“Fantastic weekend”

By: TONY MARKS
Editor

NATCHITOCHES - All roads lead to the banks of the Cane River as a new class of inductees joined the ranks of legendary athletes enshrined in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame on Saturday, June 25. For this year’s 12 honorees, they all took different roads getting them to that point of their careers.
For Garland Forman, known as “The Country Journalist,” his road to the hall of fame as one of the recipients of the Distinguished Service Award in sports journalism began as an eight-year-old boy with a paper route. He then became a manager at Louisiana College and eventually became editor of The Bunkie Record. Over the years, he has received several hundred awards for his writing, photography, and layout. He is also the only person to serve as president of the Louisiana Press Association and the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. Today, he serves as publisher of the Ville Platte Gazette and oversees 13 papers across central and north Louisiana for Louisiana State Newspapers.
Forman expressed the days surrounding his hall of fame induction as a “fantastic weekend.” He said, “It’s just unbelievable what everybody’s done for not just myself but my family. It’s actually been a great weekend.”
Driving Forman down his now hall of fame career is the belief that community news is a big thing when it comes to the rural areas of the state. “People in rural parishes rely on the news and the sports because the communities in these rural parishes want the news and the sports too,” he said.
Forman shared an example of how the community and sports intersect and form an important aspect in people’s lives.
The same weekend LSU was playing in the College World Series finals against Miami in 1996 was the same weekend as the annual Corn Festival in Bunkie. “There was a pretty large crowd for Bunkie,” Forman recalled.
He continued, “There were only two TVs. I had brought one, and the Lion’s Club brought one for its booth. We were watching the game. When the ninth inning started, it was tied then Miami took the lead. Everything stopped. The carnival stopped. The music stopped. Everything stopped. When I looked around, I don’t know how many people were around each little 13-inch TV trying to see what happened. It just showed you the power of what sports can do in a community. (Warren Morris) then hit the home run, and, an hour later, we were all back to normal. Everybody was happy.”
For another inductee, Coach Claney Duplechin, of Episcopal High School in Baton Rouge, his road to Natchitoches began at the same time he was playing drums at Fred’s Lounge in his native Mamou at the age of 16.
Duplechin grew up playing baseball and was a self-proclaimed “decent athlete” on his Green Demon squad. He then became a coach and got hired at Catholic High School in Baton Rouge.
“I really wanted to do football and baseball,” Duplechin said. “I got to Catholic High, and the principal said to me to go talk to Barry Murphy and decide what I was going to do. He said, ‘You’re doing football and you’re doing track because we don’t have room at baseball this year.’ My heart kind of sank, but I needed money.”
What happened next changed Duplechin’s life and led him to his hall of fame induction. What happened was he had the opportunity to learn from legendary Coach Pete Bourdreaux, who himself is inducted into the hall. “He changed my mind and made me start loving the sport of track and field,” said Duplechin. “I learned so much from him about how to coach people and not how to coach the sport. I think if you coach people first at any level and not the sport you’re going to be successful.”
After years at Catholic High, Duplechin then went to Episcopal. Since then, his teams won 64 LHSAA state titles in track and cross country and 15 runner-up finishes.
Also winning the Distinguished Service Award in sports journalism was Ted Allen, who has worked for the Shreveport Journal and The Times in Shreveport and for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans before founding DesignatedWriters.com.
Allen’s road to Natchitoches began as a kid growing up in rural South Carolina. He said, “When I was three or four years old, I was doing things with idioms and subjective clauses.” He added he was doing to commas what Pete Maravich was doing to basketballs.
At the age of 10, Allen then developed his love of the game when he was taken to a Clemson football game against South Carolina. “We walked into the stadium,” he said, “and stood in the end zone on the hill. All of the colors, the sounds, the roars, and the smells were just fascinating. I’m sure I slept all the way home, but I never forgot that. I didn’t know that was that many people in the world.”
Receiving the Dave Dixon Louisiana Sports Leadership Award was Jay Cicero, the president and CEO of the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation. The foundation is responsible for bringing major sporting events, like the Super Bowl and the Final Four, to the Crescent City.
