Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame to induct 13

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The Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame will induct 11 former athletes and two sports journalists during its celebration scheduled for June 30 in Natchitoches. This year’s class includes three former NFL players and a World Series pitcher. Here is a run down of this year’s class.
PAUL CANDIES -- The formidable drag racing partnership of Candies & Hughes began in 1964 when Leonard Hughes, who’d been racing Chevrolet stockers, wanted to go faster. The man to help him achieve that goal was Paul Candies, his long time friend. By 1968, they were part of the fledgling Funny Car class in the National Hot Rod Association and set the national record of 7.87 seconds in LaPlace. The next year, they had low e.t. and top speed at the U.S. Nationals with a national speed record and also won at the Winternationals. The Candies & Hughes team won 45 major events -- including 28 NHRA titles in the Funny Car (18) and Top Fuel (10) classes between 1970 and 1994. The first two of those breakthrough wins came with Hughes at the wheel in the 1970 Gatornationals and 1971 Summernationals in the Funny Car class. They later became the first team to win NHRA and IHRA Winston championships in the same year. Candies went on to win five IHRA Championships, two NHRA titles and had nine top-five seasons. Both men were inducted into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame in 1999. Candies, president of the des Allemands-based marine transportation company Otto Candies, was also a longtime supporter of the long-running Grand Isle International Tarpon Rodeo. As chairman of the annual summertime event, he was known as the “Granddaddy of the Tarpon Rodeo.” Candies, who died in 2013, was following in the footsteps of his father, Otto, who helped the tarpon rodeo -- whose history dates to the 1930s -- thrive in its early years and eventually become one of the premier fishing tournaments in the entire nation.
LEWIS COOK -- Cook has led three different high schools to 31 state playoff appearances in 33 years as a head coach with 23 district and four state titles, three at Notre Dame of Crowley. At the outset of the 2018 season, Cook has a 344-82 career record, ranking him third in Louisiana history among active coaches and fifth all-time in the state with each of the coaches ahead of him already inducted into the LSHOF (J.T. Curtis, Jim Hightower, Red Franklin and Don Shows). His .808 winning percentage, which is fourth-best in state history, includes a playoff record of 75-27 with four state titles, 12 trips to the state championship game and 18 semifinal berths. His 1989 Crowley team won the 3A state title, and he followed with state crowns at Notre Dame in 2000 and 2009 in 3A and 2015 in 2A. Cook has won 24 district titles -- including 11 in a row -- and has been the state coach of the year six times in three different classes. He also was the head coach at Rayne High, his alma mater, from 1977-80. Cook spent eight seasons on the staff at UL-Lafayette (1981-84, 1992-95) and coached six eventual NFL players -- including Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame member Jake Delhomme, and Brandon Stokley, also a 2018 inductee. Born 6-8-1951.
JACK HAINS -- A crop-duster from Rayne, Hains was one of the early champions of competitive bass fishing. In 1975, he captured the fifth annual Bassmaster Classic (the Super Bowl of fishing tournaments) in Currituck Sound, North Carolina. Hains, a rookie angler on the circuit, caught 18 bass weighing 45 pounds, 4 ounces and collected a check for $15,950. He went on to qualify for seven Bassmaster Classic tournaments. Hains, who competed in the late 1990s on the Walmart Fishing League Worldwide Tour, has piled up earnings of $318,061.44 in 152 career tournaments. Hains finished in the Top 10 a total of 24 times and also had 35 top-20 showings.
JERRY SIMMONS - The winningest coach in LSU, Louisiana-Lafayette and Louisiana history (career record of 492-197-2 in 26 years), Simmons is the second winningest coach in SEC history behind only the legendary Dan Magill. He is one of the top 10 winningest NCAA Division I coaches of all-time. Simmons led LSU to 13 NCAA appearances, all of which were at least to the Round of 16, in 15 years. He was named National, Regional, SEC and Louisiana Coach of the Year in 1988, when he led LSU to a school-record 27 wins (only 2 losses) and to the National Championship match. LSU was ranked No. 1 in the nation for four weeks in 1988, a first in school history. He coached Donni Leaycraft to the 1989 NCAA Singles title, the first Grand Slam victory in school history. Simmons coached Johan Kjellesten to the 1989 Clay Court Singles title, the second Grand Slam victory at LSU. Tiger players earned 24 All-America honors and 34 All-SEC honors in 15 years under Jerry Simmons, and he had players earn 23 Academic All-SEC honors. His teams won 138 SEC dual matches in career, second in league history to Hall of Famer Dan Magill. In 1998, Simmons was the youngest coach ever inducted into the ITA Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame, and is in the Louisiana Tennis Hall of Fame. He was the first person to introduce corporate sponsorship to collegiate tennis with the USL Rolex Tennis Classic in 1977. Also had the nation’s first-ever college tennis corporate sponsored scoreboard. He organized ESPN’s first televised tennis match in 1979, served as tournament director of the Nokia Sugar Bowl 1994-98 and is tour director of Chanda Rubin’s American ITF. His record at LSU was 278-105 (15 years) and at Louisiana-Lafayette he was 214-92-2 (11 years). Along with the 1988 NCAA title match, his LSU teams advanced to the NCAA Final Eight in1987-89-91-92, the NCAA Sweet 16 in 1984-85-86-90-93-95-96-97 and made NCAA Appearances in 1984-85-86-87-88-89-90-91-92-93-95-96-97.
