When you think of bigtime celebrating in Louisiana, most people automatically think “New Orleans.”
I get it.
A town with few rivals. Internationally appreciated. A culture all its own. Can’t walk down its streets without overhearing several different languages.
I love it.
But if you want to celebrate without the traffic, the potholes, and a less likelihood of your car getting jacked, you getting mugged, or your toilet getting backed up, I’ll take Natchitoches any day of the week.
(I’d take Ruston, Minden, and Farmerville too, and we haven’t even gotten out of northwest Louisiana yet.)
Louisiana is blessed with small-town goodness.
But today, for a special reason, the salute goes to charming, quaint, welcoming Natchitoches.
Of course there are the annual Christmas lights. (I might be the only person in a five-state area who’s never been.) Eeeeeeeverybody loves the Christmas lights.
But Natty lights up each summer too.
The annual Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame class is inducted each June, usually on the fourth weekend. The welcome mat, the red carpet, the good times are rolled out and one of the South’s finest small towns says, “Come on and getcha some!”
Last weekend was no exception, and my encouraging word would be to consider going next summer or the next or as soon as you can to a Hall of Fame weekend. All the deets — plus a replay of the ceremony and video intros of each inductee, all produced by the team of all-stars at Louisiana Public Broadcasting — are at lasportshall.com.
The weekend never disappoints.
If you haven’t studied just how the actual LASHOF works, the induction side of it, please be encouraged to read this effort by Doug Ireland, the chairman of the Hall. The road to the sports hall of fame in your state is significantly steeper than the road to the sports halls of fame in most any other state. Most states are trying to scrape together a couple of inductees each year. Louisiana’s selection committee has year-long knock-down drag-outs to figure out which eight stars should be inducted that year.
And each year, some deserving candidates are left knocking on the door. It’s fascinating that in Louisiana, you can’t swing a cat without it hitting a Super Bowl winner, All-American, Pro-Bowler, Olympic medalist, national champ, All Star … and the list goes on.
And on and on.
And each year, more stars and studs become eligible.
The setting is always a no-doubter. Natchitoches. The actual Hall of Fame on Front Street. (Don’t forget to go upstairs! It’s a state history museum, not just sports.) The Cane River Right There, even though it’s not a river. The awnings. The bricked street. The food.
The flowers. The hospitality.
It’s a movie set.
And then the Events Center, decorated more beautifully each year. (One member of this year’s induction class didn’t “get it” until Saturday night when he saw the joint. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I thought … I didn’t know it was going to be like this.”
Oh, it’s a big deal. Done right.
And if you walk downtown a couple of hours after the Saturday night induction, all is calm again. Like walking in a painting.
Because of the pandemic in 2020, two ceremonies were held in 2021. In the same summer. Both were full throttled. Natty didn’t skimp. Sponsors, volunteers, organizers: everyone showed up with their A-games. The whole town is like a living Statue of Liberty.
And this year’s inductees? Humble. Authentic. Seldom does an inductee disappoint. They get what ball means to Louisiana, and maybe through the ceremony and the weekend, they begin to get how they each fit into the state’s Phenomenal, Stunning Sports Story.
The Hall’s a place where legends live, and Natchitoches keeps the lights on and the fire burning so you can meet them any time.
SONNY SMILE: Louisiana Tech football coach Sonny Cumbie relishes the Bulldogs’ return to the Sun Belt Conference as it becomes reality today. (Photo by JOSH MCDANIEL, Louisiana Tech Athletics)
By DOUG IRELAND, Journal Sports
RUSTON — It’s New Year’s Day for Louisiana Tech Athletics.
Today the Bulldogs and Lady Techsters are officially members of the Sun Belt Conference, completing a move that despite its obvious logic, required nearly a year of legal wrestling with Tech’s former league, Conference USA.
Discussions between the Sun Belt and Tech began last spring and the deal was officially announced last July 15. The terse relationship with Conference USA boiled throughout 2025-26 athletic year, notably with CUSA including the Bulldogs on its initial conference football schedule release in March, just ahead of the Sun Belt’s release of its league schedule also including Tech. For a few weeks, the Bulldogs had 20 conference games in two leagues.
The conference shift carried an $8 million pricetag to satisfy CUSA’s legal challenges and pay the entry fee for Sun Belt affiliation. Tech officials won’t confirm the figure but acknowledge the cost was significant.
“First I want to thank the Louisiana Tech Foundation and those who love Louisiana Tech Athletics for helping make that possible,” said university president Dr. Jim Henderson. “It was certainly a financial decision that just about any reasonable person would make.
“Within two years we’ll be more than whole. Within four years, we’ll have a solid athletic budget, which not a lot of schools are talking about. We’re actually talking about adding sports because we know they can add benefits to the bottom line.
“Moving conferences makes that possible because (of) the reduced costs associated with travel and certainly the increased revenues associated with fans being accessible to the games. I couldn’t be more satisfied with the finances,” said Henderson Monday in a media session.
The Bulldogs football season ticket base is growing rapidly, said athletics director Ryan Ivey, with regional rivalries with ULM and UL Lafayette a big part of the appeal.
“We feel like we’ve had a lot of success over the years. … Being in the Sun Belt again allows us to really grow that brand and really strengthen it moving forward,” he said.
After being subjected to playing October mid-week games in CUSA, Tech will have six Saturday home games this fall for the first time since 2017.
“It’s kind of boring. We just have six Saturday home games,” said football coach Sonny Cumbie, sarcastically.
“The city of Ruston and North Louisiana thrive on Saturday game days,” Cumbie said. “… It’s a great opportunity for people to come together on Friday in Ruston and go to restaurants and stay in hotels and just frequent all the places that they remember when they went to school here.”
Ivey said the home football schedule is being well received and indicates Tech fans are buying into Sun Belt membership and regional rivalries that simply did not exist in CUSA. One Tech athletics official referred to visiting team fans from league foes as “non-existent.”
Not the case in the Sun Belt. Blending in non-conference games, Tech’s start to this football season is a Bulldog fan magnet, said Ivey.
“With Army, (UL) Lafayette, Southern Miss, and Northwestern State (visiting Tech in the first six weeks of the season) … in the month of October, we don’t leave Lincoln and Ouachita Parish (an Oct. 17 game at ULM). It’s big,” he said.
Kennesaw State (Georgia), Jacksonville State (Alabama), Sam Houston State (Huntsville, Texas), Missouri State and Middle Tennessee were Tech’s closest conference foes in CUSA. Longer trips included Delaware, Liberty, Florida International, New Mexico State and UTEP.
Now along with ULM and UL Lafayette, there’s reasonable drive time between Tech and Arkansas State, Southern Miss, South Alabama and Troy.
In the Eastern time zone are Coastal Carolina, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, James Madison, Marshall, and Old Dominion.
Coaches are thrilled to have a much-reduced number of long road trips in conference play, several requiring air travel with tight connections in particular for basketball two-game swings to the Eastern time zone.
Tech was in the Sun Belt from 1999-2011 before jumping to a then robust CUSA. But most of the league’s premiere teams soon migrated to the American Athletic Conference and fan interest dipped. Meanwhile, Tech officials were dismissive of the Sun Belt when reports surfaced of possible interest in the Bulldogs returning to the SBC fold.
But that mindset shifted in recent years and as of today, all is forgiven – or paid for.
July 1 … every year. We have a day for everything, don’t we?
So, make sure you find some humor in something during the course of today. Maybe you can take a little from this tongue-in-cheek effort that you are hopefully about to consume.
For Louisiana Tech fans, this year’s version of International Joke Day has even greater meaning. It’s the first official day of the school’s membership in the Sun Belt Conference.
And that’s no joking matter.
For the first time since the 1986-87 season — yes, four decades — Louisiana Tech and ULM are conference foes. For the first time since 2000-01 — yes, a quarter of a century — the Bulldogs and Lady Techsters are league opponents with those dirty Cajuns of UL-Lafayette.
The gloves officially come off today, and I couldn’t be more excited.
I grew up hating — strong word, but probably accurate — both NLU (now ULM) and USL (now ULL).
The first Louisiana Tech sporting event I ever attended was a Bulldog homecoming football game in 1979 against USL (now ULL) at Joe Aillet Stadium. For some reason, my dad thought it would be a good idea to sit us right next to the LA Tech student section on the east side.
The good guys won that day, 17-0. And by the time I got home, I was running around the house chanting, “Go to hell, USL! Go to hell, USL!”
Mom wasn’t very happy, but I was hooked. That was the day my Tech fandom began, and it’s only grown over the past four-plus decades of wearing the ole red and blue.
Although my hate for ULL began that day, it didn’t stop there. It grew in intensity and magnitude the older I got (the more wise I became) and the more I watched my beloved Bulldogs and Lady Techsters.
It was a hate that was almost unmatched. Almost.
That is until I was introduced to the maroon and yellow of the school 30 miles east on I-20. I had a new love (to hate). I stood in line outside of the Thomas Assembly Center for three hours in 1984 to get in and watch both the Lady Techsters and Bulldogs defeat NLU (now ULM) in a basketball doubleheader.
Sold out. More than 8,500 fans that night. It was an atmosphere that I wish every current Tech student could experience. Two fan bases that loved their schools and loved to hate the other.
That’s one of the great things about reuniting with these two schools (and Southern Miss and Arkansas State), calling the Sun Belt Conference home.
It won’t matter the sport. We could be playing in dominoes, and I would be table-side pulling for the Bulldogs. Tiddlywinks? Go Dogs. Thumb wrestling? Go Dogs.
Rivalries Renewed is how Louisiana Tech has marketed the move since last July when it was announced. Well put. It’s not a coincidence that the LA Tech home attendance record for a football game was in 1997 vs ULM. The home attendance record for a men’s and women’s basketball game was in 1984 vs. ULM.
And although the two programs have met an assortment of times in different sports (some more regularly then others), the rivalry begins on the gridiron.
I have plenty of good friends who are ULM and ULL fans and/or employees and/or alums. I try not to hold it against them. That is until gameday.
Then I will “hate” them too until the game is over. And I know the feeling will be mutual.
Rejoining the Sun Belt is a full circle moment for Tech fans. It’s been a quarter of a century for us. It’s also been that long since the Bulldogs and the Warhawks have met on the gridiron, something which will change Oct. 17 at Malone Stadium in Monroe — one week after Tech hosts the Ragin Cajuns at The Joe.
I’m going to have to build my hate stamina quickly. Outside of a few “rivalries” within a few sports with a very few teams over the last 25 years, there hasn’t been this level of despise in a while.
I sure am looking forward to it.
Heck, who knows. Maybe I won’t hate them nearly as much as I did growing up. I may even like them.
That was a joke, folks. Remember, it’s International Joke Day.
SPECIAL MOMENT: Kathy Holloway took in the audience reaction last Saturday night at the Natchitoches Events Center as she was inducted in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame as the 2026 Dave Dixon Louisiana Sports Leadership Award winner. (Photo by CHRIS REICH, for the LSWA)
By JASON PUGH, Written for the LSWA
NATCHITOCHES — Those who followed the Tioga Lady Indians basketball team when Kathy Holloway coached noted the team’s tough defense. That wasn’t modeled on how young Kathy Stewart played at now-defunct Poland High School.