Cicero’s road began on the baseball diamond in his native Shreveport and almost went a different route when he interviewed for a job in the front office of the San Francisco Giants in 1989. “I was there for the Earthquake Game,” he said.
The game was Game Three of the World Series between the Giants and the Oakland Athletics and was postponed following an earthquake in the area.
“I said I cannot move to California after going through that experience,” Cicero said, “so I ended up moving to New Orleans the next year.”
Cicero’s secret to success down his hall of fame journey is surrounding himself with great people. “When you find somebody who is great and handles business in the right way,” he shared, “you need to be around that person a lot more and learn and absorb from him.”
Opelousas native Steve Duhon entered the hall of fame as a steer wrestler, but, in doing so, took a page out of the Robert Frost playbook and took a road less traveled.
Duhon played a year of football at LSU. “I realized I was just a little too small to be able to play the game,” he said. “I got hurt playing a couple of times and broke my shoulder my freshman year. At the end of the year, I realized I had a different road I could go on.”
He then began competing in rodeos and claimed the PRCA Resistol Rookie of the Year award. He also won three world championships (1986, 1987, and 1993) in rodeo as a steer wrestler and qualified for the National Finals Rodeo eight times. He twice won the steer wrestling NFR aggregate title and established a Wrangler NFR record run of 3.0 seconds in 1986.
Fifty years ago, the first formal induction was held at the Louisiana Sports of Fame when Y.A. Tittle was the sole inductee. That same year, landmark legislation took effect prohibiting sexually based discrimination in athletics. This year’s class of inductees featured a pair of individuals who benefitted from Title IX and were able to leave their marks on LSU athletics.
Britni Sneed Newman was a pitcher on the LSU softball team from 1999 to 2002 and was a cornerstone of the school’s first team to make the Women’s College World Series. She collected 10 no hitters, six of which came during her senior season.
“I don’t remember one of them,” she commented. “I kind of wish I did, but I do remember our team finally being able to go to the Women’s College World Series. That was my ultimate moment at LSU.
Newman’s road to the hall of fame came through Louisiana after Texas A&M passed on recruiting the Texas native. Glen Moore, who was softball coach at LSU at the time, pursued her. “He came on a visit, and I fell in love with the vision for women’s softball and the support LSU gave to its athletes.”
Fellow Texas native Susan Jackson finished her gymnastics career at LSU second in school history with 12 career All-America honors, including 11 first-team honors. In addition, she also won two national titles and the Honda Award as the nation’s best gymnast.
“I actually never went to LSU before I committed,” Jackson said. “It was very early in the recruiting process when I knew LSU was for me. I fell in love with the coaches, and I loved the fact they cared for me as Susan and not just as a gymnast. I googled LSU in typing class my junior year and saw it was an hour drive from New Orleans. That didn’t hurt things either.”
The highlight of Jackson’s road to the hall of fame was getting to the Super 6 for the first time in school history. She said, “We had been trying for years and years to get there. To finally get there was a pretty cool moment.”
What Newman and Jackson did in laying foundations, two other inductees did the same on the football field.
On the offensive line, Jahri Evans was an anchor for the New Orleans Saints on their way to their first Super Bowl title in 2009. Among his career accolades are six Pro Bowl appearances.
For the Philadelphia native, his road, also, began on the baseball diamond, and he received a scholarship to play baseball in Connecticut. But, he ended up playing football in high school and signed to play for Bloomsburg in Pennsylvania. He then was drafted by the Saints in 2006 and became the starting right guard for new coach, Sean Payton.
“We knew we had a tough group of guys,” Evans said. “There were a lot of guys from different places and a lot of free agents. We put all of that together and had a pretty good group that year to go to the NFC Championship. That’s where that toughness started.”
He continued, “We were really a big running team in 2006. Then when Drew (Brees) and the rest of the guys got going we became a dynamic passing team. We just put those things together and made magic happen.”
Kyle Williams, a Ruston native, was similarly a building block for the recent successes of LSU football. His road to the hall as a defensive tackle began on a recruiting visit from Nick Saban.
