JOURNAL SPORTS
The fourth Shreveport-Bossier Journal Sportsperson of the Year honor was a no-brainer. Can’t top perfection.
While there were several top-notch possibilities, one stood apart. Brad Neffendorf coached the 2025 LSU Shreveport baseball team to an unprecedented 59-0 season culminating with the NAIA World Series championship.
Neffendorf has since collected a series of national and state coaching awards, and just last week was introduced on the field pregame as the Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl Sportsperson of the Year.
With the start of the Pilots’ 2026 season just three weeks away, it’s likely the SBJ honor is the last one celebrating the past season’s remarkable accomplishments.
With the latest honor, Neffendorf follows his colleague at LSUS, Kyle Blankenship, the 2024 winner, who led both LSUS basketball teams to NAIA postseason appearances after taking over the women’s squad just a couple of weeks before the season.
A year earlier, the award went to LSU basketball player Mikaylah Williams, the Bossier City native and Parkway product who was the SEC Freshman of the Year. The inaugural Sportsperson of the Year for 2022 was PGA Tour star Sam Burns, a Shreveport native and Calvary Baptist product.
They were in the pool of 2025 candidates, too, along with Calvary football coach Rodney Guin, who led a team with 17 first-year starters to the state finals for the second time in three years while becoming the all-time winningest prep football coach in Shreveport-Bossier history.
Another top candidate was just-retired Parkway girls basketball coach Gloria Williams, whose last Lady Panthers team reached the state championship game for a third consecutive season.
But Neffendorf’s historic coaching job leading a senior-laden team through the first undefeated season in the history of college baseball at any level was the undeniable selection.
The aftermath of the World Series triumph has been immense. It began with police escort coming into Shreveport all the way to the LSUS campus on the trip home from the NAIA World Series, to being cheered by a thousand admirers at a downtown rally, and was highlighted on epic trips to Washington, D.C. for recognition by President Trump at the White House, and down I-49 to Natchitoches to open a year-long display at the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.
The Pilots’ secret sauce?
“Our guys didn’t care about anything but being together,” said Neffendorf at the Hall of Fame event in November. “They had unbelievable energy, and guys like our shortstop Jose Sallorin, the energy he brought to the table every day is why we were able to develop so dang well together and play together as one unit.
“To use the word dominant – we did that because we dominated every day, and that’s because of the players. We (coaches) didn’t talk to them before games last year. They ran with everything and they balanced everything.”
The 59-game winning streak can be extended when the preseason No. 1 Pilots open their next season Jan. 23 at home against Tabor College, beginning a three-game series.