Holloway, inducted last Saturday night in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in Natchitoches as the Dave Dixon Louisiana Sports Leadership Award winner, established a long-standing Class C state tournament record by scoring 86 points across two games played at Shreveport’s Hirsch Coliseum while at Poland.
Her basketball skills were honed at home, on a metal rim that her father hung on the side of the family’s wooden garage. A photo in the Hall of Fame museum shows elementary school-aged Kathy shooting baskets on that backyard goal.
That led to her All-State playing career at Poland in southern Rapides Parish near Lecompte, and sparked a lifelong love of basketball. Holloway, a math major at LSU where there was no women’s team in the 1960s, entered the education field and launched career in high school sports, first as a championship head coach at Tioga then as the first female president of the Louisiana High School Coaches Association, achieved in 1986, and as the president of the National High School Athletic Coaches Association in 1992.
“Title IX was passed in 1972,” said Julie Wilkerson, one of four high school All-Americans Holloway coached at Tioga. “That energized someone like Mrs. Holloway.”
That energy may have indirectly led Holloway to her trailblazing positions within the coaches associations she eventually chaired.
“In those days, there was All-Star Week and on the Friday before the all-star games on Saturday, there was the final meeting of the coaches association to elect the president,” Holloway said. “One of the guys who was running asked me at the barbecue, ‘Will you vote for me (for president)?’ I said, ‘Yeah, if you’ll vote for me if I ever run.’ He said, ‘There ain’t ever gonna be a woman president of this association.’ That sealed it for me.”
Following her gilded administrative career, the NSCA in 2021 created the Kathy Holloway Women of Inspiration Award that honors a female “that has promoted female athletics by either coaching, serving, supporting or leading high school female athletic programs that focus on changing lives and inspiring women to strive for greatness.”
Holloway remains involved in the sport she loves, working closely with the Upward Basketball program at First Baptist Church in Pineville where her son, Stewart, is the pastor.
“She’s been involved the past 13 or 14 years,” he said. “It’s a fantastic way to use her skills to invest in another generation.
“Mom didn’t win a lot of state championships, but she’s been a champion in a lot of other ways.”
A close bond between siblings helped deliver a signature moment for the LSU women’s basketball team when it landed Sylvia Fowles, a 6-foot-6 standout from Miami.
Brought to LSU by coach Sue Gunter, who promised Fowles nothing more than the opportunity to complete for playing time, Fowles teamed with fellow Louisiana Sports Hall of Famer Seimone Augustus (a 2024 inductee) to usher in the golden era of Tigers women’s basketball – one that included four straight Final Four appearances.
“In my home visit, (Gunter) told me she wasn’t starting me as a freshman, that I had to earn it,” said Fowles via a Zoom call from Chicago where her Portland Fire were preparing for a WNBA game Friday night against the Chicago Sky. “That motivated me to be around her. I was signed, sealed and delivered after hearing her say you had to work for everything you want.”
Fowles, who is now an assistant coach with the Fire, averaged a double-double at LSU before a prolific WNBA career with the Chicago Sky and Minnesota Lynx where she averaged 15.7 points and 9.8 rebounds per game in her career.
Four Olympic gold medals, two WNBA titles and a spot of the WNBA’s 25th Anniversary Team only buttress a resume that came in a sport Fowles once regarded as “dumb,” thanks in part to her three older brothers.
“Growing up with them, I was allowed to play defense only,” she said. “I didn’t learn the rules of the game until eighth grade. I didn’t there were two ends of the court playing simultaneously. It was that moment I realized I was getting cheated. I didn’t think the sport was dumb after that.”
Although her brothers failed to share the full extent of basketball with their younger sister, Fowles never missed an opportunity to help someone else.
“She’s the best center of all time in women’s basketball” said former Minnesota teammate Lindsey Whalen. “She had a relentless will to rebound and to get to her spot on the block. She had great hands. Then there were times you’d look over and she’s helping put towels away or doing anything she could to help someone else.”
Previous Premium Season Pass holders also have an exclusive renewal window before tickets become available to the general public. Renewals for past Premium Season Pass holders are also available at this time.
New this season is the option for anyone to purchase single-game tickets in the premium section at $40 per ticket. These seats are chairbacks and located at midfield.
Any remaining Premium Season Passes will go on sale to the general public beginning Thursday, July 9, at midnight.
The Gents will open their season on Sept. 5 against Westgate Christian University at home with kickoff set for 6 p.m. in the first of five games played at Atkins Field.
The Gents are scheduled to play nine regular-season games – five at home and four on the road. Centenary will play its first two games at home as the Maroon and White will face Millsaps College on Sept. 12 before traveling to Marshall, Texas in Week 3 (Sept. 19) to face East Texas Baptist University for its first road contest.
General admission single game tickets are $15 for all persons age 13 and older.
General admission youth tickets cost $5 for all children 12 and younger.
Premium Season tickets go for $200.
General Admission Season tickets are just $70 (age 13+).
General Admission Season tickets for children are a bargain at $20 (12 and under).
ACADEMICS: Nine Centenary STUNT student-athletes were named to the College STUNT Coaches Association Division III Academic Honor Roll, the organization announced.
Student-athletes must have completed at least 24 credit hours and have maintained an overall GPA of a 3.5 or higher. The nine Ladies are freshman Ja’Kyra Allen, junior Leah Dawson, freshman Allison Gonzales, senior Jo Hoffman, junior Amelia Jones, sophomore Keagan Malone, freshman Riley Navarro, junior Dalila Ramirez and freshman Ella Wilson.
BACK IN THE SCAC: The Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference announced that Millsaps College will return to the conference beginning with the 2027-28 academic year after the SCAC Presidents Council approved the college’s formal application for membership.
When Millsaps returns in 2027, the Jackson, Mississippi-based institution will rejoin the conference it first called home in 1989 after competing as an NCAA Division III independent since 1973. At the time, the league was known as the College Athletic Conference, and the Majors became one of its longest-tenured members before departing with six fellow institutions in 2012.
Millsaps currently has 19 varsity programs and approximately 385 student-athletes. Men’s sports include baseball, basketball, cross country, football, golf, soccer, swimming, tennis and track and field. Women’s sports include basketball, cross country, flag football, golf, soccer, softball, swimming, tennis, track and field and volleyball.
“As current Chair of the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference, I am delighted to welcome Millsaps College into a league defined by academic excellence, spirited competition, and shared values,” said Centenary College President Christopher Holoman. “Millsaps brings a strong tradition and a commitment to the student-athlete experience that will enrich our conference community from day one. We look forward to the championships ahead and to the strengthened bonds this partnership will create across the SCAC.”
“We are thrilled to welcome Millsaps back to its original Division III conference home,” said Commissioner Dwayne Hanberry. “Millsaps has a proud history within the SCAC, and I have no doubt the institution will once again be an outstanding fit. Having previously worked with several of the college’s current administrators and coaches, I know firsthand the values they bring, and I am confident they will once again thrive with the collaborative culture that defines the SCAC.”
The Majors have captured 22 conference championships as members of the CAC/SCAC and 10 titles in the Southern Athletic Association.
When they rejoin, they’ll compete against SCAC members Austin College, Colorado College, University of Dallas, Centenary, Texas Lutheran, St. Thomas, Concordia, University of the Ozarks and LeTourneau.
There’s a scene from a Seinfeld episode in which George Costanza enters Jerry’s apartment to inform his friend that he has just gotten a job at the New York Yankees. Jerry, of course, can’t believe it and says incredulously –
“Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle … Constanza?”
That’s pretty close to how I feel about this weekend’s induction into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. Believe me, I have no problem if many are saying “Maravich, Guidry, Manning, Saban … Marshall?”
The Hall of Fame choses a select group of outstanding athletes each year – it’s always an impressive list – plus others who have contributed to the state’s sports landscape during their careers. In this case, I’m an “other” and will be a recipient of a Distinguished Service Award for sports media. It definitely isn’t for throwing a touchdown on a screen pass for the only points in the 1976 state championship game (although as screen passes go, it wasn’t bad.)
Saturday night’s program will be a full one with lots of the state’s sports figures to celebrate. It is well orchestrated for television (it’s on LPB) and the last thing they need is some media hack giving a speech and how he learned about the perils of splitting an infinitive.
And I’m not being inducted for my marvelous oratory skills, so nobody’s missing out. But I do feel the need to express some thoughts and feelings, so if I had been asked to give a speech, it would have gone something like this:
“Since it’s because of words – written and spoken – as to why I’m here tonight, here are two to get this started –
“Honored.
“Humbled.
“And by the way, it’s a tie between those two as to which one hits the tape first.
“It’s an honor to be in this class of inductees, but far more of an honor to be among those who came before me in the state’s media. These are people I have admired and who I consider giants of our state’s media.
“It’s humbling to think that this could have even happened in the first place.
“Years ago, when I was president of the Louisiana Sports Writers Association, I remember coming to these events to hand out plaques to recipients such as the NFL’s Charles Alexander and the NBA’s Calvin Natt.
“And now, someone’s going to hand ME a plaque? Does not compute.
“I don’t feel very far removed from the young whipper-snapper who wrote 2,000-word game stories on a meaningless Huntington-Parkway football game and got away with it. I did that because I was allowed to. I was surrounded by a cast of sportswriters at the old Shreveport Journal that was the greatest collection of talent that a mid-sized paper could have ever had. Any city, any state. You had to bring it every day, every byline.
“Though I had no reason to think that I’d do anything other than have a 40-year career as a sportswriter and then retire, I am thankful that I was afforded the ability to explore my creativity in ways I had never thought of before.
“That helped led to a three-decade career in sports radio as well as to a career in journalism-based educational instruction, neither of which I was necessarily qualified for. The ultimate ‘fake it ‘til you make it.’
“I like to say that in my heart, I have always been a sportswriter, even though I haven’t been one on a full-time basis for more than 30 years.
“I started this by saying I’m honored and humbled by this. But there is actually another word that may be even more apropos: fortunate.
“Fortunate to be surrounded by colleagues, friends and, most importantly, family who had supported me as I branched out into something new to explore that next creative challenge. The 2,000-word game stories may have disappeared, but the creativity that goes into them never leaves you.
“Which is good news for me because I’m not done. There’s always another story to tell. And I want to tell it.”
LEGENDS LINEUP:Members of the 2026 Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame induction class include (front row, l-r) Jonathan Lucroy, John James Marshall, Warren Morris, Kathy Holloway, Gil LeBreton, (back row, l-r) Dewain Strother, Todd McClure, John Brady, Mike McConathy, Pat Williams. (Photo by CHRIS REICH, Northwestern State)
By JONATHON ZENK, Written for the LSWA
NATCHITOCHES — The power of family and relationships was on full display during Thursday afternoon’s introductory press conference for the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026.
The inductees shared their gratitude and fondness for the state that helped them the people they are today and led them to be enshrined in the state’s athletic hall of fame, the top honors an athlete from Louisiana can receive.
The 10 inductees speaking, as well as former New Orleans Saints legend Joe Horn and LSU women’s basketball great Sylvia Fowles, are being officially enshrined Saturday evening.
Family came up during everybody’s speech, but not everybody works with a family member, which is exactly what Shreveport’s John James Marshall does. He co-hosts with his older brother Ben on “SportsTalk with J.J. and Bonzai Ben,” the longest-running sports talk show in the state.