“Nick was sitting in my living room and giving me the what fors,” Williams said. “‘Hey, we offered you a scholarship,’” he recalled about the conversation. “‘We’re going to be really good. Wherever you go, we’re going to beat you. What’s your problem.’ And then what made it worse was my mom sitting over my shoulder going, ‘Yea! Yea! Yea!’”
“Luckily,” Williams continued, “Coach Saban and my mom knew something I didn’t know. I think that’s where all the roads were pointing anyway.
Williams then was a member of the LSU football team to win the national championship in 2003, the school’s first since 1958. He was then drafted by the Buffalo Bills and played 13 seasons. In the Bills’ 2017 season finale, he ran for a 1-yard TD at Miami and that win lifted Buffalo into the playoffs for the first time in 17 years. Individually, his best season came in 2013 with 10.5 sacks, 68 tackles and 22 quarterback hits. When he retired, Williams ranked second in franchise history in tackles (609), sixth in sacks with 48½, still best ever by a Bills’ tackle.
His career is attributed to the style of practice while at LSU. He said practices were “just so fiercely competitive that they forced you to rise to the top. If you did not compete and rise to the top you were going to get left behind.”
Two of the inductees into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame saw their road tragically come to an end too soon.
Justin Robichaux, son of the late Tony Robichaux, recalled his father’s struggles as a young coach at McNeese. He used those struggles to motivate him on his way to becoming the winningest baseball coach in Louisiana. At the time of his death in 2019, at the age of 57, he had the seventh winningest record in the NCAA with a mark of 1,177-767-2. Robichaux won 914 games at UL and led the Ragin’ Cajuns to 12 NCAA regional appearances, four Super Regional appearances and the 2000 College World Series where UL finished tied for third with a 2-2 mark, at the time tying for the most wins by a first-time CWS participant.
Driving Robichaux down his hall of fame career was his commitment to consistency and to mastering his craft. His son, Justin, recalled an incident during his sophomore season.
“We’re playing Middle Tennessee, and I get a phone call at two o’clock in the morning,” he said. “It’s him. He said, ‘Hey, I need you to come up to my room.’ I got up to his room, and he’s laying there with the laptop propped up on his stomach. He goes, ‘I need you to put this in the DVD player for me.’ He wasn’t very technologically inclined. I pushed the side button and got it in. I got a chance to look at the title of the DVD, and it was John C. Maxwells’ The 21 Essential Laws of Leadership. His resiliency and constant perfectionist approach were used to just better himself.”
The late Eric Andolsek went into the hall of fame almost two days to the date of the 30th anniversary of his death. In his final NFL season, Andolsek helped the Lions win the NFC Central title and advanced to the NFC championship game.
“He started off at a very young age being very competitive,” Andolsek’s brother, Andy, said. “Eric did not like to lose at anything. It pushed him to work harder. Even when he was at Thibodaux High and when he was a freshman at LSU he always thought he wasn’t good enough. That just pushed him to train harder and harder.”
Also inducted was the late Dr. Eddie Flynn, who won an Olympic boxing gold medal in the welterweight (147 pounds) division at the 1932 Los Angeles Games, defeating Erich Campe of Germany in the final. After the Olympics, Flynn fought professionally and compiled a 23-7-1 record until he entered military service and served through World War II.
Dr. Flynn’s great-grandson, Cory Martin, said the induction allowed him to take a deeper dive into his great-grandfather’s career and learn more about him as a man. Martin said it was kind of oxymoronic for his great-grandfather to become a dentist after being a boxer. “He would provide services to anybody and everybody regardless of pay even if it was fruit or chickens.”
All of the inductees thanked the many people who made their hall of fame journeys possible, including their families. For Duplechin, he also thanked his new Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame family. He concluded, “I’d like to congratulate the other inductees here tonight. I truly learned so much from you. You are an inspiration to me. It’s such an honor to be able to share this stage with you. All-in-all, I’m so humbled to be here tonight representing all of our track and cross country coaches in Louisiana. We have some of the most talented and outstanding coaches in the entire nation here in our own state.”