Marshall, McConathy sparkle in Hall of Fame spotlight
By JASON PUGH, Written for the LSWA
NATCHITOCHES – The locals honored Saturday night at the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026 Induction Ceremony didn’t have smooth paths to their success.
But John James Marshall and Mike McConathy got there, and what they’ve accomplshed brought them together over the weekend as 2026 LSHOF inductees.
As a quarterback at then-Jesuit High School in 1976, Marshall became a state champion, throwing the game-winning screen pass in the title game.
That trophy may have portended athletic greatness, but Marshall’s trophy case now overflows with innumerable awards from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association, an organization Marshall served as president of before his 30th birthday.
His writing prowess is just one of the tools in a multi-faceted toolbox that helped lead Marshall to the Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism and LSHOF induction.
“I couldn’t do anything else,” Marshall said. “I spent my whole being around sports. In baseball season, it was baseball. In football season, it was football. I just loved sports. Eventually, I kept loving sports when my friends were off becoming accountants and lawyers. I missed that train. This was a logical thing, keep doing sports. I can write about it. Everything in sports, what goes into players, coaches, the intricacies, everything involved in it fascinated me.”
In an appropriate iron sharpens iron achievement, Marshall and 2022 DSA awardee Teddy Allen shared the 1987 Associated Press Sports Editors national best feature award.
“A guy like J.J. will make you work an hour longer, ready a little more copy, make another phone call because you know he’s going to be that good,” Allen said.
Marshall had plans on being a “40-year newspaper veteran,” but the industry had other ideas.
Marshall pivoted as deftly as a second baseman turning a 6-4-3 double play and teamed with his brother, Ben, to create “Sports Talk with J.J. and Bonzai Ben” on Shreveport sports radio. After a spectacular start at the Shreveport Journal, when it closed, Marshall was scooped up by the morning paper in town. Shortly afterward, a friend in radio offered a chance to start a sports talk show and the brothers teamed up.
One day after J.J. had to miss the show to cover a game, he was called on the carpet at the paper because Ben had criticized the paper on the air. Forced to choose between stopping the show to keep his sportswriting post, Marshall did not hesitate.
Thirty-four years later, the back-and-forth banter between brothers remains on the air as Louisiana’s longest-running sports talk radio show. Along the way, Marshall has served his alma mater, now Loyola College Prep, educating the next generation of journalists and becoming a part-time documentarian whose latest labor of love is a documentary about that 1976 state championship Jesuit squad, which Marshall hopes to unveil at the team’s 50th anniversary reunion in September.
Four years ago, he returned to sportswriting with the Shreveport-Bossier Journal and he said Saturday night he was pleasantly surprised to find he hadn’t lost the touch. And he’s kept going on the radio.
“I was going to be a sports writer my entire life,” Marshall said. “In 1981, that’s what you thought. Those guys were 40-year veterans. I had to make a decision. When opportunity knocks, you answer the door. I didn’t know what it was going to lead to.”
Neither did Bossier City’s Mike McConathy when he took on building the Bossier Parish Community College program from scratch starting in 1983 – while remaining as boys coach at Bossier High School and teaching classes there.
He defied long odds and meager resources to develop a wildly successful program at BPCC over 16 seasons, But McConathy had been unable to land an NCAA Division I coaching job despite interviewing for five – including Centenary, Louisiana Tech and Stephen F. Austin — before the Northwestern post opened after the 1998-99 season.
The Demons had five winning seasons in 24 years of Division I play when athletic director Greg Burke turned to McConathy. One observer wasn’t sure if the new coach had come from a planet far, far away.
“Mike McConathy stood up at his (hiring) press conference and talked about bringing Northwestern basketball back to where it was when his dad and uncles played here (before packed gyms in 20-win seasons in the 1950s),” said longtime NSU SID and Hall of Fame chairman Doug Ireland. “I thought, ‘This guy’s from Mars. You can’t do that here.’”
Not only could McConathy and his team do it, they did. They played in the Southland Conference Tournament finals ending his first year, with only four newcomers on the roster.
Two years after arriving in Natchitoches following a 352-victory career at his hometown junior college, McConathy’s 2000-01 Demon team was in the NCAA Tournament – a first for the program.
“I was fortunate to coach here and be able to be who I am,” McConathy said. “I do what I feel like I’m supposed to do to set an example. You do the little things. Don’t ask anyone to do what you wouldn’t do yourself. Those things are so important. If you impact your players and your staff around you, that allows you and your university to be seen in a different light.”
Never did that light shine as bright on Northwestern as it did March 17, 2006, when McConathy’s second NCAA Tournament entry stunned third-seeded Iowa on Jermaine Wallace’s last-second corner 3-pointer – a shot that still graces most March Madness intros during tournament season.
“Skip to the happy ending, but Mike was the perfect coach at the perfect time for Natchitoches and Northwestern State,” said former NSU Director of Athletics Greg Burke. “He just checked a lot of boxes. Sixteens seasons at BPCC at 22 wins per season. He told us he was going to recruit Louisiana. He did. The biggest shot (against Iowa) was made by a guy from Heflin.”
More than 20 years after the defining shot in NSU history, McConathy can still vividly recall the moments before Wallace’s moment in the spotlight.
“Ryan Edwards, whose dad was a doctor and an LSU graduate, was on our staff,” McConathy said. “Ryan rode to school in sixth grade with me to take (McConathy’s son) Michael into school with him because (Michael) didn’t like to go to school. (Iowa’s Greg) Brunner gets fouled and Ryan said, ‘Coach, we need to call timeout.’ I said, ‘OK, Ryan, we’ll do that.’
“Brunner shoots the first and made it (for a 63-61 lead). We iced him (with the timeout). We talked about what we were gonna do. He missed (the second), Luke Rogers steps in, blocks out and rebounds. He looks up, passes and we go into our break. The ball goes to the right side and Kerwin Forges from New Orleans takes a pretty good shot with too much time on the clock to be honest. Jermaine Wallace is on the left side of the floor and did everything he’s supposed to do. He gets to the rebound spot he was supposed to go to. The ball falls to him, because he was where he was supposed to be.
“He had enough thought to look at the clock, see how much time he had and dribble to the corner and launch the winning shot.”
That was the most nationally relevant of McConathy’s 682 career on-court victories, but the 90 percent graduation rate of his players and their post-playing careers and lives brings as big a smile to his face.
The same can be said for the faith that drove McConathy to build the program at BPCC from scratch and then to take over a Demon program that had previously had just five winning seasons in its Division I history.
“Without the Lord Jesus Christ and our relationship with God, I wouldn’t have anything,” he said. “I’ve been given everything – an opportunity to be raised in a Christian home. They played it out for me to follow Christ or not. That’s so critical to do that. I had the opportunity to have a Christian wife and Christian boys and, hopefully, Christian grandchildren when they get to that point. If they do, that will be the greatest win ever.”
Saturday night, the McConathy family was surrounded by former players and staff members, some who have become coaches like Jeff Moore at BPCC and J.A. Anglin at Centenary. Also on hand were Bossier City natives Brian Rayner and Chris Thompson, among the former players, and McConathy’s college roommate, future NBA head coach Tim Floyd.
All part of McConathy’s extended family.
Contact Jason at pughj@nsula.edu