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 telling stories.

It's what Lori Lyons has lived and loved to do for well over 30 years.

Her name is synonymous with the river parishes and high school sports.

She wasn't getting access because she was a woman.

She was getting it because she was one heck of a reporter.

She came out here as a young writer first, an opportunity to be a sports writer and really made her mark in the river parishes, working with now eight of the best high schools in the New Orleans area.

She did it with class.

She did it with humor.

Look, if you can make people laugh, that opens up a lot of doors.

Right?

And I think Lori figured that out early on.

Hey, you're the Times-Picayune lady.

That's what they say.

That's exactly right.

That's what they call me.

Tell me, though.

You have got to be the only Hall of Famer in the history of this great institution whose career started with puppy love as a senior in high school.

Yes.

When I got to Terrebonne high school late seventies, I noticed the quarterback of our football team and I thought he was cute.

And I was like, How do I get him to talk to me?

Because he didn't know existed.

And then I asked one of his friends.

I said, How do I get him to talk to me?

And they said, You have to talk to him about football.

That's all he talks about.

Well, I said, okay.

So I went to the bookstore, which is what we did back then.

We didn't have Google, and I bought a book, the Great American Sports Book, and it was just a little encyclopedia of all the different sports.

And I read it and tried to learn as much as I could about sports.

And and I also was on the the the school newspaper, The Mirror, and I did a little writing for sports.

We all took a rotation news features and I did a rotation in sports and I kind of liked it.

Well, how did it work out with the quarterback?

Oh, he didn't know I was okay.

So that probably still does.

But it launched a career, apparently.

But I mean, I didn't grow up wanting to be a sportswriter.

I wanted to be a journalist because there were no female sportswriters.

When I was growing up.

It was Barbara Walters and Connie Chung maybe.

And that was kind of it.

And so I didn't have a role model to say, Oh, I want to be like her, but I wanted to be a journalist.

How far has Laurie's journey come this home?

A native started as a sports agate clerk for The Times-Picayune, where she won state prep writer of the year twice and went on to become the first female president of the Louisiana Sportswriters Association.

When you think about Lori you think about somebody giving her an opportunity, first and foremost, when it really wasn't fashionable for a female to get those kind of opportunity.

I definitely felt like I had to prove myself.

When I went out there, you know, you're a girl.

What do you know about football?

And I used to tell this little joke that, you know, well, I'm not a fireman either, but I can write your story telling you how your house burned down.

I didn't have to play it to understand it or to write about it.

The storyteller in Lori recognized the impact of pen to paper.

To her, it was just as important to chronicle the lives of every athlete on the field.

And not just the ones who would become superstars.

I always felt like my job as a print journalist was to fill your scrapbook.

I'm going to write your story.

Hopefully write a story that you can clip and put on Granny's refrigerator or put on put in your scrapbook.

And a lot of kids say, Oh, I have a scrapbook filled with your articles.

And that to me is the greatest compliment.

It was telling the story of a guy who's who had a big game and maybe made a big catch or an interception or a big hit in a game that that made it special for him.

He's now working at the plant.

He's now doing something else.

And she's covered, you know, the dad and the kids.

The inquisitive nature of your mind has always been impressive to me.

There's.

You don't look at something and just dismiss it.

You look at something and say, Well, there's something behind the corner.

There's something behind the curtain.

You know, I'd like to find more about this.

I think that served you well in your profession.

Yes.

I've always been curious when we were talking about this.

Yes, there are people that are out wanting to meet everybody and talk to everybody.

I'm more likely to be in the corner watching and observing.

That's just my nature.

I have a young daughter who's a journal, young journalist, and she does it to and I just want to observe what's going on.

And then if I go back to my room, to my office and my computer, I could probably write you a story just about what went on, just from my observations.

And that that's that's just the way I operate, I guess.

Don't you think you had looking back on it, maybe a little bit of advantage because you were covering so many high schools and the river parishes where sports is a passionate subject, where the communities rally around their schools and you were part of that and they appreciated every single word that was written about them.

Yes, absolutely.

Because it's a no man's land between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

And people in Baton Rouge feel like, you know, it's like the end of the earth and people in New Orleans feel like, well, I'm not going out there.

And so it's it's kind of we have to get ourselves noticed.

