey has always been one of her sport’s top recruiters and recently earned the verbal commitment of the USA’s No. 1 prospect in the Class of 2023, Parkway High’s Mikaylah Williams.
The presenting sponsors of the 2022 Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl Kickoff Dinner are the Shreveport Convention Center, Willis-Knighton Health System, Morehead Pools, Home Federal Bank, Shreveport Rubber & Gasket and Wieland. For more information on the Kickoff Dinner, visit RadianceTechnologiesIndependenceBowl.com/fan-events.
Photo courtesy of LSU Athletics