Louisiana Up Close: State's sports legends have a grand home in Natchitoches

NATCHITOCHES – Even though it has been a full three years since it opened its doors, Doug Ireland remains in awe by the state-of-the-art facility on historic Front Street that serves as home to the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Museum.
“I continue to be thrilled on so many levels every time I pass or walk in front of that museum,” said Ireland, who has served as Hall of Fame Chairman since 1991. “Knowing that generations of sports writers and friends have dreamt of having a true museum home since the 1950s, and now that it has became a reality it is truly amazing.”
The Hall of Fame’s journey began nearly sixty years ago when the Louisiana Sports Writers Association (LSWA) inducted three charter members into the HOF – champion boxer Tony Canzoneri, baseball slugger Mel Ott and LSU football player and later coach Gaynell Tinsley in 1959.
In the decades since then, hundreds of more athletes that have helped shape the diverse sports culture of Louisiana have been enshrined. LSU’s lone Heisman winner Billy Cannon, Grambling State legendary football coach Eddie Robinson, Louisiana Tech and Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw and jockey Eddie Delahoussaye are just a few of the notables.
“It is truly a state museum,” said Ireland, who also serves as the longtime sports information director at Northwestern State University. “The content in the museum touches every part of the state. No matter where you are from you are going to find something that speaks to your own personal sports experience.”
The fact that the museum is a representative of the entire state, makes the job of the 32-person voting panel a difficult one, and one that at times produces heated discussions amongst the voters.
Glenn Quebedeaux – who spent decades covering high school and college sports for the Crowley Post-Signal, Abbeville Meridional, Daily Iberian and The Advocate – has been a voter for the hall since the early 1980s. Quebedeaux compares the passion displayed in the voting room to that of a political convention.
“Things have got heated at times,” Quebedeaux said.
“What people don’t realize is how personal those meetings are because of the caliber of the nominees we have to choose from every year. And of course everyone has their own favorites from their areas of the state that they want to put up. It is rare that a meeting now goes under three to four hours. It is almost as heated as a political convention.”
The passion from the voters was there from its inception, but the museum didn’t have a permanent home as enshrinements were held in numerous places such as Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Then in 1971 Prather Coliseum, home of Northwestern State basketball, was selected as a home for the induction ceremonies and to display archival material.
The massive potential for the induction weekend was revealed when it was held for three years inside one of the ballrooms at the Horseshoe Casino in Bossier City, when hundreds upon hundreds of people took part in the induction weekend. That success helped propel the plans for the hall’s modern home.
In 2003, the hall was folded into the state museum system, and the LSWA, the state of Louisiana and the City of Natchitoches began collaborating on constructing a permanent stand-alone home for the hall.
The result of the hard work by those groups produced the $23 million needed to build the 27,500-square-foot two-story museum with a modern copper exterior and sloped stone walls on the inside. The new facility opened during the induction weekend of 2013.
“A lot of people within the LSWA, Natchitoches and Louisiana have all been unselfish in helping elevate this to become a world class museum,” Ireland said.
“It has been fun to watch it develop,” said Quebedeaux, who gives massive credit to Ireland for the museum’s success. “It is a truly great museum.”
The first thing a visitor will see after walking through the front doors is the ground floor that features glass displays of the most recent Hall of Fame inductees. A few items currently on display is the New Orleans Hornets jersey of P.J. Brown and a University of Michigan football helmet for Anthony “A-Train” Thomas.
A visitor can also look up any of the hall’s inductees by accessing a digital monitor on the left side of the massive room known as the Hall of Fame wall. There you can search for an inductee several different ways, pull up the inductee’s induction painting and read the biography and statistics associated with the inductee.
As expected, The Who Dat! Nation is well represented as the first display on the second floor with a giant glass case filled with New Orleans Saints items. There is an autographed No. 56 Pat Swilling jersey, a Sports Illustrated with Bobby Hebert on the cover signed by “The Cajun Cannon” himself and a football card of former Saints president and general manager Jim Finks, who also played for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1950s.
The museum will also be hosting a special Saints 50th Anniversary exhibit which will debut in September.
There are a plethora of different non-Saints artifacts on display behind the glass cases on the second floor as well, as sports from basketball to horse racing to track and field and everything in between are honored.
There is Eunice High and New Iberia High football coach Faize Mahfouz’s whistle; the letterman jacket of Pine Prairie High basketball coach Leslie Gaudet; the 1989 Arkansas Derby’s Stretch Run Trophy won by a horse owned by Shreveport native John Franks; a commemorative basketball honoring Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters famed coach Leon Barmore; the LSU boxing jersey of Ville Platte’s very own Bobby Soileau; and film equipment used to produce the late Grits Gresham’s popular TV show “The American Sportsman” on ABC.
The display on Outdoors serves as the transition into the non-sports section of the museum, which serves as the Northwest Louisiana History Museum. There visitors can learn about plantation life of the region and view the artwork of famed folk artist Clementine Hunter.
Longtime Hall of Fame voter and former sports editor of The Town Talk in Alexandria John Marcase never imagined that the museum would become what it has today, especially when he first visited the museum as a small child.
“I was in the third grade when my mom graduated NSU with her master’s in teaching,” Marcase said. “I wanted to go with her to attend graduation practice because it was in Prather Coliseum. Even at my young age, I knew Prather was home of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. I walked into the lobby and thought, ‘this is it.’ It was a massive letdown for an eight-year-old.
“I never thought I would one day be invited to the ground breaking to help turn dirt for a new and permanent home for the Hall,” added Marcase, who took his oldest son to the 2013 opening. “Louisiana gets a bad rap for many things, and deservedly so. But the new Hall of Fame and Museum is a true treasure for everyone in Louisiana to be proud of.”
Even though induction ceremonies have been sold out, and the museum has been a massive hit with tourists to the historic town, there are challenges that remain. Like how to raise the appropriate funding to display all the exhibit concepts that the hall has and how to further appeal to more of the population of the state.
Ireland and the rest of the people behind the hall are also not done with transforming the museum into one of the most entertaining, educational and exhilarating museum experiences in the state.
In the short term, Ireland envisions video projection that would play video packages with feature stories and recaps of sporting events shown inside the museum. This would help make a visit to the museum different every time.
“My vision is if you visit the museum on a monthly basis that you go up and watch something on the Ragin’ Cajuns football team that had an unbelievable spring or a big news item on the New Orleans Pelicans making a run for a playoff spot or some story on an emerging high school phenom in Northeast Louisiana.”
A larger and more long-term plan is to have another building (north of the current location) constructed to give visitors a more interactive experience courtesy of holographic technology.
“The additional building would feature holographic technology,” Ireland said.
“A visitor could run the fast break with Pete Maravich or run the bases with Warren Morris or try to tackle Billy Cannon on his famed run against Ole Miss. The technology is there we just now have to find a way to bring it to the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.”

Editor's Note: Louisiana Up Close is a feature series from The Ville Platte Gazette which showcases affordable attractions and establishments that are authentic to the storied landscape of Louisiana.