Alexandria native Sonja Hogg was still on Cloud 9 on Saturday evening, a week after receiving the prestigious Tower Medallion award at Louisiana Tech’s Winter Commencement ceremony.
Hogg, 79, is a member of Tech’s Athletics Hall of Fame as well as the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame and the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. She’s been retired since 2020, when she sold her house on the river in Waco, Texas and moved to an independent living area that’s conveniently near a shopping center and a golf course.
“It kinda surprised me when the new (Tech) president, Dr. Jim Henderson, called,” she said. “He told me he wanted to give me the Tower Medallion, the highest honor at Tech you can receive.”
The Tower Medallion is awarded to Tech alumni who have distinguished themselves by exceptional achievement, community service and humanitarian activities.
Hogg distinguished herself with exceptional achievement as a basketball coach at both Louisiana Tech and Baylor before retiring as the Lady Bears coach in 2000. She spent the next 20 years as a fundraiser in the university’s development office. It was her presence and success at Baylor that was instrumental in luring her former player and current LSU coaching legend, Kim Mulkey, to replace her as Baylor’s coach.
A 1964 Bolton graduate, Hogg coached in the high school ranks for a few years after graduating from Tech in 1968, and, shortly after the passage of Title IX, at the invitation of then-Tech president F. Jay Taylor, she started the Lady Techsters basketball program in 1974. She directed Tech to the peak of women’s college basketball during an 11-year career, highlighted by six straight Final Four appearances and back-to-back national championships in 1981 and ’82. The first title was in the AIAW (Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women), with an undefeated 34-0 record, and Tech’s second straight title was in the first season women competed in the NCAA. Tech finished 35-1 that year.
Henderson presented her with the Tower Medallion during the commencement exercises on March 1.
“I had some friends from college there, some sorority (Sigma Kappa) sisters, players and personnel from that time like the bus driver, and some came from Waco,” Hogg said. “It was a wonderful celebration.”
Sonja said her brother, David Chatelain and his wife Evelyn, who live in Bentley, planned to attend the event but couldn’t because they got the flu.
“I told my friends, ‘Pray for (my) composure,’ because I cry at the drop of a hat,” she said while starting to cry. “And I did cry. Tech means a lot to me, and just to get that award … but we had some laughs, too.”
Pam Kelly, Tech’s only three-time All-American, from Columbia, Louisiana, was among the former players present and laughed with her coach about a time they were doing wind sprints at practice.
“Pam was a woman of few words,” said Sonja, “and she always had a puddle of perspiration by her, and she said they had worked extremely hard in practice and Leon (Barmore, then a co-head coach and later highly successful head coach) had gotten upset with her and he had everyone doing wind sprints. After about the third one, she said, ‘I quit, Coach.’”
Barmore, convulsed by Pam’s reaction, called off the rest of the wind sprints.
Consider the talent Hogg had on those championship teams, when Tech was an independent school and not part of any conference. Among the players were future Louisiana Hall of Famers Kelly, Janice Lawrence and Mulkey, not to overlook Julie Wilkerson of Tioga. And Sonja was responsible for the “Lady Techsters” nickname. The mascot for the men’s teams, being Bulldogs, meant the possibility of her team being called “Lady Bulldogs,” and Sonja refused that nickname, believing they would inevitably be called what female dogs are often called.
Hogg said she’s glad she’s not coaching now, considering what current coaches have to deal with, including the transfer portal and NIL deals.
“When I recruited players, I was trying to sell them on getting a good education,” she said, “because (at first) we didn’t have scholarships to offer.”
Women’s college basketball was something new then. Sonja didn’t play basketball at Bolton or at Tech because they didn’t play women’s sports – other than in intramurals – back then. But she was gifted athletically even as a child, when one of her earliest requests for a Christmas present, at age 2, was a “bassetball.”
Sonja’s late mother, Dorothy Chatelain of Alexandria, said in an interview many years ago that Sonja’s late stepfather since age 9, E. P. Chatelain, had some words of wisdom for her as a youth. “He used to tell her, ‘Anything you attempt to do, be the best at it, whatever you decide to do in life.”
She followed that advice to a tee, and she fondly remembers the formation she had at Bolton High School, recalling her English teacher, Inez Parker, civics teacher/coach Jesse Doyle (later principal) and the principal when she was a Bolton student, W. E. “Ted” Pate. She was recently part of a 60th anniversary reunion of her graduating class, which had more than 500 students.
“I’ve lived in Texas for years,” she said, “but my heart’s in Louisiana.”