And so any coverage they got, they were thrilled to have.

So and it just turned out that when I got there, they were pretty good.

I mean, Hahnville went 15-0 one year and, oh, you know, Reserve, Christian, the basketball powerhouse that they were and Destrehan and and Hahnville, you know, that battle back and forth and West they done went to the dome over two years in a row and Riverside and Saint James when Coach Gailey got to say, James, you become a little possessed like these are our kids, these are our teams, this is our area.

And you feel like you want to brag about, you know, your area.

Oh, these are my eight school.

I have eight schools.

These are my schools.

I want to write about them.

And if you're going to call me and ask me about them or, you know, or we're going to go on the road, I'm going to make sure you get it right.

So it wasn't like we were under the radar.

We were way above the radar.

And it was my job to to tell the rest of the world what was happening there.

I don't think there's any doubt that she would be Miss River Parish, if you will.

And I also think that her perspective became even greater because she married a coach.

So when you're married to a coach, you have a totally different understanding and perspective on who you're covering, why they think the way they think and how to present the product.

She she talks about one of some of the best advice given to her was, if you were going to tell someone about the game, what would you write?

And she does a great job on that.

But the deadlines is what was crazy as as you travel around.

I mean, when she first started, it wasn't as easy as just put it in your computer and sending it.

She always made those deadlines and and the paper, you know, got that their story and and the kids got their moments with a passion for writing and storytelling.

Lori now enjoys teaching journalism and multimedia to her high school students at Riverside Academy.

So what are the challenges now for you as a teacher of journalism?

Is there a quest like when you and people in our generation were growing up and wanted to get into this business?

Do you see the same quest, the same burning in the belly to do it for the right reasons?

They want to be on TV.

They wanna go on ESPN and shout and and make predictions and things like that.

I as a teacher, I think my job is to try and get them to love journalism.

And I've succeeded on some levels.

They they come they take the class because it's an easy A and it's a fun class and it's not a whole lot of hard work.

But then they find out it is hard work, but it's fun work, you know, go take a picture of that.

Oh, right.

Let's write a story about the kid that won this contest or won this award or scored the four touchdowns in the game the other day.

And then they start getting into it.

And then when they see their name on it and the other kids say, Oh, thanks for that.

Then they start to develop that love for it.

And the editor of our little school website, The Rebel Express, changed her major.

She was going coming to Northwestern State to major in social work, and now she's going to be a journalism major.

She just she said, you made me fall in love with it.

And so she's coming here and I could not be more proud of her.

And, you know, we have a little podcast.

We have to stay with the times, We have a podcast, we do videos, we do slideshows.

I'm going to I have two young fellows who talk sports in my class when they're supposed to be doing their work, but they talk sports and they riff off each other really well, and I'm going to get them to do a sports podcast this year.

I hope you make me want to go back and come to your high school with me.

They a student.

That would be that would be fantastic.

I want them to enjoy it.

I want them to have fun, but I also want them to learn what responsibilities we have, you know, to be accurate, to be not necessarily to be first anymore.

That that's old days.

They used to be.

We got to beat the other paper.

We got to beat TV.

I think now it's let's get get it right and let's get it good And or maybe let's do something that nobody else is doing, something unique and creative.

Not necessarily.

Oh, we have to beat somebody to the story.

Lyons also authored Adopting in America The Diary of a Mom in Waiting.

It's an account of her and husband, Marty's quest to adopt a baby.

That daughter, Laura Lee, just graduated here at Northwestern State, where she was editor of the student newspaper.

You know, Laura talks about my mom was always at all her functions.

So she was able to do that as a mom and a journalist and still get the job done and be outstanding at what she did.

The lifelong dedication to her profession and Louisiana sports has earned Lori Lyons the honor of the 2023 Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Distinguished Service Award in sports journalism, a recognition bestowed among the top sports journalists in the state as chosen by her peers.

Well, Lori Lyons, for decades, you have not only beat the competition, you've done it at an A-plus plus plus level.

And I am so glad that you're here to be inducted into this 2023 Hall of Fame class.

It's well-deserved.

Thank you so much.

It's just surreal to be on the other side of it that I've been coming to this thing for 30 years and seeing these guys see, I'm going to cry, seeing these guys talk about what it means.

You can't explain it, what it means.