by Doug Ireland
The 2025 Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Induction Celebration has been set for Thursday, June 26-Saturday night, June 28, featuring eight shining stars in state sports history, headlined by West Monroe, LSU and NFL star Andrew Whitworth, pro basketball All-Stars Danny Granger and Vickie Johnson, and coaching greats Danny Broussard, Joe Scheuerman and Dale Weiner.
The LSHOF Class of 2025 also includes LSU gymnastics great and NCAA champion April Burkholder, and George “Bobby” Soileau, an NCAA boxing champion at LSU who won a state crown as a football coach at his alma mater, Sacred Heart High School in Ville Platte.
Three more inductees, from the “contributor” categories, will be announced soon – winners of the Dave Dixon Louisiana Sports Leadership Award and the Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism.
The new class will be the focal figures during three days of festivities including seven events – three free of charge — at the Hall of Fame’s home in Natchitoches to culminate the 66th Induction Celebration.
Opportunities to purchase admission for the four ticketed events are available at the LaSportsHall.com website through the www.LaSportsHall.com/Induction25 link.
The 2025 Induction Celebration kicks off Thursday, June 26 with the free Welcome Reception from 5-7 p.m. at the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame and Northwest Louisiana History Museum at 800 Front Street in downtown Natchitoches.
The fun-filled Friday, June 27 slate begins with the midday Celebrity Bowling Bash at Four Seasons Bowling Cener in nearby Alexandria. Friday evening’s big party is the Rockin’ River Fest free concert on the Cane River Lake downtown stage, accompanied by the VIP Taste of Tailgating party, a ticketed event at the adjacent Mama’s Oyster House on Front Street above the concert venue.
Saturday begins with the New Orleans Saints & Pelicans Junior Training Camp, a free event for kids ages 7-17 hosted on the Northwestern State campus from 9-11 a.m. with advance registration required and available on the 2025 Induction link at LaSportsHall.com.
The popular Round Table Lunch showcases the induction class interviewed by iconic Fox Sports announcer and 2020 LSHOF inductee Tim Brando of Shreveport.
The festivities peak Saturday afternoon and evening with the Taste of Louisiana Reception at the Hall of Fame museum from 5-6:45, followed by the Induction Ceremony tipping off promptly at 7 o’clock at the nearby Natchitoches Events Center.
A 40-member Louisiana Sports Writers Association committee selected the 2025 “competitors ballot” inductees in August to complete a three-week process. The panel considered 150 nominees from 27 different sport categories on a 34-page ballot.
The complete 11-person Class of 2024 will swell the overall membership in the Hall of Fame to 503 men and women – athletes, coaches, administrators and sports media members — honored since its founding in 1958.
Whitworth won three state titles and two national high school crowns playing for the late Don Shows at West Monroe, then helped LSU win its first national football championship in 45 years under coach Nick Saban in 2003. “Big Whit” capped a 16-year NFL career, mostly in Cincinnati, by starting at offensive tackle as the Los Angeles Rams won Super Bowl LVI, just a couple of days after he received the 2021 Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year award for his community activism. He made four Pro Bowls.
Granger, a New Orleans native and Grace King High School graduate, averaged 17 points per game in a 10-year NBA career that included a 2009 All-Star Game appearance and a gold medal win with Team USA at the 2010 World Championships.
Johnson, from Coushatta, ranks among the greatest players in Louisiana Tech Lady Techster program history under coach Leon Barmore, and twice was a WNBA All-Star in 13 seasons in the league. She ended her pro career winning the WNBA’s Kim Perrot Sportsmanship Award in 2008.
Scheuermann will join his father Rags, a 1990 inductee, to form the fourth father-son combination in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. The others: football greats Dub and son Bert Jones, USA Olympic track stars Glenn “Slats” Hardin and son Billy, and the football family of sons Eli and Peyton Manning, and their father, Archie.
Scheuermann succeeded his dad as baseball coach at New Orleans’ Delgado Community College and last spring eclipsed the late Tony Robichaux of UL Lafayette as Louisiana’s winningest college baseball coach with 1,179 victories in 34 seasons.
Broussard, who will begin his 42nd season coaching basketball at St. Thomas More High School in Lafayette, has averaged 27.5 wins per year while collecting 1,130 victories to rank seventh nationally and second in the state behind 2019 LSHOF and pending 2024 Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Charles Smith of Alexandria’s Peabody Magnet. Broussard’s Cougars have won six state titles and been runner-up four more times.
Burkholder was a 14-time All-American gymnast and as a senior won the 2006 NCAA beam title to cap an LSU career that featured a school-record 108 victories, helping to dramatically elevate interest in the Tigers’ program locally as it emerged as a national power. She was twice Southeastern Conference Gymnast of the Year.
Weiner retired in 2016 after posting 317 wins, now seventh in state history, in 35 seasons as a high school football head coach. The last 30 were at Catholic, where he built a mediocre program into one of Louisiana’s best as he won 282 games, 9.1 per year, including a 2016 state title. He also coached 18 state championship weightlifting teams with the Bears.
Soileau won four high school boxing state crowns, beginning with his eighth-grade year, and captured the 125-pound NCAA title in 1956 in the heyday of the sport at the state and collegiate levels. He won 159 games in 30 seasons as football coach at Sacred Heart, including a 1967 state championship, and is a 1988 Louisiana High School Sports Hall of Fame inductee and an inaugural Louisiana High School Boxing Hall of fame inductee.
The 2025 Induction Class will be showcased in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame and Northwest Louisiana History Museum. The facility is operated by the Louisiana State Museum system in a partnership with the Louisiana Sports Writers Association.
The striking two-story, 27,500-square foot structure faces Cane River Lake in the National Historic Landmark District of Natchitoches and has garnered worldwide architectural acclaim and rave reviews for its contents since its grand opening during the 2013 Hall of Fame induction weekend.
The new competitive ballot inductees will raise the total of Hall of Fame members to 394 athletes and coaches honored since the first induction class — Baseball Hall of Famer Mel Ott, world champion boxer Tony Canzoneri and LSU football great Gaynell Tinsley — was enshrined in 1959 after their election a year earlier.
The Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame already includes 25 Pro Football Hall of Fame members, 18 Olympic medalists (including 11 gold-medal winners), 14 members (including pending 2024 inductees Semoine Augustus and Charles Smith) of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, seven of the NBA’s 75 Greatest Players, seven National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees, 45 College Football Hall of Fame members, 10 Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame inductees, 10 Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinees, nine National High School Hall of Fame members, nine College Baseball Hall of Fame inductees, five National Museum of (Thoroughbred) Racing and Hall of Fame inductees. The LSHOF showcases jockeys with a combined 16 Triple Crown victories, six world boxing champions, four NBA Finals MVPs, four winners of major professional golf championships, and three Super Bowl MVPs.
Biographical information on all current Hall of Fame members is available at the LaSportsHall.com website, and a steady stream of info is available at the @LaSportsHall X (formerly Twitter) account.
Anyone can receive quarterly e-mails about the 2025 Induction Celebration and other Hall of Fame news by signing up on the website.
The 2025 Induction Celebration will be hosted by the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Foundation, the support organization for the Hall of Fame. The LSHOF Foundation was established as a 501 (c) (3) non-profit entity in 1975 and is governed by a statewide board of directors.
For information on sponsorship opportunities, contact Foundation President/CEO Ronnie Rantz at 225-802-6040 or RonnieRantz@LaSportsHall.com, or Foundation Director of Business Development and Public Relations Greg Burke at 318-663-5459 or GregBurke@LaSportsHall.com. Standard and customized sponsorships are available.