“It’s easy arguing with my brother for an hour,” Marshall, who is being awarded the Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism, said. “We grew up doing that. He’s a Red Sox fan and I grew up as a Yankees fan—until (former New York Yankees owner George) Steinbrenner came along. We argued about Yankee-Red Sox things our entire lives.
“If I was talking with (fellow 2026 inductee) Warren Morris, I’d be very careful what I said to Warren Morris. With your brother, you can say anything you want at any time and not worry it is going to offend him. And he does the same to me.”
As an accomplished sportswriter as well, Marshall always has that in him.
“I’ve done a lot of writing, and I’ve done a lot of talking, and now I try to find a way to combine both of those.”
While Marshall works with his brother, former Florien High girls basketball head coach Dewain Strother was able to coach his granddaughters, leading them to a state semifinal appearance in his 39th and final season three years ago.
“Who would have ever thought you’d be coaching long enough to coach your grandchildren?,” Strother asked. “I was able to coach my daughter and while I didn’t coach my son, I coached him at home. After my grandchildren were done playing, I knew it was time to go.”
Strother, who has the second-most wins nationally with 1,235 and is the all-time state leader in girls basketball coaching victories, led Florien to six state championships, five runner-up finishes and 21 semifinal appearances.
Legendary Northwestern State basketball coach Mike McConathy had his two sons play for the Demons as he continued the legacy left behind by his father.
While a great player in his own right, ‘Coach Mike’ received words of wisdom from his father, N-Club Hall of Famer Johnny McConathy, at a young age.
After the younger McConathy was a fourth-round NBA Draft pick after starring at Louisiana Tech, he was cutting yards in Bossier City waiting for training camp, and told his father that he bet no other NBA picks were doing that.
“He told me, ‘Son, you can take that draft choice down to the coffee shop and coffee is still 35 cents a cup.’
“He was saying to me that I am who I am and I am no better than anyone else,” said McConathy.
McConathy, through his time at Bossier Parish CC and NSU, is the state’s all-time coaching wins leader (682) for college basketball. He led the Demons to unprecedented heights, notably three NCAA Tournament berths, including two wins, with one coming in an upset of third-seeded Iowa on a corner 3-pointer from Jermaine Wallace.
Like McConathy, former LSU men’s basketball coach John Brady came into a program down on its luck and turned it around in a quick fashion.
In his third season, he guided the Tigers to the Sweet 16, led by Shreveport native Stromile Swift.
During the 2005-06 season, the team had to deal with the adversity of Hurricane Katrina, and it only strengthened an already-strong bond between the team members, as five of the players were from Baton Rouge and two more were from close by.
All they did was knock off No. 1 Duke on their way to the Final Four behind Baton Rouge natives Glen Davis, Tyrus Thomas and Garrett Temple.
“We were displaced after Katrina hit,” Brady said. “We had to practice at different facilities, but because that group was so close, they tried to do something for the state to be proud of and they took them to the Final Four.”
While Jonathan Lucroy is originally from Florida, he made a name for himself in Louisiana to start his career, setting records at UL Lafayette, and eventually became a two-time All-Star in MLB and a gold medalist in the 2017 World Baseball Classic for Team USA.
He looks back at his time at UL with fond memories, making it to the NCAA regionals twice in three seasons with the Ragin’ Cajuns. He credited his late coach for that success and being a cornerstone for him and all the players he encountered at UL.
“Coach Tony Robichaux is a Hall of Famer here,” Lucroy said. “Outside of family, he is probably the most influential man in my life, and most every player he has had says that. It’s a special thing when you have a special coach and he was very impactful in my life. If it wasn’t for playing for him, I never would have made it to the big leagues.”
Like Lucroy, Warren Morris also made it to the big leagues and won a medal with Team USA. The Alexandria native owns an Olympic bronze medal in the 1996 Atlanta Games, a few weeks after the most pivotal swing of his life.
Morris, who will receive the Louisiana Sports Ambassador Award, made his biggest mark for LSU in the bottom of the ninth inning of the 1996 College World Series championship game. He hit a game-winning homer for the Tigers.
He is only the third ever recipient of the Louisiana Sports Ambassador Award, which combines athletic involvement with advocacy of the state.
“As a young man, I never really thought the home run would be something we still talk about 30 years later,” Morris said. “I remember the next day, we were walking through the airport to fly back to Baton Rouge, I remember seeing my picture on the front page of the Omaha paper. I thought ‘That’s awesome that they put me on the front page.’”
For years, there’s been a statue of Morris in Omaha commemorating his historic blast.
While baseball was the first love for Todd McClure, the Baton Rouge native made a name for himself in football for LSU and in the NFL.
After All-America honors with the Tigers, McClure was a 14-year veteran at center for the Atlanta Falcons, blocking for quarterbacks such as Michael Vick and Matt Ryan.
A seventh-round draft pick in 1999, he had an unfortunate beginning to his career, as he tore his ACL during training camp as a rookie, but came back and carved out a sensational career and earning a spot on the Falcons Ring of Honor.
McClure, who loved LSU throughout his life, did not think his dream of being a Tiger would come true.
“Early on, I wasn’t a very physical kid,” McClure said. “I remember my dad getting on me about not wanting to hit anybody or be physical. But one day, it clicked.
“I was a tight end/defensive end in high school,” he said, remembering his move to center at LSU, and a preseason major injury to the starter there. “I was told ‘McClure, you’re in.’ I had a training camp and eight games to get ready for the SEC. At the end of the season, coach (Gerry) Dinardo told me I had a future in the NFL.”
One of the guys McClure blocked in the NFL was Monroe native and resident Pat Williams, who was a massive defensive tackle for the Buffalo Bills and Minnesota Vikings, where he was part of the ‘Williams Wall’ with Kevin Williams.
Williams was key on a defense that was either No. 1 or No. 2 in opposing yards per carry from 2006-08 and in the top 10 every year from 2006-10.
He was awarded 37 game balls throughout his NFL career.
“I got my first one from (Pro Football Hall of Famer) Bruce Smith,” Williams said. “Ted Washington got hurt and I came in and got three sacks.”
Williams’ first taste in playing organized football came after seeing his friends walking down the street with pads and then asking his mom if he could sign up. She said yes, and the rest is history.
Gil LeBreton, who will also be awarded the Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism, grew up in New Orleans and graduated from LSU to become a goliath in the industry. He spent 50 years as a writer and columnist and covered 26 Super Bowls, 16 Olympics and 13 World Series.
Even though he spent 37 years at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, his roots remained back home.
“LSU was so important in my life and career,” LeBreton said. “After serving in the Vietnam War, I decided I am going to use the G.I. Bill to get a degree in journalism at LSU. Those years, working for (former LSU SID) Paul Manasseh, working with those people you got to meet. Out of the first 12 recipients of the distinguished service award, I worked with eight of them.”
Kathy Holloway is the recipient of the Dave Dixon Louisiana Sports Leadership Award. The Rapides Parish native and resident was the first woman president of the Louisiana High School Coaches Association and a few years later, broke the glass ceiling as leader of the National High School Coaches Association.
She received the news of her selection a bit different from everybody else, at a Christmas Eve program at her church in Pineville.
“(Louisiana Sports Writers Association president John Marcase) is in our church and asked to speak at the service. My son, the pastor, was delighted. John said, ‘Many of you know her as the pastor’s mother’ and asked me to come to the podium. John announced it and I was shocked. It was a really sweet time.”
Before she was the president of the high school coaches association, she was a terrific basketball coach at Tioga High School. But she moved into an administrative role and quickly became prominent statewide in that capacity.
“A lady from Thibodaux saw there was a committee on girls athletics,” she said. “She wanted to know who was on the committee and no one was on it. The LHSCA president appointed me, the woman who wrote the letter and (Jennings coach) Charlotte Creed to serve on that committee. So that was the start of it.”
The Class of 2026 all have different stories, but they all share pride and roots in the state of Louisiana.
“I’ve lived in different places, and I’ve been to other places, but there is no place like this,” Morris said.
COACHING IT UP: Centenary basketball coach J.A. Anglin talks to his team during a timeout last season as the Gents got on a roll in the second half of 2025-26, much like Mike McConathy’s teams did after the New Year season after season at Northwestern State. (Photo courtesy Centenary Athletics)
By J.A. ANGLIN, Centenary Gents head basketball coach
I am excited to be attending the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony in Natchitoches Saturday night. They have an all-star class and it is only right that Coach Mike McConathy is a major part of it.
I heard all the stories of how great of a player Coach McConathy was from my father. They attended Louisiana Tech together during some historic years at their university.
I grew up in a football household. My father won two state championships at Haynesville High School and two national championships at Louisiana Tech. Football was life.
When I have reflected about my journey as a coach in college basketball, I have often wondered why I chose to play and coach basketball. The only conclusion I can come to is Coach Mike’s influence.
I attended the majority of his camps at Bossier Parish Community College and Northwestern State as a child. I watched his teams compete at Northwestern State and even saw the Demons play in the Gold Dome several times as a kid. He is someone my father always held in high regard. We followed his teams religiously.
After attending the Southland Conference Championship Game in Natchitoches in 2005, I decided that there was only one school I wanted to attend and there was only one coach I wanted to play for.
I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to play for him. We were extremely competitive in my time with him (historic NCAA Tournament upset over Iowa, two conference championships and three conference tournament championship appearances). We were held to the highest standard on and off the court.
We were expected to play the right way, his way, together. The strength of our team was our team. It would have been hard for us to play another way when we constantly saw him picking up trash around Prather Coliseum, mopping the floor, or striping parking lots. He was a servant leader in the finest form.
Losing was not acceptable, but neither was missing class. I think that is evident in his 90 percent graduation rate. To him, basketball was a big part of all of our lives, but it was not the biggest part. Basketball was just a vehicle that was preparing us for life after basketball. He wanted us to be leaders of our families and communities. Proof provided with all the leaders and head coaches he has produced at all levels in all walks of life.
Coach Mike stayed true to his Louisiana roots throughout his career. He represented his home state as a player at Louisiana Tech. He continued to show loyalty as he coached at Bossier Parish and Northwestern. Louisiana took priority in all of his recruiting classes. He left no stone unturned on the recruiting trail.
Coach Mike has stayed in touch during all of my coaching stops throughout my career, something that is not common for everyone’s college coach. He still calls to recommend players that he saw in the middle-of-nowhere Louisiana on a random Tuesday night. When he’s not on a tractor or cutting grass, I’ll often see him in the gym, watching a high school game.
He’s always around somewhere. I always put my shopping cart back when I finish grocery shopping. I do my best to park between the lines every time I park my car. That’s what he expected us to do. The small things matter the most. Doing the right thing all the time always took priority.
Coach Mike has definitely left his mark on the state of Louisiana. There are very few, if any, who have done more for the game of basketball in our state. Several championships won, but endless lives impacted! Congratulations Coach! Looking forward to seeing you go in the Hall of Fame Saturday night!
DARING TO BE DIFFERENT: Mike McConathy was no ordinary NCAA Division I basketball coach, from his players’ 90 percent graduation rate to his gameday wardrobe on occasion at Northwestern State. (Photo by GARY HARDAMON, Northwestern State)
By DOUG IRELAND, Journal Sports
The straw hat. The overalls. A weed eater, and a rake.
