Athletic greatness comes in all shapes and all sizes.

It doesn't come naturally, but is achieved from hard work diligence and adversity along the journey.

There's opportunity and there's always struggle.

There is triumph and there is defeat.

And there is always a story behind the glory.

Alana Beard was a basketball star at the high school, collegiate and professional levels with honors to show for it.

She was a hard worker and I assume wanted to be the very best she could be.

Alana Beard's legacy is a legacy of excellence.

Miss Basketball in Louisiana, every major award in college basketball and WNBA Defensive Player of the year.

She had a work ethic that made her a star on all levels.

She fit right in, had a champions heart, Loved to compete.

So I'm going to go take you back a few years.

Coming out of high school in Shreveport, where you had as good a high school career as anybody's ever had.

But you had Kim Mulkey at Louisiana Tech, you had Sue Gunter at LSU.

You had schools from all across the country trying to woo you.

What made you select Duke?

I think that's where you know, you█re mistaken.

And I didn't have teams from all over the world.

come on.

No, I'm telling you, right.

When you talk about like Sue Gunter, there was the Hodges twins at the time, right?

Right.

And so we were basically competing for the same position.

So they were really high on the Hodges twins.

And so LSU didn't necessarily come into the picture for recruiting Kim Mulkey, Louisiana Tech.

Leon Baremore.

Absolutely.

They were the ones that I was just like my eyes were on them right?

But it wasn't until my parents allowed me to travel to Santa Barbara to play with the California stars in which we ended up traveling to Oregon to play on the Oregon Trail.

And so that was like a top three summer tournament.

People were there to see Diana Taurasi, Lindsey Whalen, Nicole Powell.

I can go down the list and name all of those superstars at the time.

And it was a lot of coach's first time seeing me, and that's when Duke saw me.

That's when other colleges saw me.

So to your point, I wasn't highly recruited at a very young age.

I've always understood that there is a process to everything, and I've never forced anything, granted, Like I said, I wanted to go to Tennessee.

That was probably one of my top three choices.

It didn't happen.

I didn't take it personal, but if it did anything to me, it was motivated me to strive to be one of the best ever play the game.

She's one of the first to practice, you know, to get into the to the gym and one of the last to leave.

Down low beard turns, spins, banks it in.

Beard's got 41 beard helps out with high in Shreveport to four state titles and 144 wins scoring more than 2600 points.

And she was just had such a will to win and that's it.

48 points.

I was competitive.

I hated losing all of those individuals that came before me at athlete.

They were better than me and I knew that.

But every day I walked in, I made it a point to be better than them.

And so that that was my driving force.

And Alana Beard's career is done.

But what a career it was.

A massive recruiting battle ended with her attending Duke, where she became the first NCAA player to amass 2600 points, 500 assists and 400 steals as she earned three ACC Player of the Year honors and got the Blue Devils to two Final Fours.

Her legacy is the lifting up of Duke women's basketball and the excellence that she displayed on the court in the classroom with the community.

The giving back deal now being led to finishing count it in 2004.

She was the second pick in the WNBA draft and played in more than 400 games, averaging over 11 points and two and a half assists twice.

She was Defensive Player of the year and a 2016 champion with the Los Angeles Sparks.

Urban legend or not, we've heard from some associates of yours that if I need 30 points out of Alana tonight night and I'll say 15 rebounds and 10 assists and six or eight steals, I just need to wave a box of Krispy Kreme donuts in front of her face in front of the gate before the game.

Rumor or not, it's not a rumor, but I'm curious to know who gave you that information that will be hidden forever.

There was a time when Krispy Kreme was at the very top of their game.

And so I love them.

I still love them.

I played better when I ate them.

So, yeah, that's not a rumor.

Do you realize what you missed?

Pre NIL you could have had a heck of a deal with Krispy Kreme.

I mean, is it too late?

Is it too late?

I don't know.

Let's.

Let's figure this out.

But no, NIL It's something something special that's happening right now.

But yeah, I guess I could had and then NIL deal.

Your story is amazing.

Really?

When you look back and you look through the midsts of time and you see your impact on the game and Duke and that league and nationally, it's it's quite the journey.

When you're in it, you don't necessarily at least for me, I didn't necessarily grasp the magnitude of what we were accomplishing as teams.

But now that I'm older, retired, I'm away from the game.

It's really special to look back and just really reminisce and think about the people that I took this journey with.

