By DOUG IRELAND, Journal Sports
Two of Shreveport’s brightest sports stars, Alana Beard and Wendell Davis, are headed into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame next summer, along with two-time Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning, in a 10-member Class of 2023.
Beard, a sensational girls basketball player at Southwood High, went on to greatness at Duke and became a four-time WNBA All-Star.
Davis, a Fair Park standout, made his name at LSU catching passes from Tommy Hodson as they rewrote the Tigers’ record book in the mid-1980s, then was a first-round NFL Draft pick. His career was derailed when he injured both knees at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, just as he was emerging among the NFL’s best receivers.
College World Series champion LSU baseball coach Paul Mainieri is another big name in a star-studded 10-member group of 2023 inductees announced Wednesday by the Hall of Fame.
The Class of 2023 also includes New Orleans native Ron Washington, who managed the Texas Rangers to a pair of World Series appearances and last year helped the Atlanta Braves win the world championship; two-time LSU track and field USA Olympian and world champion Walter Davis; and Slidell native, Tulane great and Chicago Bears two-time Pro Bowl running back Matt Forte.
Also elected for induction next summer are All-American LSU pitcher Paul Byrd, a 14-year Major League Baseball veteran who made the 1999 All-Star Game; multiple national champion and world class weightlifter Walter Imahara, a UL-Lafayette legend; and retired Baton Rouge-Parkview Baptist baseball coach M.L. Woodruff, whose teams claimed 11 state championships.
The LSHOF’s Class of 2023 will be enshrined Saturday, July 29, at the Hall of Fame’s home in Natchitoches to culminate the 64th Induction Celebration July 27-29. The LaSportsHall.com website has extensive information and participation opportunities available now.
Manning starred in 16 seasons with the New York Giants (2004-19) after a stellar four-year career at Ole Miss. A New Orleans native, the Newman High School grad starred at Ole Miss and was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2004 draft. He was MVP in Giants’ victories in Super Bowls XLII and XLVI.
Manning will join his father, Archie (a 1988 inductee) and older brother Peyton (inducted In 2019) as the first set of father and two sons in the Hall. Two other father-son pairs are enshrined: football stars Dub Jones (1982) and son Bert Jones (1986) of Ruston, and USA Olympic hurdlers Glenn “Slats” Hardin (1962) and son Billy Hardin (1998), both LSU greats.
A phenomenal shooting guard at the high school, collegiate and professional levels, Beard was the state’s 2000 Miss Basketball at Southwood. She won the 2004 John R. Wooden Award as the nation’s best college player for Duke and became a four-time WNBA All-Star (2005-07, 2009). She led Southwood to four consecutive state titles from 1997-2000 with a 144-6 record (ending her career with 53 wins in a row), and the prep All-American scored 2,646 points before going to Duke.
There, Beard scored 2,687 points — 41 more than she did in high school — and was the first NCAA player to amass 2,600 points, 500 assists and 400 steals in a career while leading the Blue Devils to two Final Four appearances. The three-time ACC Player of the Year (2002, 2003, 2004) averaged 19.8 points, 5.8 rebounds, 3.7 assists and 3.0 steals for her career.
The second pick of the 2004 WNBA Draft by the Washington Mystics, Beard played 14 seasons with the Mystics and Los Angeles Sparks and averaged 11.3 points, 3.4 rebounds and 2.5 assists in 419 career games. Beard was the WNBA Defensive Player of the Year in 2017 and 2018 and was a first-team All-Defensive team pick five times (second team four more times). She helped the Sparks win the 2016 WNBA championship.
One of the most prolific wide receivers in LSU history, Davis was a two-time All-American in 1986 and ’87 when he teamed up with Hodson. Playing for the Tigers from 1984-87, Davis set most of the school’s receiving marks. Among them: receptions in a game (14), single-season marks for catches (80), receiving yards (1,244), receiving TDs (11) and yards per game (113.1) in 1986; and the school record for career receiving yards (2,708). Davis still holds the school mark for career receptions (183).
A first-round draft pick (27th overall) of the Chicago Bears in 1987, his NFL career was cut short by a devastating injury when he tore the patellar tendon in both his knees on the notoriously-bad artificial turf at Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium just five games into the 1993 season. In the two seasons prior to the injury in 1991 and ’92, Davis grabbed 115 passes for 1,679 yards and eight scores. For his 5½-year NFL career, he had 207 catches, 3,000 yards (14.5 yards per catch) and 14 TDs.
Five of the inductees – Byrd, Walter Davis and Wendell Davis, Mainieri and Woodruff (who were baseball teammates as freshmen) – competed at LSU.
Contact Doug at DougIreland@LaSportsHall.com