By BRAD WELBORN, Written for the LSWA
NATCHITOCHES – Standing in amazement.
That was a common reaction Thursday afternoon as the four contributor award winners going into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024 took turns reacting to their pending induction Saturday night at a sold-out ceremony in the Natchitoches Events Center.
“It’s stunning,” a sentiment shared by every inductee, including the six competitors at the press conference, and voiced by Distinguished Service in Sports Journalism Award winner Ron Higgins, who had a particularly poignant welcome to the Hall.
“It was an emotional day when I got the call from (Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame chairman) Doug Ireland. He didn’t know, but it was the anniversary of the day my dad died (in 1968) when I was 12 years old. Dad was the reason that I got into the business. I was helping him since I was seven, looking over the shoulder of sports writers and watching how they wrote stories.”
Higgins covered his first high school football game for the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate when he was a high school freshman, at age 14. One of the participating coaches thought he was a team manager until he asked an insightful question, and the response was, “you really ARE a sports writer.”
The son of LSU sports information director Ace Higgins, he said the bug for writing and the “fun part of the unpredictability” of covering sports still thrills him, in a career that has seen him serve as president of the Football Writers Association of America, and for a wide range of publications in Louisiana and Tennessee, for the last year with the Rapides Parish Journal.
The recipient of the second-ever Louisiana Sports Ambassador Award, Wilbert Ellis spent 30 years as the head coach of Grambling baseball and is recognized as one of the finest representatives of that sport. He’s in the American Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame, among nine different HOF honors he holds.
But there’s so much more impact to appreciate. He has also earned acclaim for continuing service work in Lincoln Parish, elsewhere in the state – he’s in the Louisiana Justice Hall of Fame — and even in Omaha, Neb., during the annual College World Series, where his youth clinics have been impactful in troubled neighborhoods.
A trusted advisor for countless coaches and administrators, all the way to GSU presidents, Ellis reflected on those that he learned from and now joins in the state’s most elite sports group.
“Eddie Robinson would say don’t cry,” Ellis joked. “It’s pretty hard not to but I think I’m alright. I’ve been honored to go into a few of these but when you think about it being your own state it’s something to be proud of.
“I knew I wanted to be a coach from the time I was nine. I just wanted to form a group and see what we could do to win some games. My dad said you might win ball games, but can you win lives. And thankfully through the grace of God we’ve been able to do that.”
Along with his dear friend “Coach Rob,” Ellis offered credit to iconic basketball coach Fred Hobdy, longtime publicist Collie J. Nicholson, and legendary president and baseball coach Ralph Waldo Emerson Jones, three more pillars of Grambling, for being mentors and guides through his career and life.
Tom Burnett, the Dave Dixon Louisiana Sports Leadership Award winner, also reflected on the people in his life going back to his time at Louisiana Tech that launched him to his role over two decades as commissioner of the Southland Conference and ultimately, chair of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament committee.
“I was born in Texas, but Louisiana is home to me,” Burnett said. “The Hall itself is special and even more so because of people like Jerry Pierce (2000 Distinguished Service Award inductee). You think of people like Teddy Allen, Ro Brown and of course Dave Dixon, it’s truly an honor to be here. To be mentioned in the same breath as him, it’s overwhelming.”
It was Hall of Fame Tech sports information director Keith Prince who helped the “meandering student” onto his path to commissioner. Craig Thompson introduced him to the sports world of New Orleans and Wright Waters, longtime Sun Belt commissioner, polished Burnett into being ready for a 20-year stint leading the Southland Conference.
Burnett’s connection to Pierce, who died in November 2022, was one also felt by the other recipient of the Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism, Bobby Ardoin of Opelousas.
“I had a few choices for journalism school but when I visited Northwestern and met Jerry Pierce, that’s where I wanted to go,” Ardoin said. “I met Rick Woodson about a year later or so and I knew that sports writing was what I wanted to do.”
Ardoin, a baseball player growing up, covered the gamut of sports while working at the Opelousas Daily World, including fellow 2024 inductee jockey Ray Sibille at nearby Evangeline Downs, all while teaching full time.
“I never started out wanting to be a teacher,” Ardoin said. “I was working on my masters and wanted to get married, so it was kind of a survival tactic. But it was great to be with the kids every day.”
He stopped teaching English and history after 42 years, but Ardoin is still working daily as a news and sports reporter for the St. Landry Today website. In fact, he was filing a story Thursday night on the LSHOF press conference.
Contact Brad at welbornb@nsula.edu