It was Steve McDowell who taught me what it meant to be a true champion in terms of respecting the game.

My approach to the game.

Competing every single day.

He gave me the fundamentals that I will forever be grateful for.

Let's get back to some serious work that you're doing post basketball career with your foundation in Shreveport.

And I also want to dovetail that with what Title nine has meant, what you have personally been affected by the course of half a century now of Title IX Absolutely.

I mean, Title IX stands for so many things, but what it stands for most to me is sort of sacrifice and progression.

Right.

There are so many pioneers that came before me that has allowed me to do what I'm doing today, and I'll forever be grateful for them.

But I have to admit, like early on, right as a young kid, I didn't necessarily understand what was being done, the foundation that was being laid.

But it's something pretty.

And I use this word a lot because it is special to see sort of where we are now compared to where we were years ago.

Tell me about your foundation, something that you pour your heart and soul into.

And I can see the passion in your eyes when you talk about it.

I played my last game in October of 2019 in the WNBA, and during that time I took it upon myself to come back to Shreveport.

I spent five months, five consecutive months in Shreveport, stay with my parents will never do that again, at least not for that long.

But I took it upon myself to go on a listening tour because I love listening to listening tours in Shreveport, where I brought together, you know, stakeholders, whether it was political leaders, leaders that in the community who are in the trenches every single day doing the work.

Educators, the superintendent, Lamar Goree, those individuals who are open to taking meetings with me for me to just listen about the pressing needs of Shreveport.

Because what I understood is that it would have been very irresponsible of me to come in and say, This is what I want to give Shreveport, this is what you need without just really understanding what was happening.

I have been away for for 18 years.

So you did the groundwork.

I will always do the groundwork, Lyn I could have easily lend it my name and face to the Alana Byrd Foundation while I was playing.

But I was always in the mindset of wanting to feel in touch and be a part of whatever I'm building.

And so the 318 foundation is simply, you know, not simply, but we're aiming to close this opportunity gap that exists in historically underserved communities for young girls through mentorship and what I refer to as life changing experiences.

Tell me about the specific trip that your foundation enabled two representatives from Shreveport to recently take.

We were able to fly two young women and a chaperon from what Long Leadership Academy out to Washington, D.C., to participate in a national leadership conference.

It was 40 individuals, 40 young kids there, high school kids there, and they were two of them.

And it was their first time out of Shreveport.

First time on a plane.

First time on an escalator.

First time in the store.

Marshall's And it was their first of many.

Right.

And for me to be able to allow that experience to to be a part of allowing that experience to happen means everything to me.

Right?

It's me.

One young woman asked me, Why do you think you resonate with us?

And my response is, I am you, right?

I was born and raised in Shreveport.

My mom and dad worked their butts off to sort of, you know, provide for my sister, my brother and I. But at the end of the day, I had this one thing, this round orange basketball that I loved, and that was my vehicle to doing everything that I was capable of doing after picking up that ball.

And so the 318 foundation is simply, you know, based off of just everything that I experience growing up as a young woman and wanting and needing.

And so just happy to do it for the city of Shreveport.

With her list of career accolades and character to be a positive role model.

Alana was inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in 2023.

She led more by example.

I think she expected everyone else to work hard and as a coach, that's what you want.

You want somebody that will step up and lead.

And it's a legacy of joy, of passion, love of the game, love of people.

She's really set the gold standard, determination to be great.

I get the sense, looking into your eyes right now, that this means more to you than any championship trophy, than any individual award in any national championship, than any national award that you've earned.

And you've earned plenty.

But I get I sense that this goal in your mind is greater than all.

Absolutely.

What is it?

What does it mean to go off into the world and have all the experiences and learn with what I've been able to learn and not share it?

That's something that I've always been against.

And so to be able to come back to Shreveport to, I don't know.

Give a sense of hope to people who may be hopeless, to people who have all the talent in the world, but don't necessarily have access to opportunity.

It means more than anything to me.

And to this day, I'm still a part of getting the access and opportunity because of what I've been able to do.

The Andre Agassi Foundation for Education is my anchor donor in this entire thing.

The Englesat Family Foundation is my donor in this entire thing, so they understand the importance of the work that we're doing in the city of Shreveport.

So if I call you a champion on the court and off the court, absolutely.

That's what I'm that's what I'm communicating and wanting to instill in the young woman that we're working with.

We're building leaders.

We're building champions in every sense of the way.