NATCHITOCHES, La. – Iconic retiring LSU sports broadcaster Jim Hawthorne and Bob Tompkins, the acclaimed Alexandria sports writer whose 43-year career ended last fall, are the recipients of the 2016 Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association.
The “Voice of the Tigers,” Hawthorne is wrapping up his 36th and final year as the play-by-play and coaches’ show host for LSU sports and will retire after basketball season. A 38-year veteran editor, writer and columnist for the Alexandria Town Talk, Tompkins was voted the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Sportswriter of the Year for Louisiana four times (1998, 2004, ’06, ’12). He was the LSWA Sportswriter of the Year in 2006 and shared the same award in 2007.
They were recently selected from a 17-person pool of outstanding nominees.
The Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism is the most prestigious honor offered to sports media in the state. Recipients are chosen by the 35-member Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame selection committee based on their professional accomplishments in local, state, regional and even national arenas, with leadership in the LSWA a contributing factor and three decades of work in the profession as a requirement.
Distinguished Service Award winners are enshrined in the Hall of Fame along with the 389 current athletes, sports journalists, coaches and administrators chosen since 1959. Only 56 leading figures in the state’s sports media have been honored with the Distinguished Service Award since its inception 34 years ago, in 1982.
Hawthorne and Tompkins will be among the 2016 Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Induction Class to be spotlighted in the annual Induction Dinner and Ceremonies on Saturday evening, June 25, at the Natchitoches Events Center. The Induction Dinner and Ceremonies are the culmination of the 2016 Induction Celebration beginning Thursday afternoon, June 23, with a press conference at the Hall of Fame museum at 800 Front Street in Natchitoches.
The selection of Hawthorne and Tompkins was jointly announced Wednesday by Hall of Fame chairman Doug Ireland and LSWA president Brent St. Germain.
Hawthorne handled football, men’s basketball and baseball broadcasts and is LSU’s Director of Broadcasting. A native of Anacoco and a 1967 Northwestern State graduate, he was a protégé of Hall of Fame (2010 Distinguished Service Award winner) member Norm Fletcher. Hawthorne has prior play-by-play experience at NSU, Centenary, and with the Texas League in baseball and the World Football League during his stint at KWKH-AM in Shreveport prior to getting hired to replace Hall of Fame (1984 DSA winner) member John Ferguson at LSU.
Hawthorne has called two LSU national championships in football, six in baseball, and three Final Four appearances in basketball. He joined LSU’s football broadcasts in 1983 alongside Ferguson, and stepped in a year later when Ferguson moved to the brand-new Tigervision package. Since taking over play-by-play in 1984, Hawthorne didn’t missed an LSU football game, doing 387 straight, including 22 bowl games, until surgery sidelined him for three games late last fall.
He has handled basketball play-by-play since 1980, doing three Final Fours and calling action by stars such as Ben Simmons, Shaquille O’Neal, Rudy Macklin and Chris Jackson (now Mahmoud Abdul-Rouf). His baseball play-by-play work began in 1984 and includes all of the Tigers’ College World Series games, wrapping up appropriately in Omaha last summer.
Four-time major league baseball All-Star pitcher Ben Sheets, NBA standout P.J. Brown, University of Michigan and NFL star Anthony Thomas, and two longtime highly-successful coaches, Tulane baseball coach Rick Jones and prep football coach Jim Hightower, headline eight 2016 competitors’ ballot inductees chosen last fall for the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.
Also in the class announced last October: Janice Joseph Richard, a two-time All-America basketball player and highly successful coach at her alma mater, Louisiana College, along with Xavier University; Arthur “Red” Swanson, Southeastern Louisiana’s most successful football coach who became an impactful figure in LSU sports history; and “Gentleman” Dave Malarcher, a great player and manager in Negro Leagues baseball. That trio will be inducted posthumously.
Also honored with enshrinement in the Class of 2016 will be the Dave Dixon Louisiana Sports Leadership Award winner, to be announced Thursday.
The 2016 Induction Class will be showcased in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Museum, operated by the Louisiana State Museum system in a partnership with the Louisiana Sports Writers Association. The striking $23 million, two-story, 27,500-square foot structure faces Cane River Lake in the National Historic Landmark District of Natchitoches and has garnered worldwide architectural acclaim and rave reviews for its contents since its grand opening during the 2013 Hall of Fame induction weekend.
Tompkins has been voted the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Sportswriter of the Year for Louisiana four times (1998, 2004, 2006, 2012). He was the Louisiana Sports Writers Association Sportswriter of the Year in 2006 and shared the same award in 2007.
A 1972 graduate of LSU, Tompkins was sports editor of the Daily Reveille student newspaper in the spring of 1972. Over the next four years, Tompkins worked at four different newspapers — the Lafourche Parish Daily Comet in Thibodaux (general assignment news reporter), the Monroe Morning World, the Shreveport Journal and the Lafayette Daily Advertiser.
He was sports editor of the Advertiser (Feb.-Aug. 1976), then moved to the Town Talk, where he was sports editor from 1987-94. He then spent 19 years as a senior reporter and sports columnist. Tompkins covered LSU’s BCS Championship Games in 2004, 2008 and 2012, he covered the 1994 and 1995 Masters, the 1981 and 1990 Super Bowls, the 1986 and 1993 NCAA Final Four tournaments and the 1992 U.S. Track and Field Olympic Trials and the 1981 NCAA Track and Field Championships. He covered 33 Sugar Bowls, several of which settled national championships.
During his career, Tompkins was the beat writer at various times for the New Orleans Saints, LSU football and basketball, Northwestern State football, Louisiana College football, basketball and baseball, Tulane football, USL football and basketball and for the Lafayette Drillers and Alexandria Aces minor league baseball teams. He has covered many PGA Tour events in New Orleans.
He was president of the LSWA for 1990-91 and ’91-92 and has been a member of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame selection committee since 1977. He also served many years on the committees to select the Heisman Trophy and the John Wooden Award.
He won LSWA Columnist of the Year for the 1988-89 judging period. He won the LSWA’s Mac Russo award in 2011.
Tompkins changed jobs on Jan. 1, 2015 to become the Town Talk storyteller, working on feature stories, news stories and columns across the spectrum, not just sports. Two of his stories since changing his job role – one on the colorful history of an old golf course in Pineville that is now a cemetery and another on a local man who was among the first American Ebola fighters in West Africa in 2014 – were reprinted via the Associated Press in several newspapers across the country.
The 2016 Induction Celebration will kick off Thursday, June 23 with the press conference and reception. It includes three receptions, a youth sports clinic, and a Friday, June 24 golf scramble at Oak Wing Golf Course in Alexandria. Tickets for the Induction Dinner and Ceremonies, and golf entries, are on sale this spring through the LaSportsHall.com website.
Adding to the 318 sports competitors currently enshrined, 15 previous winners of the Dave Dixon Louisiana Sports Leadership award and 56 prior recipients of the Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism, there are 389 members of the Hall of Fame prior to this summer’s ceremonies.
The 2016 Induction Celebration weekend will be hosted by the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Foundation, the support organization for the Hall of Fame. The LSHOF Foundation was established as a 501 c 3 non-profit entity in 1975 and is governed by a statewide board of directors. For information on sponsorship opportunities, contact Foundation President/CEO Lisa Babin at 318-458-0166 or lisababin@LaSportsHall.com. Standard and customized sponsorships are available.