Sugar Bowl

Andrea Williams, the head coach of the Ursuline Academy girls basketball team, was selected as the Allstate Sugar Bowl’s Greater New Orleans Girls’ Prep Coach of the Year for 2015-16. The Greater New Orleans Sports Awards Committee, sponsored by the Allstate Sugar Bowl, selects annual award winners in a variety of categories; it also selects Amateur Athletes of the Month and each year’s Hall of Fame class.
 
Williams directed a very young Ursuline squad to its first-ever basketball state title with a 61-48 victory over Rayne in the Allstate Sugar Bowl/LHSAA Class 4A championship game. The Lions, a team without any juniors or seniors in the starting lineup (they start three sophomores, a freshman and an eighth-grader) earned the No. 8 seed for the Top 28 tournament but posted five state tournament victories to earn the title – it was their first title game appearance since 1995. Ursuline finished the year with a 27-6 record as Williams was named the Class 4A Coach of the Year by the Louisiana Sports Writers Association.

“At the beginning of the season, I wanted to pull my hair out all the time,” Williams said. “This is my first time having such a young team. But I told myself that you have to be patient. We’ve got to take baby steps. So we started making small goals at the beginning of the season and capitalizing on those. Then they just started clicking. Once that happened, it made it easier for me not to pull my hair and scream all the time.”
              
The Greater New Orleans Sports Awards Committee began in 1957 when James Collins spearheaded a group of sports journalists to form a sports awards committee to immortalize local sports history. For 13 years, the committee honored local athletes each month. In 1970, the Sugar Bowl stepped in to sponsor and revitalize the committee, leading to the creation of the Greater New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame in 1971, honoring 10 legends from the Crescent City in its first induction class. While adding the responsibility of selecting Hall of Famers, the committee has continued to recognize the top amateur athlete in the Greater New Orleans area each month - the honors enter their 66th year in 2022. To be eligible, an athlete must be a native of the greater New Orleans area or must compete for a team in the metropolitan region.
 
The Allstate Sugar Bowl has established itself as one of the premier college football bowl games, having hosted 28 national champions, 102 Hall of Fame players, 52 Hall of Fame coaches and 21 Heisman Trophy winners in its 89-year history. The 90th Allstate Sugar Bowl Football Classic, which will double as a College Football Playoff Semifinal, is scheduled to be played on January 1, 2024. In addition to football, the Sugar Bowl Committee annually invests over $1 million into the community through the hosting and sponsorship of sporting events, awards, scholarships and clinics. Through these efforts, the organization supports and honors thousands of student-athletes each year, while injecting nearly $2.4 billion into the local economy in the last decade.