At other times, a wet mop, or a paint brush. In another setting, a spatula, griddle, and serving dishes.
Some of the tools of the trade for Louisiana’s all-time winningest college basketball coach.
Yes, Mike McConathy also relied on dry erase boards, whistles, and video replay equipment as he led teams at Bossier Parish Community College for 16 seasons, then the next 23 at Northwestern State.
But “Coach Mike” approached his role differently. He was not just breaking down tape and building teams. He was building two programs, one from scratch and the other from the doldrums, and fundamental to the process was lifting up everyone involved or in the vicinity.
It’s his coaching resume that has earned him induction in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, upcoming Saturday in his adopted hometown of Natchitoches. The Saturday night ceremony at the Natchitoches Events Center, carried live on LPB, culminates seven events that began Thursday. For information and purchases for the four ticketed events, visit LaSportsHall.com or call 318-332-8539.
The credentials are impeccable. He was a prep All-American guard at Airline High School, pursued by Dale Brown at LSU and future NBA coach John McLeod at Oklahoma, but ultimately choosing between his father’s alma mater, Northwestern, and Louisiana Tech, where one of his dad’s best coaching pals, Scotty Robertson, was head coach – and near the family’s roots outside of Bryceland in Bienville Parish.
He became one of Tech’s great players, combining his genetics – his father John was the No. 5 pick in the 1951 NBA Draft – with a relentless work ethic.
Retired NBA and college coach Tim Floyd was a Bulldog teammate.
“I have never seen the drive Mike had in any other player on any level. Looking back, I realize that the things we coaches try to emphasize each day to our players are the things that Mike did back then. He was completely self-made and his numbers each year reflected how hard he was working. He could have started for North Carolina, UCLA or anybody else.”
By the time McConathy’s career (1973-77) ended at Tech, he was a two-time all-conference pick, conference “Player of the Year,” honorable mention AP All-America and his name was splashed throughout the record book. He scored 2,033 points, tied the school record for points in a single game with 47 and is the only Bulldog to score 41 or more points in a game six times.
After making it to the last cut with the Chicago Bulls, and briefly playing in Europe, McConathy turned to his life’s work – influencing lives through teaching and coaching.
His 682 wins (330 at Northwestern State in 23 seasons, 352 in 16 seasons after starting the Bossier Parish CC program) tops any state college coach in men’s or women’s basketball. McConathy’s overall 330-373 mark at NSU included a winning record (220-203) in Southland Conference games against peer opponents while he led the Demons into 117 guarantee games bringing in over $5 million to the school’s athletic budget — including road wins at Auburn, Oklahoma State, Mississippi State, UTEP and neutral-court victories over Oregon State and most notably, beating 15th-ranked Iowa in the 2006 NCAA Tournament.
His 43-year coaching career began as girls coach at Airline High, before he launched the Bossier Parish CC program, initially playing home games at Airline. Following 16 seasons literally driving the team bus while building the Cavaliers into one of the more successful NJCAA programs, including seven seasons of 23-plus wins, in March 1999 he took over a Demons’ program with only five winning seasons and no postseason trips in 24 years of Division I history.
The junior college coach didn’t gut the roster and bring in a horde of transfers. Without a roster makeover, McConathy led Northwestern to the Southland Conference championship game to cap his first season, then won that contest the next March to earn the first of four postseason tournament appearances (NCAA 2001, Opening Round win over Winthrop; NCAA 2006, No. 14 seed First Round upset of No. 3 seed and Big Ten Tournament champ Iowa; NCAA 2013, First Round loss to eventual NCAA champion Florida) and the 2014 CIT.
His NSU teams made seven Southland championship game appearances (four straight from 2005-08) and graduated 90 percent of his players. Five current or former Division I head coaches, including Maryland’s Buzz Williams, were part of his NSU staffs. So were two current college head coaches in Shreveport-Bossier: BPCC’s Jeff Moore and Rodney Broughton at Southern-Shreveport, and Centenary’s J.A. Anglin played for McConathy’s Demons.
He is in the Louisiana Tech and Northwestern athletic halls of fame, the Ark-La-Tex Museum of Champions and NSU’s Hall of Distinguished Educators — he served as an active faculty member during his 23 seasons.
Understandably, the Prather Coliseum court was officially named for him Feb. 15, 2025, with close to 200 family, former players, coaches, and staff members gathered on the floor during the halftime ceremony.
How best to describe him?
“He’s unassuming,” said James Smith, who was Northwestern’s highly-successful women’s coach during McConathy’s first five years with the Demons.
“Mike is about people. He looks at others before he looks at himself,” said Smith, who won 340 games in 17 seasons with the Lady Demons.
“Examples of that run amok. Before the games, home AND road, he’s up in the stands, shaking hands, thanking people for showing up. If need be, at halftime, he would mop the floor.
“I enjoyed home games, because I always got my office vacuumed. He’d do that on game days – he couldn’t sit there looking at tape. He wanted to be doing something useful, something to help somebody else,” said Smith. “He comes way second, third or fourth, when it comes to people. If you’re around him very much, you can’t help but like him. You’re drawn to him because he’s so sincere, so laid-back and easy-going.”
McConathy was, and still is at age 71, a servant-leader. He continues teaching a Sunday school class at First Baptist Church in Natchitoches, his involvement in prayer groups, his daily morning devotional e-mails, and lending a hand however he can to help a friend or a community group.
Four years after his college coaching days ended, he’s in his second year as a special assistant to NSU president Jimmy Genovese, primarily focused on recruiting – general students, not simply basketball players.
That often takes him to high school gymnasiums, stadiums, and athletic events – or the office of a guidance counselor, principal or the teachers’ lounge, asking about students looking for a college destination.
He remembers being a late-bloomer, nicknamed “Opie” for his tousled red hair and slight build that reminded schoolmates of Ronnie Howard’s character on the iconic 1960s “Andy Griffith Show.”
“It all started because I fell in love with the game when I was a kid. I just thought it was normal to turn the lights on outside at our house and keep shooting at night, then get in a gym any time I could,” said McConathy, who came from off the radar to rank among 100 U.S. prep players named Sunkist All-America in 1973.
“What I accomplished was through having a passion for the game. Even when I was playing at Tech and things were going well, I always had this desire to work harder than the day before.”
Hard work remained a cornerstone. Symbolic of that, when his Demons were winning back-to-back Southland Conference championships in 2005 and 2006, McConathy donned a hard hat in a locker room talk to his team – then began wearing it in his pregame travels through the stands at Prather Coliseum.
When janitors didn’t have time to sufficiently wet mop or even sweep the court, there he was, sometimes in his game gear, taking care of it. When the campus grounds crew was overwhelmed and didn’t have the grass trimmed around the arena before a Lady Demon basketball camp, there was “Coach Mike,” in straw hat, long sleeves and overalls, with assistants if needed, doing what was needed. It didn’t stop there – or even, on campus.
Smith had been cooking breakfast for his players on game days for a few years when McConathy arrived. The new coach asked if his team could join in – starting a routine that extended to hotels on SLC road doubleheader mornings, and resulted in the renovation of a concession stand at Prather into a fully-functional kitchen.
“Bonds were formed between the teams. Mike was always up for doing the work and getting his staff involved,” said Smith. “We also did the Sixth Man Club, TV shows, radio shows – his idea, ‘let’s do it together,’ and he was always wanting to include us – include everybody, really.”
The mantra for his program was “Championship Basketball – With a Purpose.”
He was a leader in the Louisiana Association of Basketball Coaches, helping spearhead an annual free kids clinic in Baton Rouge. He engaged the Demons with local and area schools, promoting literacy and other educational activities. The National Association of Basketball Coaches gave him its Pillar of the Game for Education Award in 2013 for a program NSU pioneered with junior high students at Zwolle High School near Toledo Bend, 45 miles west of Natchitoches.
One of his most staggering credentials is the Demons’ 90 percent graduation rate during his career, when other Division I programs were graduating players at less than half that. His NSU program consistently topped the Southland and nearly every state program in the NCAA’s two surveys of academic achievement.
“So many times we get caught up in the fact we are teaching kids to play games,” McConathy said. “If we don’t teach those kids to be young men and what’s right and what’s wrong, and that as people we need to reach out to those in trouble, we have failed as coaches and teachers. There is more to life than the game.”
For all of McConathy’s endeavors off the court, what NSU and BPCC accomplished in competition will also stand any test of time. Bossier Parish had to overcome well-established and well-funded opponents in Texas and Mississippi to succeed, and emerged as a regional powerhouse. Northwestern was never near the top half of budgets in the state or Southland, but with rosters brimming with in-state products, the Demons had sustained success with “Coach Mike.”
In the brightest spotlight, after his team knocked off Iowa, CBS Sports analyst Bill Raftery pegged it perfectly.
“Mike is remarkably relaxed in this pressure cooker. You can tell his players hold a reverence toward him. If you didn’t meet him, you’d think he was too good to be true,” said Raftery, who was courtside for the Iowa win. “He’s a quality human being, more concerned about his kids getting through school and doing well in life than anything else, and they know it.”
A few weeks later, McConathy was spotted weed-eating outside of Prather Coliseum.
BOM Bank was proud to have a full crew attend the Annual Evergreen Life Services Banquet, Masquerade in the Quarter. This wonderful event raised funds to support Evergreen Life Services’ mission of providing essential services and opportunities for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities throughout our community. We are honored to support organizations that make a meaningful difference in the lives of others and help create a more inclusive, supportive future for all. Pictured left to right: BOM’s Sam Marvin, Drew Baker, Ireland Slocum, Melinda Williams, Eldeen Potter, LaToya Braziel, Jessica Ammons, and Catie Colvin.
He or she is “purpose driven.” They are “fulfilling their purpose.”
I’m sharing this ON purpose to ask if, like me, you sometimes wonder if we make things more complicated than they should be. On purpose.
Micah was a big “purpose” guy. You remember Micah. Old Testament and old school. Once wrote this:
“And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
The simplicity of Micah’s wisdom is easily evaded. Because in the chic area of ‘purpose finding,’ it is more convenient for human beings to make things complicated. It’s more comfortable too. At least for a while. Because it keeps us from the hard and dirty business of real change.
We declare we have no clue what our purpose is. The questions is sincere: “What does God really want me to do?” But that question is an excuse to dog-paddle as our lives slip away.
According to Micah, God wants us – requires us – to act justly. To love mercy. To walk humbly with Him. From that, our purpose will find us.
Is it easier to read a ‘spiritual’ book and join a Bible study than it is to do those things? I think so. Relationships involve time and deep commitment. It’s easier to read a book on marriage, to study marriage, to “get ready” to marry, than to live out a marriage. It’s easier to read a book about fence building than it is to build a fence.
To live as God requires, He has to be the heartbeat. And as He becomes the heartbeat, our purpose becomes clear. For that day. “Give us Lord our ‘daily’ bread…” And the days, and our purpose, plays out by His hand.
We have been told what is required: act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with Him. There’s our purpose, or at least the path to a more specific purpose.
Jesus didn’t carry a Daytimer, but he knew his purpose: He set his face toward Jerusalem.
He walked with intention. He walked with purpose. ON purpose.
And so, his purpose unfolded — though few would have guessed at the time that his purpose could be what it was. But with each just and compassionate act, with each humble step, he showed us what it looks like to fulfill God’s purpose.
