The Allstate Sugar Bowl has recognized the top girls prep team from the Greater New Orleans area since 2013-14 – all high school teams based in the Greater New Orleans area are eligible for the honor. The honor is selected by the New Orleans Sports Awards Committee, which has been existence since 1957. The Committee selected an overall team of the year, regardless of gender, from Louisiana from 2010-13. All of the Sugar Bowl annual awards were presented on a calendar-year basis until 2009 when the Committee changed to an academic calendar (July-June). The annual awards banquet is typically held in late July or early August.
The Slidell volleyball team, which became the first public school to win the Division I state title since 2011, was selected as the Allstate Sugar Bowl’s Outstanding Girls Prep Team for 2024-25.
Slidell lived up to its top-seeded billing and won a volleyball state championship on Nov. 16 at the Cajundome. Against four-time reigning state champion Dominican, the Tigers won the first two sets and overcame a third-set defeat to secure its first LHSAA volleyball state championship since 1997. It also snapped a 10-year run of Catholic League state championship dominance that also included six titles won by Mount Carmel.
Senior Demoni Lewis and junior Addyson Dowell combined for 27 kills as Dowell earned the outstanding player award. Lewis had nine blocks. Other contributors included junior setter Ava Labat with 45 assists, along with senior Regan Robinson and junior Isabella Spelling with strong defensive performances on the back row.
Lewis and Dowell put down plenty of the points needed in the final set to build an early lead and close out a 25-17, 25-20, 23-25, 25-15 victory that gave coach Danny Tullis his seventh state championship. Slidell became the first public school to win a Division I volleyball state title since Tullis coached Fontainebleau to a championship in 2011. His other five crowns came later while at Pope John Paul II.
“The focus of this season really started when I came here two years ago and I told them they had the same things that everybody else has, just not the belief and not the understanding,” Tullis said. “But they started to believe in themselves in the way that I believed that they could win.”
Outstanding Girls Prep Team, New Orleans