RUSS SPRINGER -- A right-handed pitcher, Springer played 18 major league seasons – from 1992-2010 (minus 2002) with 10 different teams. He played for LSU from 1987-89, compiling a 19-10 career record with a 3.39 ERA and 313 career strikeouts in 252 innings pitched for the Tigers. A seventh-round pick of the New York Yankees in 1989, he made his big-league debut in 1992 with the Yankees and went on to appear in 740 games. He logged 755 strikeouts in the big leagues in a shade over 856 innings. Springer, mostly a reliever through his career, was 36-45 overall with a 4.52 ERA, but his best two seasons were late in his career – 2007 and ’08 with the St. Louis Cardinals, when he went 10-2 with an average ERA of 2.25 and registered 111 strikeouts. In 2007 (8-1, 2.18 ERA) he was given the Darryl Kile Good Guy Award, presented annually to the Cardinals (and Astros) player who best exemplifies Kile’s traits of “a good teammate, a great friend, a fine father and a humble man.” Of all the baseball players in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, only three -- Baseball Hall of Famers Mel Ott (22 years), Ted Lyons (21 years) and Lou Brock (19 years) -- played for more seasons in the major leagues. He played on three teams that went to the World Series – the 1999 Atlanta Braves, 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks and 2005 Houston Astros. He was the winning pitcher for Atlanta Game 6 of the 1999 NLDS against the Mets, which clinched the NL pennant. Only 73 pitchers in MLB history have more appearances than Springer (740), who also set an SEC strikeout-per-nine-innings record (14.5) as a freshman at LSU. Born 11-7-1968 in Alexandria.
BRANDON STOKLEY -- A former Comeaux High and UL-Lafayette star, the 5-foot-11 dynamo played wide receiver for five NFL teams over a 15-year career, appearing in 152 games, and had 397 catches for 5,339 yards (13.4 yards per catch) and 39 TDs. His best season was in 2004 with the Colts, when he teamed with Peyton Manning for 68 receptions, 1,077 yards and 10 TDs. Stokley added 46 receptions for 647 yards and seven TDs in 15 postseason games, helping the Baltimore Ravens win Super Bowl XXXV. That night, he caught seven passes for 91 yards in a 34-7 rout of the New York Giants, scoring the first points of the game on a 38-yard TD grab from Trent Dilfer in the first quarter. Stokley was a record-setter at UL-Lafayette from 1995-98, becoming the first NCAA Division I player to average 100 receiving yards a game in three different seasons (101.9 in 1995, 105.5 in 1996 and 106.6 in 1998). As a freshman, his 1,121 receiving yards was an all-division NCAA record even though he didn’t start a game that year because coach Nelson Stokley (his dad) didn’t want to show favoritism. With the Ragin’ Cajuns, he had 241 catches for 3,702 yards and 25 TDs despite playing in only four games as a junior because of a torn ACL. At the end of his career, he ranked ninth all-time in Division I-A in career yardage (3,702) and 10th in catches (241). Only played one year of high school football, but made the Class 5A all-state team after leading the state with 80 receptions for 946 yards. Born 6-23-76 in Blacksburg, Va.
REGGIE WAYNE -- The 30th overall pick in the first round of the 2001 NFL draft by the Indianapolis Colts, Wayne, a New Orleans native and former John Ehret High School star, went on to team with Peyton Manning and become one of the league’s most productive wide receivers -- especially when it came to finding the end zone. Wayne, who had 82 touchdown catches in his career, caught 69 of them from Manning from 2001-10. Wayne was a six-time Pro Bowl pick (making it five years in a row from 2006-10) and a one-time AP first-team All-Pro selection. For his career, he caught 1,070 passes for 14,345 yards (13.4 average) and 82 TDs despite sharing the ball for his first eight seasons with Hall of Fame wideout Marvin Harrison. Going into the 2017 season, Wayne ranked 10th in NFL history in receptions and receiving yards after ranking seventh in catches and eighth in yards when he retired after the 2014 season. Wayne, who played in two Super Bowls (winning one in 2006 against the Chicago Bears and losing to the Saints in 2009), started 197 of 211 regular-season games. He caught at least 75 passes nine seasons in a row (2004-12) and had at least 100 receptions four times (104 in 2007, 100 in ’09, a career-high 111 in ’10 and 106 in ’12 at the age of 34). Wayne had at least 1,000 receiving yards in eight of 14 years in the league with career-high 1,510 in 2007 and topped the 1,300-yard mark four times. He had a career-best 12 TD catches in 2004 and recorded 10 in 2007 and ’09. Wayne added 93 catches for 1,254 yards and nine TDs in 21 career playoff games, catching a 53-yard TD for the Colts first score in a 29-17 win over the Bears in Super Bowl XLI in Miami where he attended college. He caught 173 passes for 2,510 yards and 20 TDs in four seasons with the Hurricanes. Born 11-17-1978 in New Orleans.