For those of you who are temporary soccer fans, meaning while World Cup games play on your television daily … welcome.
Here is what to know: Watching soccer requires patience.
You might have observed — say, many years ago — that soccer (which is football in the rest of the world) is not a high-scoring game. A game with, say, three goals is a bonanza. Every now and then, in a mismatch, one team scores seven goals or five. Very much the exception.
So, welcome, 1-0, or 2-0. Or even — yikes — 0-0.
Yes, it can be a “slow-paced game.” But think golf, or baseball (especially before the major leagues installed a pitch clock). We don’t much mind the slow pace there.
But those of us who have been soccer fans for life know that there is more up-and-down the field action than soccer neophytes realize.
To see a game in person — this month to see a World Cup game in person — is a heckuva lot better than to watch on TV. To see play over the whole field in context to a television view makes a huge difference.
And people in the U.S., plus Mexico and Canada, are watching by millions on TV and by tens of thousands in full stadiums. No matter how high the ticket prices.
(How high? Seeking tickets for a game in Kansas City this week, the low price we could find — for a seat high in the Chiefs’ stadium — was $638. No, thank you. The game will look OK on TV.)
FIFA, soccer’s international organization, is raking in millions (billions?).
Americans are streaming to the games in person. And if you’ve seen the huge fan followings here of so many of the countries involved, there are amazing sounds (songs, dances, drums, pep rallies) in the streets around the stadiums and in the stands.
Borrowed this from a recent story in USA Today: Soccer has now replaced baseball as the third most popular sport in America, behind football and basketball, according to data analytics firm Ampere Analysis.
C’mon. As a baseball fan(atic) since we first saw a game, we are offended (OK, we call offside). It’s still No. 1 here, and soccer always has been 1A. Football and basketball, take a back seat now. (Sorry, it’s an un-American view).
Of course, in this country, there always will be sceptics. Have a friend, a retired Louisiana sportswriter — let’s call him Ted — who two weeks ago posted on Facebook: “No offense to World Cup fans but I have long held that unless your kid is playing, soccer is boring. This is one notion that should spread across the political spectrum. Agree or disagree?”
He followed that a few days later with, “Am I supposed to feel guilty because I could care less about the World Cup?”
No, my friend, enough people care.
We replied to his original post: “It is boring, especially for boring people. No more boring than listening to blowhard politicians.”
Another friend, from Louisiana but a longtime Texas resident, said this week, “Watching soccer I am amazed at the athleticism of the players.”
Yes, with many of these World Cup teams, these are those countries’ best athletes. They can use their feet, and they can use their heads.
Even the U.S. team now has impressive athletes. Suddenly, after two dominant victories, the Americans are thinking they could go a long way in this World Cup. A championship? Do you believe in miracles? Wouldn’t bet on it.
One aspect of World Cup play that is acceptable to most of the world but not here is games that end in a tie. There were 13 ties — four in one day — in the first 44 games. (In group play — the first three games for all teams — it’s three points for a victory, one for a tie.)
Around the world, ties are part of soccer in regular-season league play. In the U.S., we decided decades ago that ties were antiquated in football — high school, college and most-not-all NFL games. The National Hockey League regular-season games, if tied at the end of regulation, requires a brief overtime and then a penalty shootout. Of course, baseball always has had extra innings, basketball overtime, golf a playoff, etc.
Once this World Cup reaches the final 32 teams stage, ties will be broken — even not in 30 minutes of overtime, then with a penalty-kick shootout. Five shooters to begin with; team that converts the most wins. If it still tied after five shots, keep alternating shots until there is a winner.
This, we think, is stupid. This is our biggest criticism of soccer.
It’s like ending a baseball game with a home run-hitting contest, or basketball with a free-throw or 3-point shooting contest, or golf with a long-drive or putting contest.
Our idea for soccer in overtime is (1) play on, but take one man off the field every five minutes until someone scores, or (2) even better, do away with the offsides rule, giving offenses a chance for a breakaway. (It’s the offsides rule, in the first place, which makes it so difficult for teams to score.)
No one from FIFA has called for our advice.
PK shootouts? Yes, consider them a boring finish. But soccer itself is an exciting game … for open minds. Just be patient.
By PATRICK MEEHAN, Centenary Assistant AD for Communications
Four Centenary student-athletes haven been named College STUNT Coaches Association Division III second team All-Americans.
Junior Kaitlynne Anderson, senior Jo Hoffman, junior Amelia Jones and freshman Kelsey McPherson earned All-American status.
To receive All-America status in STUNT, competitors must have participated in two out of the four quarters of competition, participated in at least 75 percent of games played, must have been a vital component to team success and have that shown by their routines. They must come from teams that qualified for the national championship.
“These four Ladies have represented our program well, and I am so happy that they are getting the recognition they deserve,” said Centenary head coach Kaylee King.
“As only a second-year program, to not only qualify for nationals, but to put four athletes on the all-American team, is a big deal. These Ladies were voted for by the fellow coaches in the College STUNT Coaches Association and have received this honor for their performances and contributions to the team throughout the season.”
ACADEMIC ACCOLADES: The Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference included 50 Centenary student-athletes on its Student-Athlete Academic Honor Roll for the 2026 spring term. Across the SCAC, 936 student-athletes made the list — the second most in a single semester since the league split its spring honor roll to separately recognize winter student-athlete honorees from spring sport student-athlete honorees in 2011-12.
For the 2025-26 academic year, across the league’s 18 sponsored sports, a total of 2,199 student-athletes earned all-Academic honors, the second-most in a single academic year in league history.
Since its inception in the fall of 1997, over 39,800 male and female student-athletes have been recognized for their contributions in the classroom. To qualify, a student-athlete must maintain a minimum grade-point average of 3.25 for the term and be a regular member of a varsity athletic team in a sport sponsored by the conference
TRACK DUO HONORED: Jay Scott and Grayson Shugart were named to the College Sports Communicators Academic All-District® Men’s and Women’s Track and Field Teams.
2025-26 CENTENARY ATHLETICS HIGHLIGHTS: Here’s my list of top accomplishments for Centenary sports over the past competitive year.
• Senior gymnast Olivia Stratmann was named MIC Woman of the Year and Skyla Cruz and Amy Foret were named first team WCGNI All-Americans.
• Gavin Ferrington and Noah Walsh named USA Lacrosse All-Americans.
• Lacrosse’s Gamble Harvill scored an NCAA single-game record 14 goals on Feb. 7 against Hendrix College. It was the most goals in a game in NCAA history across all three divisions (DI, DII, and DIII).
• Quentin Beverly of men’s basketball joined the 1,000-point club on Jan. 11. He is just the 37th Gent to score 1,000 or more career points in the 102 years of Centenary men’s basketball. The senior finished his career ranked 25th all-time with 1,244 career points.
• The STUNT team finished its second season in historic fashion with run at the national tournament and four Ladies were named All-Americans.
• Ladies softball won 14 conference regular-season games — the most in a single season in the Division III era (2012-present) — and earned their 10th-straight berth in the SCAC Tournament
• Centenary student-athletes excelled in the classroom as 173 were named Academic All-Conference and 25 were named Academic All-America.
BOM Bank was proud to sponsor the Haughton High School Baseball Camp! Over three action-packed days, young athletes ages 6–13 sharpened their offensive and defensive skills, learned from experienced players, and competed in a fun round-robin style tournament. Campers had the unique opportunity to be coached by current and former Haughton High Buccaneer baseball players, making for an unforgettable experience on the field. Pictured left to right: BOM’s Catie Colvin and Melinda Williams with Head Baseball Coach Glenn Maynor.
When we were young whipper-snapper sports writers, it brought us great pleasure to mock the writing techniques of those who had come generations before us. They were good men, but they were never at a loss for a cliché.
“Ducats still available for Porker grid tilt” was one headline and “… toed the slap on the alien humpback” was part of an actual sentence in another Pulitzer Prize winner.
Gold. Pure gold.
(In case you need a translator, football tickets were on sale for an Arkansas Razorbacks’ game and in the other, a player for the visiting team was going to be the starting pitcher.)
Funny thing is, these writers (and it wasn’t just local ones) wouldn’t actually talk like that, and only used those terms when they sat down and banged out a story on their Smith-Corona.
And we loved to laugh at how outdated the terminology was because nobody talks like that.
Well, apparently they do.
With obviously little to do, I have watched way too much college baseball in the last couple of weeks and let me assure you that, thanks to our buddies at ESPN, the cliches are flying around all over the place.
Though they aren’t using terms like “flannelclads” (baseball players) or “initial sack” (first base), there’s a whole new terminology at play at the College World Series.
There used to be the idea that you should present your broadcast so that a third grader could understand it, but I’ve never been one to want it to be dumbed down so much that it borders on absurd (“a force play occurs when…”).
But these guys are often speaking a different language.
To wit (see what I did there?) –
Let’s start with broadcaster names. Better pay attention when they first come on because otherwise you’ll think that Ravy, KP and Burkie are written on their birth certificates. Hey, we know y’all are bros. You don’t have to constantly prove it.
I missed the federal legislation that banned it from being called the pitcher’s mound. It’s now the bump and don’t you forget it. Same goes for home plate; dish will now suffice.
I promise I’d never heard this one a month ago and now it’s on every broadcast: “He has great bat-to-ball skills.” Maybe it’s just me, but I never remember anyone saying Tony Gywnn had “great bat-to-ball skills.” I do remember lots of people saying he was a good hitter. How about we just go with that instead of overtalking?
I’ve seen more than a few baseball games in my time and this “pull side” and “glove side” business is out of control. I gotta admit it’s a little confusing because It makes me stop for a moment to figure out which is which. If a left hander hits a ball down the right field line, I instantly know exactly what means. Tell me it’s “pull side” and I need a half-second to process that. Same deal when a pitcher misses “glove side”; I need a moment for a synapse to fire. You couldn’t just say the ball missed outside?
“They’ve had four free 90s” may not be a bridge too far, but I guarantee there aren’t a whole lot of third graders who can decipher that. In a recent game, one team allowed four players from the other team to reach base in ways that were preventable (walk, error, wild pitch, etc.). A “90” is the distance in feet from one base to the other and when the opposition can advance to the next base in that manner, it’s considered free. Now you know.
I’ve heard home runs called a lot of things (taters, trot shots, dingers, blasts), but I found out a player has three “pumps” in the tournament. I’m going to leave that one alone.
And then there was this, so good that I ran to write it down. In describing a relief pitcher who had just entered the game (and climbed the humpback!) it was said “every now and then he will give you a four or a five.” OK, hang on for a minute and let me think about this. It took me a while, but I finally figured out that it meant he often threw pitches in the low 90s but could get it up to 94 (a four) or 95 (a five) miles per hour. I felt like had just passed a bar exam after that one.
PAR SAVE: Sam Burns acknowledges cheers after sinking a 14-foot par putt Thursday on the par-3 17th hole, his eighth of the first round of the U.S. Open. (Photo by DUSTIN SETLOFT, United States Golf Association)
By DOUG IRELAND, Journal Sports
Sam Burns entered Thursday’s opening round of the U.S. Open as one of the players expected to contend, and he quickly showed why.
