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. The New Orleans Sports Awards Committee, sponsored by the Allstate Sugar Bowl, selects annual award winners in a variety of categories; it also selects Sugar Bowl Athletes of the Month and each year’s New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame class.
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.”
Joining Warren Easton as finalists for the Outstanding Girls Prep Team were Haynes Volleyball, Mount Carmel Soccer, and St. Scholastica Swimming. Haynes came together behind sisters Virginia and Marilyn Voitier to upend top-seeded Hannan to capture the LHSAA Division III state championship in the school’s first-ever trip to the state title match. Mount Carmel recovered from a 3-4-3 finish to the regular season to win multiple post-season thrillers, outscoring its opponents 16-1 in the state tournament to capture the Division I championship. St. Scholastica’s swimming dominance continued as the Doves used a balanced effort to tally 365 points, 91 points ahead of second-place to win their 14th straight Division II team title at the LHSAA state swim meet.
The New Orleans Sports Awards Committee came together 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 and a variety of annual award winners. In 1970, the Sugar Bowl stepped in to sponsor and revitalize the committee, leading to the creation of the 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 athlete in the Greater New Orleans area each month as well as a range of annual awards – the honors enter their 69th year in 2025.
The Allstate Sugar Bowl has established itself as one of the premier college football bowl games, having hosted 29 national champions, 110 Hall of Fame players, 55 Hall of Fame coaches and 21 Heisman Trophy winners in its 91-year history. The 92nd Allstate Sugar Bowl Football Classic, which will double as a College Football Playoff Quarterfinal, is scheduled to be played on January 1, 2026. 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 over $2.5 billion into the local economy in the last decade.
-www.AllstateSugarBowl.org-