LARRY WRIGHT - Wright was a prep and college standout in Louisiana and played six NBA seasons, and served as the head coach at Grambling State, his alma mater. He was a prep All-American at two schools, Richwood of Monroe and Western High School in the Washington, D.C. metro area, who was a two-time NCAA Small College All-American (1975-76) at Grambling. After being the SWAC Player of the Year as a junior, he declared for the NBA Draft and was a first-round NBA Draft pick of Washington. Wright helped Elvin Hayes and the Bullets win the 1978 NBA Championship. In four seasons with the Bullets, he scored 2,489 regular-season points in 297 games (8.4 points a game), averaging between 9.3 and 7.3 points a game each season. After playing a season for Detroit (7.4 ppg), Wright went on to play in Europe, leading Banco DiRoma to the Italian championship in 1982-83, winning Italian Player of the Year honors in 1983. One publication named him the European Player of the Year in 1983-84 when he led the team to the European title. He was a scout for Seattle, Washington and New Jersey before taking the coaching post at Grambling. In 1972, he led Richwood to the state Class 3A championship, averaging 28.9 ppg. A year later at Western HS, he led the team to the Inner City championship and the Knights of Columbus championship, earning a spot on the Parade Magazine Super 13 All-American team in 1973. He was the SWAC Player of the Year in 1976 with a 25.4 ppg average when he led Grambling to its only SWAC Tournament title.
STEVE GLEASON – Gleason’s place in New Orleans Saints history is now secondary to the impact he is making on ALS research and in the lives of thousands of victims of the disease, with the advocacy of his Team Gleason Foundation and his own inspiring lifestyle. Gleason, whose pro football career ended in 2007, turned 41 on Feb. 22. He earned a permanent place in Saints lore on Sept. 26, 2006, when he blocked a punt early in the first game back in the Superdome since Hurricane Katrina. The play resulted in a Saints touchdown that triggered an emotional victory over their heated rivals, the Atlanta Falcons, on Monday Night Football. The Saints later commissioned a statue of Gleason’s play that stands outside the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. Two years after retiring from the Saints, Gleason, then 34, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Gleason, along with his friends and family, started Team Gleason which is designed to generate public awareness for ALS, raise funds to help those fighting the disease, and ultimately to find a cure. His continuing efforts and his indomitable lifestyle have made national and global impact.
SCOOTER HOBBS -- A colorful writer and personality, Scooter Hobbs has been entertaining and informing sports fans at the Lake Charles American Press since 1979. He’s also been a statewide columnist with Tiger Rag. Hobbs, hired by LSHOF member/2015 DSA winner Bobby Dower, succeeded Dower as LCAP sports editor in 1992 and has retained that role since. In recent years, he’s also co-hosted a weekly sports talk cable television show in the Lake Charles market. Hobbs has made the rounds throughout the Southeastern Conference, primarily covering LSU football, and has become a fixture in the LSWA’s annual writing contest. His astounding career totals are 87 firsts, 51 seconds and 35 thirds. He has won LSWA Sportswriter of the Year five times (2003, 2004, 2008, 2010, 2013), been Columnist of the Year eight times (1997, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2009, 2012, 2014, 2015), and won the Mac Russo Award in 2009. In the Louisiana-Mississippi Associated Press contests he has 16 wins, six seconds and five thirds. Hobbs also has captured third and fourth places in the APSE national competitions with sporadic entries through his career. A former LSWA president, Hobbs has been a member of the Hall of Fame selection committee since the early 1980s and has also demonstrated an eye for talent with his hires at LCAP.
LYN ROLLINS -- Lyn Rollins has 44 years and counting as a professional sports broadcaster in Louisiana, and is a four-time Louisiana Sportscaster of the Year. Rollins is believed to have called more televised college baseball games than any other announcer in the country. He has been a Cox Sports Television play-by-play voice since 2003 and was the primary play-by-play man for Jumbo Sports’ groundbreaking telecasts of LSU baseball and other state schools beginning with LSU coverage in 1994, continuing spot duty today. He has done state high school game of the week telecasts, hundreds of high school football radio broadcasts, and has called a range of sports including soccer, gymnastics, softball, soccer and volleyball collegiately, primarily for LSU coverage on various networks. Rollins, a 1973 Northwestern State graduate, was a protégé of LSHOF member/2010 DSA winner Norm Fletcher and a colleague of LSHOF member/2016 DSA winner Jim Hawthorne. He succeeded Fletcher as the Voice of the Hall of Fame. Rollins, who has a master’s in journalism from LSU, was the Demon Sports Network PBP man from 1993-2003 and had also called games for Grambling and the Alexandria Aces minor league baseball team. He worked in PR at Louisiana College, and also in the private sector, winning multiple Addy Awards for advertising and marketing production and campaigns. He recently joined the LSWA’s Hall of Fame selection committee and has been serving on the LSHOF Foundation Board of Directors. Rollins worked as a baseball umpire on the high school and college levels until the mid-1990s.