Burns birdied two of his first four holes to jump into the lead among the morning tee times. But he slipped back with three bogeys, carding a 1-over 71 at Shinnecock Hills to stand in a tie for 29th in the 155-man field.
His threesome tees off in the afternoon today, at 12:51 CDT. Seven of the top eight players on the leaderboard played in the afternoon round Thursday, including five who were still on the course when play halted at dusk – led by Wyndham Clark, four shots clear of the rest of the field with a 6-under card and two holes left.
A two-hour fog delay Thursday kept Round 1 from being completed.
A look at his scorecard indicates Burns, the 29-year-old Shreveport native, had a lot going right and ran into trouble on three of the four toughest holes on the course.
He ranked second in the field by hitting 13 of 14 fairways. He found 12 of 18 greens in regulation, 27th overall. Burns stood fifth in strokes gained off the tee with his driving accuracy.
But he was 101st in shots gained on approaches, and 103rd on shots gained in the short game. Burns ranks fourth in putting this season on the PGA Tour, but Shinnecock’s notoriously challenging turtlebacked greens mitigated his strength Thursday. His 31 putts were 97th in the field.
Playing the back nine first, Burns laced his tee shot on the 155-yard 11th hole to six feet and drained the putt to get under par. On the 367th-yard 13th, he sank a 7-footer to get to 2-under.
His first bogey came on the 620-yard 16th, where he had his only three-putt, from 32 feet on a hole that was fourth-toughest to play Thursday.
Burns slipped to even par on the 474-yard fourth hole – the toughest for the field Thursday — after his only missed fairway of the round. He didn’t recover onto the green out of a fairway bunker and two-putted from 18 feet.
The last bogey came on No. 7, a 180-yard par 3 that was third-hardest Thursday, when his tee shot sailed over the green and he two putted from 21 feet.
Defending champion and tournament favorite Scottie Scheffler finished at 2-over 72 Thursday.
Today’s TV coverage is on Peacock throughout the day beginning at 6:30 a.m., with NBC picking up coverage at 1:30.
USA Network will have morning coverage on the weekend rounds with NBC and Peacock taking over at noon each day.
(artwork by CHRIS BROWN, Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame)
By RAYMOND PARTSCH III, Special to the LSWA
If not for a determined crop-dusting principal, Dewain Strother would have likely spent decades working in lumber mills, instead of becoming one of the winningest girls high school basketball coaches in United States history.
Despite being an all-district guard at Plainview High School for Louisiana High School Athletic Association Hall of Famer O.D. West and helping the Hornets claim the state championship in 1965, Strother had no intentions of going to college.
Raised in the Rapides Parish woods west of Glenmora, Strother firmly believed he was done with schooling upon graduation. Thankfully, Plainview principal Mike Irving had other plans.
“I had been in school for 12 years. That was long enough,” recalled Strother.
During his senior year, Strother wanted to take shop class, but the school had him in English 4. So Irving made him a deal. He could take shop class, but if he messed up, then back to English he would go.
“I left school without permission one day,” Strother said. “I think they were watching me under a magnifying glass. I was put back in that English class. (Irving) then helped register me for Northwestern State, flew me up there in his little four-seat Cessna plane to take a test, and that is how I got up there.”
That would set into motion a storied career, as Strother would lead Florien High School to six state championships, five runner-up finishes, and 21 semifinal appearances. His 1,235 victories are the most by any girls basketball coach in state history, and the second most in the nation.
“It ain’t about me,” Strother said. “It’s about those girls on the floor. They put the work in. They bought into what they needed to do. All the players who have gone through my program are successful. Nurses, police officers, teachers. I am amazed. I am just amazed. They are successful in society.”
Many will be in the audience watching Strother in the spotlight next Saturday evening, June 27, culminating three days of activities celebrating him and the rest of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame’s 12-person Class of 2026. For participation opportunities and more information, visit LaSportsHall.com or call 318-238-4255.
“It is well deserved,” said former longtime NSU women’s coach James Smith. “I have been hollering for a long time. It is really hard to believe. He can go back to the first game he coached. He still has a scorebook. He still has every book. That’s amazing to me. He is a special coach and a good guy. He gave himself to Florien and girls basketball for a long time.”
Like many young boys in rural Rapides Parish during the 1950s and 60s, Strother fell in love with basketball.
“I always loved the game of basketball,” Strother said. “At home, when we finished our chores, I would go outside and play basketball until mama hollered about supper.”
That love would carry over as he would go to play for West at Plainview, first as a bench player and then as the starting point guard. The lessons that he would utilize in his own coaching career are rooted in the time spent in the small gymnasium at Plainview.
“He basically made sure that we were well-behaved kids, and made the grades, and in the gym, he made sure we were fundamentally sound,” said Strother.
Those lessons were also done in a condensed amount of time, due to the school’s rural location.
“We didn’t practice after school,” Strother said. “We had 30 minutes during gym to work on fundamentals. We didn’t have any way to get home if we practiced after school.”
His on-court career came to a close upon graduation in 1968, but thanks to his principal, he would return to the hardwood in a different capacity, but not before one more detour.
In 1970, Strother married and stepped away from his studies at NSU to provide for his family. It didn’t take long to realize the plywood mill wasn’t for him after all.
“I realized that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in the mill,” Strother said. “My late wife, Charlotte, got a job at Ft. Polk, and her pay took care of everything. She said, ‘Go back and finish school.’ With her support, I went back.”
After graduating with his bachelor’s degree in 1974, Strother would be hired as an elementary physical ed teacher at Florien, located roughly 40 miles southwest of Natchitoches. He would keep books for the boys team before being asked to begin the girls basketball program in the early 1980s.
It didn’t take long for Strother to mold the Black Cats into one of the state’s best programs. In his second season, the team won the district championship, and then in 1986, they advanced to the semifinals, losing to Starks. Then came a state runner-up finish in 1987 to Starks.
The girls at Florien had bought into his style of “90-foot basketball.”
“The girls saw what we were doing,” Strother said. “It was exciting. The goal for the next year was to get back to state. We went back and made it to the finals. That started everything for us.”
“He was very intense at the time,” said Florien coach Angela Anthony, who played for Strother. “Kids nowadays could not have played for him. We had a good time, but we took care of business. All the girls were 100 percent bought in, and our parents were bought in.”
The seeds had been planted for one of the greatest runs in girls’ basketball history in Louisiana.
Florien claimed its first state championship under Strother in 1989 by rolling Chatham, but the next year lost the title game to Sabine Parish rival Zwolle, 47-35. That championship loss would be the last one for more than a calendar year.
In 1990-91, Florien went 48-0, defeated Holden for the state crown, and was ranked No. 13 in the nation — the perfect season.
Florien would repeat in 1992 by beating Pitkin for the state title, then win the title again in 1993 over Zwolle, and defeat Doyle for the crown in 1994.
In six years, Florien went to six consecutive title games, hoisting the title trophy five times.
“It was amazing,” said Strother’s daughter, Jessica Caroline, who played for her dad. “Florien, it was on the map. Everybody knew about Florien. Everybody knew Dad. Everybody still knows Dad. They will say, ‘he is so amazing, and I wish we had a coach like him.'”
“They always had great players,” James Smith said. “Dewain’s kids were well coached. You weren’t getting kids who were raw and had to teach them everything. They were disciplined and fundamentally sound. They had so many games and practices, and it showed. They just wanted to win. No one intimidated them.”
The key to Strother’s coaching success was humility, as the coach never stopped trying to learn and improve.
“After my first year as head coach, I thought I knew basketball, but I didn’t,” Strother recalled. “You have to find out who the five best players are playing together, not the five best overall. That summer, I went to Bobby Knight’s coaching clinic. I wrote in pad after pad of notes.”
Strother added, “Anytime I got a chance, I went to clinics. Jody Conradt, Dean Smith, Jim Calhoun, and Geno Auriemma. I have seen all of them and listened to them. I educated myself on the game and never looked back.”
“He was always wanting to learn something new,” daughter Caroline said. “The coaches these days are not like they used to be. Even through all of his fussing or screaming on the floor, he was still teaching us something. You don’t get that nowadays.”
Strother retired after the 2022-23 season following a storied career filled with a gym full of accomplishments and even more memories. The legendary coach imagined spending his days playing golf, but that first year, he didn’t play at all due to knee replacement surgery. It didn’t take long for him to have the coaching itch.
This past year, Strother returned to Florien to help his former player, turned assistant coach and then head coach. The Black Cats won 18 games and earned a playoff berth.
“He came back with a vengeance,” Anthony said. “He had rested up for two years, and he was raring to go. They (our girls) got something they weren’t expecting to get.”
“I truly enjoyed it,” Strother said. “My whole demeanor had changed because I felt useful again. It is great to be back.”
Strother is back where he was destined to be — on the hardwood of a small high school gymnasium.
Fiddlers, from left, Gina Forsyth, Clancey Stewart and Joe Suchanek at the “Fiddlin’ with the Finest! A Celebration of Louisiana Folk Fiddling” program held Saturday at the LSU Rural Life Museum in Baton Rouge. The program was sponsored by the Louisiana Folklife Center at Northwestern State University to promote the annual Louisiana State Fiddle Championship which will be held in Natchitoches on July 18. Photo by Christina Brown.
BATON ROUGE – Attendees at the Louisiana Folklife Center program “Fiddlin’ with the Finest! A Celebration of Louisiana Folk Fiddling” on June 13 at the LSU Rural Life Museum in Baton Rouge were treated to a performance of fiddle musical artistry.
Several musicians participated, including two Louisiana State Fiddle Champions — Clancey Stewart (2018) and Joe Suchanek (2017 and 2024) — as well as accomplished fiddler Gina Forsyth. Dr. Shane Rasmussen, director of the Louisiana Folklife Center and professor of English at Northwestern State University, coordinated the event, which included a discussion of various aspects of the tradition and a Q&A with the audience. Live music throughout the program included examples of fiddle styles as well as a demonstration of triple fiddling. Stewart also displayed her skill at traditional clogging or flat foot dancing and Forsyth played fiddle sticks on Stewart’s fiddle while Stewart played.
The well-attended program was a prelude to the Louisiana State Fiddle Championship, which will be part of the 46th annual Natchitoches-NSU Folk Festival to be held on the Northwestern State University campus on July 18. The Fiddle Championship will be held at 1 p.m. in Magale Recital Hall. Fiddlers may compete in the championship or non-championship, as well as in the twin fiddle category. Registration is at noon in the first-floor foyer outside Magale Recital Hall. The Fiddle Championship winner will perform on the main stage in Prather Coliseum at 5 p.m.
“The music performed at events like this one remind us how vital and vibrant Louisiana’s folk music can be,” said Rasmussen. “The Louisiana State Fiddle Championship provides important opportunities for fiddlers young and old to have fun while at the same time meet with peers, make new friends and showcase their talent. When folklife is alive and well people are happier, because our traditions give meaning to our lives as individuals and as a community.”
The event was hosted by the LSU Rural Life Museum and sponsored by the Louisiana Folklife Center at Northwestern. Support for the festival is provided by grants from the Cane River National Heritage Area, Inc., the Louisiana Division of the Arts Decentralized Arts Fund Program, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, the Natchitoches Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Natchitoches Historic District Development Commission, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation, the Shreveport Regional Arts Council and the State of Louisiana. The views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in the program did not necessarily represent those of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.
“In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha; she was always doing good and helping the poor.” – Acts 9:36
Last week momma wrote to tell me about her day, which included visiting our friend at the retirement home and baking three Italian crème cakes for somebody, I can’t remember who or how many.
Later it was another note that mentioned baking a cake for the Vacation Bible School teachers; my sister was on her way to check on her mother-in-law, whose husband was sick.
And I got in the mail my monthly newsletter from my uncle and aunt, stats and detailed updates about their ministry to the elderly and shut-in.
I don’t know what I was doing while they were up to all that. Cracking jokes and drinking coffee, most likely. Probably not doing anything of eternal value. Nothing like what Tabitha was doing, as recorded in Acts.
Tabitha was bona fide.
Tabitha was a disciple. She did not lead worship, or singing, or teach Bible study or serve on a committee. She might have done those things, but the way the text in Acts is worded, it leads me to believe she was “support personnel,” a behind-the-scenes force, stealthy to the masses, very visible to the wounded.
When she died, “widows stood around crying and showing him (Peter) the robes and other clothing that (Tabitha) had made while she was still with them.” (Acts 9: 39 NIV) Tabitha sowed the good seeds by sewing. By baking. Helping. Sweeping up.
At Peter’s request, God raised this valuable Jesus follower from the dead. “This became known all over Joppa, and many people believed in the Lord.” (Acts 9: 42 NIV)
It all matters. Sort of like baseball. Sort of like all sports. Sort of like living. The smallest things.
A broom. A mop. Needle and thread. A female disciple of 2,000 years ago, a cook and a seamstress, a maid and a patient ear, was no small fry. And neither are you. Your hands are those of Christ’s. Your hands serve his brothers and sisters, his Father’s sons and daughters.
In the kitchen and in the pulpit, in the laundry room or in the choir loft, we are never more like Christ than we when serve.
(artwork by CHRIS BROWN, Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame)
By TEDDY ALLEN, Written for the LSWA
(The scene is a cramped meeting room the size of the average American kitchen. Around a small oval table is a girl and two guys, including Scotty, the production manager, dressed in khaki and polo and youthful confidence. Yellow legal pads and paper cups of coffee are involved, pens and markers and laptops, the out-of-place, somewhat lonely Fresca. Scotty speaks …)
“Harvey and the new guy are a couple doors down in Development working on the script, polishing things up — Horatio’s doing some rewrites, a part or two that just didn’t feel right, you know? — but I wanted to get you up to speed on exactly where we are on the doc on Mike McConathy. So me and Larry felt we’d open this way …
“Hey Emmitt, please take a sec and skate down to PR and ask them to release that Bossier City native Mike McConathy, the winningest college basketball coach in state history, a prep All-American guard at Airline High and an honorable mention All-American guard for Louisiana Tech before launching a history-making coaching career at Bossier Parish Community College and then Northwestern State, will be enshrined in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Saturday night, June 27, at the Hall of Fame’s home in Natchitoches. Add that ticket information for the seven events over three days of festivities, June 25-27, is available at the LaSportsHall.com or by calling by calling 318-238-4255 …, and remind everyone it’s always sold out so get on the horn and let’s have some fun honoring the Class of 2026. Appreciate. Take off. Come back with an expresso or don’t come back …
“So Coach Mike is driving his truck down a two-lane road where the trees touch over the middle stripe. Got the Location crew scouting for the perfect spot. He’s right at home, happy as a flea at a dog show because this is the man’s wheelhouse. The guy’s face is practically glowing … He’s either driving to any one of the Louisiana high school gyms he’s been to over and over for 40 years OR he’s wearing that big floppy straw hat and we pan to the weed eaters and gas cans and rakes and mowers in the bed … You see where I’m going? It’s a beautiful open, is what it is …
“So Coach Mike is driving down a two-lane heading to a game because that’s where he’s most happy except it’s probably not gonna be Mike because the guy doesn’t toot his own horn. At all. We’re not gonna be able to get him to say anything about himself. Me and T-Money ate lunch with him in Bossier and we get this: ‘I’ve never thought of myself as being better than anybody else. That’s just who I am. I played and coached with unbelievable people. Fans have been very supportive, always. I just never think of myself that way.’ That’s it. Guy just keeps chewing. Swigs water. Like he’s talking about last week’s weather.
“His wife of 48 years and counting, Connie? Met on a blind date. She didn’t know he played basketball. They’d been dating just six months and the junior high kids she was student teaching told her he’d made all-conference. ‘If the students hadn’t told me,’ she says, ‘I still wouldn’t know.’ True story!
“You know how she found out he was in the Hall of Fame? Family text thread. Michael or Logan, one of the sons. No, for real: hand on my heart …
“So somebody who can sell ‘humble and loyal’ and make it authentic — gotta be authentic — will have to play him; he might not even let us take his picture holding a basketball. I’m thinking Bryan Cranston, funny but can get serious. Russell Crowe and go the’ gladiator’ angle, though that might be too … what’s the word? … gruesome? Sweaty? Too Roman? Woody Harrelson is a frontrunner since he was in a basketball movie, maybe Keanu Reeves with that certain All-American Dude quality. The perfect guy, the PERFECT guy, is Denzel — but he’d really have to sell it … you feel me? Not sure if Harrelson can still dunk, but Denzel can. Like Coach Mike, Denzel can do ANYthing and still be ‘everyman’ …
(Coffee slurps … the tic-tac of keys on a laptop. Somewhere, a dog barks …)
“But humble and loyal won’t get you into the Hall. Coach Mike has the numbers to go with the soul. Double-threat. Best of both worlds. All like that. The ol’ ‘Nice Guys Finish First’ bit — for a nice change.
“Here’s where the numbers tell the story through the clips with people who know him better than anyone …
“High school early ’70s, Airline in Bossier, son of Northwestern State great John McConathy, the fifth pick in the 1951 draft. We’ve got Airline teammates Terry Slack and Steve Haynes, football stars, talking about Mike having keys to the gym, practicing while wearing ankle weights, jumping rope, always working, getting recruited by Oklahoma and LSU and NSU and more, and eventually deciding to go to Ruston with them, just in a different sport …
“Then Tech teammates Tom Morris and Walter May and Tim Floyd and Jim Woolridge, quick bytes about how he’s the most dedicated athlete they’ve ever seen, and that sweet jump shot, no wasted movement, fluid as water from a garden hose, the 9-1 Southland Conference title his junior year, him getting 25 a game and being the league’s Player of the Year …
(Somewhere, a cat meows …)
“Keith Prince, Tech’s sports information director when McConathy played in 1974-77, tells us how Mike got drafted by the Bulls but the ABA/NBA merger cut out 100-plus pro jobs, how he played some European ball, then how he found his way back to Bossier Parish and brief high school gigs before starting the Bossier Parish Community College men’s basketball program with zip, playing in Airline’s gym, and winning 352 games in 16 seasons. Again, the guy did this from scratch. Didn’t have as much as an air pump …
“Then Shreveport’s Wayne Smith, another Tech all-conference and Tech Athletics Hall of Famer a decade after Mike, saying he saw Mike not only win at BPCC, but make sure, with limited resources, his players had food and some kind of housing and a chance, the one thing they needed the most. “Great player and coach,” Smith says on camera, “five-star man.” Game recognizing game. Sound and Music are seeing if the theme from Rocky might be good here, building to …
“The biggie. Northwestern State. The Demons. Where this Bulldog, this guy the Hall’s chairman and almost forever NSU SID Doug Ireland calls ‘a unicorn of a human,’ was ultimately meant to be. We’re talking 330 wins in 23 seasons, 682 total wins when we add 352 wins in 16 seasons at BPCC: Visual Effects is cooking up some snazzy presentation of the numbers. Meanwhile we’ve got Doug rattling off about Coach doing everything off the court from striping parking lots to pro bono weed eating on campus, a semi-continuance of the side biz he had in Bossier to get his Cavaliers some work and to SEE if they’d work …
“You’ll love this: we even have a Building and Grounds guy talking about how he thought Coach was one of THEM until he went to a game and saw the weed eater guy calling timeouts. Is that beautiful or WHAT?! We even have a couple of local non-profit directors saying with not a little embarrassment that they’d originally thought he worked for THEM. The guy was like a yard guy slash fix-it guy for the parish, AND he coached the basketball team. Only thing he lacked was a cape. (Scotty turns to the kid in J.Crew) Emmet, run down to Costume and see if we’ve got a purple and orange cape … might work that in … he did wear those checkerboard purple and orange pants coaching games.
(Somewhere, a crow caws …)
“A blurb of Greg Burke, NSU AD when Mike was coach, thanking his guy for the $5 million-plus his teams brought in from playing 117 guarantee games — including road wins at Auburn, Oklahoma State, Mississippi State, UTEP and neutral-court victories over Oregon State and 15th-ranked Iowa in the 2006 NCAA Tournament. Burke cries a little, understandable, especially when he gets to the part about 90 percent of the Demon hoopsters graduating. NINETY PERCENT! Believe that? …
“Then Chris Maggio tears up. TearFest, I’m telling you. Maggio, lifelong Natty resident and former NSU president. Former high school coach. Maggio takes us from March 1999, when Mike took over a Demons’ program with only five winning seasons and no postseason trips in 24 years of Division I history, to the Southland championship game that first season. And this without making over the roster! It’s a Demon miracle! Glory! …
“Here’s where Chris Thompson jumps in since Chris played for Mike both at BPCC and NSU. Chris describes the joy of winning the SLC title game Mike’s second season in their hometown, Bossier City, and the program earning the first of four postseason tournament appearances. Then we roll clips from those: NCAA 2001, Opening Round win over Winthrop; NCAA 2006, No. 14 seed First Round upset of No. 3 seed and Big Ten Tournament champ Iowa, a game everyone in Natchitoches swears they watched if they weren’t in Auburn Hills, Mich.; NCAA 2013’s First Round loss to eventual NCAA champion Florida, and the 2014 CIT home game. Video montage of those games with nat sound …
“It’s gold, is what it is. You love it! … I can tell by the way you’re smacking your Juicy Fruit. I do too! …
“And so, The End. On-court buckets and hugs. Sweaty time outs. Family pics. A quick blurb of Mike’s haberdasher saying, “He didn’t invent the mock turtleneck,” — this is courtside through tears after the buzzer-beater over Iowa, “he merely perfected it.” Oh! — almost forgot: some sentimental footage from February 15 last year when they named the Prather Coliseum court after him. THE WHOLE COURT! People DO this sort of thing? Guess we should get that in, amiright? LOL! Good stuff.
“Big Finish, but like Coach Mike, understated. A comment from — get this — the straw hat. The big nasty straw hat he wears when he’s weed eating the world. We’ve got Creative on it now, to make it work. All the hat says, shyly but with gratitude, is this: ‘I know I’m just a hat. A hat that needs an oil change, if we’re being honest. Just an ordinary hat. But when I’m on Coach Mike’s head, somehow, I feel more like a crown.’
(Fade to black. And purple. And white, with some orange trim …)
STATE’S BEST: The Byrd Yellow Jackets’ 4×400 meter relay teamof Bereket Raines, Wyatt Ditt, Jordan Blakes, and Markeith Niblett received All-State honors Tuesday for running the state’s fastest time while they won the Class 5A championship last month at LSU’s Bernie Moore Stadium. (Photo courtesy C.E. Byrd High School)
JOURNAL SPORTS
Two state championship performances headline the local competitors who qualified for the 2026 LSWA All-State Track and Field Team announced Tuesday.
Byrd’s boys 4×400 relay team and Parkway distance star Brennan Robin ran to Class 5A gold medals at the LHSAA Outdoor Championships last month, and their marks got them top billing in their events.
Airline’s Jayden Williams posted the state’s third-fastest 800, clocking 1:52.79 to earn All-State honors. He was also a 5A bronze medalist at the state meet, running 1:53.43.
The all-state roster was compiled considering all marks recorded during the outdoor season around Louisiana.
The Yellow Jackets’ foursome of Bereket Raines, Wyatt Ditt, Jordan Blakes, and Markeith Niblett captured the 5A crown with a 3:17.25 mark at the state meet.
Byrd edged defending event champion Catholic of Baton Rouge by 0.01 for the victory, the first time since 2012 a Caddo Parish 4×400 relay team won the event, and the first time since 1966 that a C.E. Byrd team won.
Robin earned All-State recognition in two races. The junior was fastest winning the 3200 meters in 9:07.4, not long after he ran a blazing 4:05.84 time in the 1600 that was under a 44-year-old state all classes record – but he was overtaken in the closing lap by Jesuit’s Connor Fanburg, who posted a 4:04.09. The old record was 4:12.
“I wanted to win the mile. Last year I was third, freshman year I was second,” Robin told a Louisiana vs. All Y’all reporter in a YouTube interview at the state meet. “I ran a really good race. Even though I got second, it was fun to battle to the end.
“I went into (the 3200) and felt comfortable. With a lap to go, I felt it was time to make a move and that move won the race. Super happy with today,” he said.
By PATRICK MEEHAN, Centenary Assistant AD for Communications
Centenary’s Brandon Henschel was named Collegiate Athletic Trainer of the Year by the Louisiana Athletic Trainers’ Association at the annual Awards Luncheon recently in Baton Rouge.
Henschel is in his third year as the head of the Centenary Athletics Sports Medicine department. He was presented the award in front of his statewide colleagues by Lance Champagne, the Athletic Training Supervisor with Ochsner LSU Health.
The Louisiana Athletic Trainers’ Association is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization comprised of healthcare professionals dedicated to safety in sports and the advancement of athletic training within the state of Louisiana.
Henschel, a native of Iron River, Mich., came to Centenary from ULM, where he served as an assistant athletic trainer with football, volleyball, beach volleyball, softball, and men’s basketball teams from March 2023 to July of 2024. Henschel earned his bachelor’s degree in athletic training from Central Michigan University in 2022, with minors in public health and substance abuse education.
MEN’S GOLF: Junior Aubrey Snell has been named to the 2025-26 Louisiana Sports Writers Association All-Louisiana Men’s College Golf team.
Ten men were recognized on either the first team or second team, while five golfers made up the women’s All-Louisiana squad. Snell was joined on the second team by ULM’s Louis Anceaux, LSU’s Noah McWilliams (of Benton), Tom Watson of UNO, and LSU’s Árni Sveinsson.
Snell, a former Parkway High School star, is the first Centenary golfer to be named All-Louisiana since former Gent Andrew Bennett earned first-team honors in 2024 for the first time in his career.
Snell turned in another impressive season as he tallied four top-10 finishes and finished in the top 15 five times. He also had one top three finish and season-low round was a 69. Snell competed in seven tournaments (16 rounds) and posted a season stroke average of 73.6. He earned a top 25 finish in the conference championships as he shot an 8-over 188 to tie for 23rd.
The 2025-26 LSWA All-Louisiana Men’s and Women’s Golf teams were selected by a statewide vote of school sports information directors.
SPRING SPORTS: The Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference has announced its spring All-Sportsmanship teams. Each head coach was asked to elect one competitor who displayed the highest standard of sportsmanship throughout the 2026 spring season.
Baseball: Lenny Forth, Sr., Flower Mount, Texas
Men’s golf: Jeff Borchert, Sr., Katy, Texas
Women’s golf: Amber Shaw, So., Hughes Springs, Texas
ACADEMICS: Eight Ladies and Gents were recently named to the College Sports Communicators Academic All-District® At-Large teams.
The Centenary representatives were Cooper Harris, lacrosse; Jordyn Templeton and Amber Shaw, women’s golf; Colton Mayer, men’s golf; and Anna Ichiba, Skyla Cruz, Olivia Montgomery, and Olivia Stratmann, gymnastics.
Well, that’s a stretch. We weren’t ever going to be confused with the Vanderbilts, but we weren’t The Beverly Hillbillies pre-oil either. We had all we needed.
I can never remember going without or being hungry or not having clothes to wear. A small-town preacher’s family always would be supplied. Bushels of corn and peas and beans showed up at our side door, fresh cucumbers, tomatoes. We had a garden like everyone else, but we didn’t really need one; we got the surplus from others. Our deep-freeze was always full.
But cash money, we didn’t have a lot of that. I didn’t know that at the time, but I do now.
Ignorance was bliss — but it wasn’t as grateful as it should have been. I didn’t understand how much my parents and their friends did for us kids. None of us knew.
When summer rolls around every year, I think of our vacations back then and wonder how they did it, how my parents came up with the money. We’d drive from South Carolina to see my grandparents in Louisiana. Not always, but sometimes, we stayed at a hotel . . . almost always ate at a Howard Johnsons, so we could have pancakes. Or “pigs in a blanket.”
Spaghetti. No restaurants in my hometown. This was a huge deal, eating out.
And not every summer, but three times, we stopped on the way home at “Six Flags Over Georgia” in Atlanta.
Bigtime. Just saying. Two words: log ride.
It is not easy these days to scrape up money for a few days at the beach or “Six Flags Over Anywhere.” Even “One Flag” can be tough. But it was even harder for my parents, and probably for yours. Somehow, they managed it, and memories of those times are priceless, even though travel with five in a two-door Impala was far from luxury.
Ignorance is thinking the window rolled down and your sister’s elbow in your ribs was bliss. And it was.
My parents did practical day-to-day things to get us over the hump, plus some more. It is another reason to honor a couple who did things for me I couldn’t do for myself. There is an illustration of selflessness in their actions and purpose that I need always to remember.
“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right,” Paul writes in Ephesians. “‘Honor your father and mother’”—the first commandment with a promise— “so that it may go well with you…”
They did so much to make it “go well” with us. Summer vacation? Probably wasn’t much of a vacation for them, corralling kids and scraping some dollar bills together. Just a small reason, of many, to honor them, more than a half-century of summers later.
EAGLE IN FLIGHT: Tonight, Evangel alumnus Roy Morris has a chance to become an All-American in each of his first two outdoor seasons at Northwestern. (NSU photo by CHRIS REICH)
By JONATHON ZENK, Northwestern State Sports Information
EUGENE, Oregon — Until now, only three athletes in Northwestern State history have reached the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in each of their first two seasons with the program. Years later, they all rank among the program’s legends.
Six-time All-American and two-time national champion high jumper Brian Brown reached nationals in 1987 and 1988.
Benton’s Latrell Frederick earned three All-America honors in the javelin after getting to NC’s in 2000 and 2001 in his first two collegiate campaigns.
Another javelin great, Cody Fillinch, who won All-America honors at each of his four NCAA Outdoors, got there in his first two years, 2006-07.
Two weeks ago, sophomore long jumper Roy Morris joined that short list after a tremendous performance at the NCAA East Region championships, finishing sixth.
After earning a second team All-American spot last season, Morris aims to repeat as an All-American with a top 16 finish among a 24-man field at tonight’s national meet.
The Evangel Christian product competes at 8:40 p.m. (CDT) this evening at Hayward Field on the campus of the University of Oregon. Fans can watch the long jump on ESPN+.
“It feels amazing to go back to nationals,” Morris said. “I can’t be more blessed than I am right now. It feels amazing to see the position God put me in. I can’t ask for much more than that.”
Last season, Morris made a surprise appearance at nationals after a jump of 24-8 at regionals to finish ninth at the NCAA East competition. Morris led after the first of two flights before a lengthy weather delay caused disruption and forced the second flight to not compete until late at night.
The competitor in Morris wanted to make a statement at this year’s regional meet, knowing some thought he benefited from the delay last season. He did, with a personal best mark of 25-7 ¼.
“He’s a competitor, through and through,” assistant coach Alex Wills said. “When it comes to those pressure situations, he keeps a level head and that is something not every athlete can do. That is one of the things you can’t really coach. They either have it or they don’t. He can keep a level head in those pressure situations. We had a plan going into the competition and he stuck to it.”
After making it to nationals last June, Morris and Wills knew there was more potential to untap. During the offseason, the two worked relentlessly to improve certain aspects of Morris’ game, and once the training paid off, there was no stopping the Greenwood resident.
This season, Morris went out to not only prove he could make it back to nationals but also prove to others that he deserved the spot a year ago.
“I really put the work in to advance to where I was last year,” Morris said. “I know a lot of people doubted me and saying it was the weather delay. I just went out and proved that it wasn’t the weather delay, but it was because of the work I put in.”
Throughout his first season and a half with the Demons, Morris had the goal of jumping 25-0.
That happened in early April at the Pepsi Florida Relays, one of five times going 25 feet in the next two months — all at pivotal points in competition.
It was also at that time that Morris also went to a new approach — one that helped earn the gold medal at the Southland Conference Championships and ultimately, another nationals appearance.
“Last year, we worked on being technical and this year, the big thing we worked on was speed down the runway,” Wills said. “We worked all fall on getting him quicker. I pushed him back so his approach was further out so we could build that speed even more. It took a while, as the Florida Relays were the first one we really got to try that new approach and it worked out well. We just kept building off that.”
He did it again on his final jump in a pressure situation to win the gold medal at the conference championships — doing so by a quarter inch —and was 25-plus on all three jumps at the NCAA East First Round in Kentucky.
His first went 7.66 meters (25-1 ¾), which was just shy of a personal best. That attempt would have finished 12th and earned the last East slot for nationals if he didn’t make any more attempts.
Morris’ second jump put any thought he might not make it to nationals to bed, as he recorded a personal best jump of 7.80 meters (25-7 ¼) to cement his spot in Oregon.
The mark that earned him a spot at nationals a season ago wouldn’t have even put him inside the East Region top 20 this time around.
“We knew about his potential this year and even last year,” Wills said. “I’ve been telling coaches he’s going to jump 7.70 or 7.80, so for him to come out and hit that exact mark was amazing. But not only that, all three of his jumps were over 25 feet and he had only done that twice previously during his career. For him to come out and hit that mark all three times just shows that he is really that type of competitor and we’re ready to see what he can do at nationals.”
Morris uses a calm, level-headed demeanor during his jumps, which has helped him achieve several of his goals. Now he aims for another — to become one of the top eight long jumpers in the country to earn a first team All-American slot tonight.
Also competing for NSU tonight, in Heat 1 at 10:36, will be the men’s 4×400 meter relay team, anchored by Parkway’s Will Achee, in the semifinal round. ESPN will have coverage.
Lady Demon sprinter Rushana Dwyer runs Thursday in the 400 meter dash semifinals.
