Annual Banquet to be Held on Friday, July 23 at the Superdome
NEW ORLEANS – LSU all-Americans Susan Jackson of the gymnastics team and Louis Coleman of the baseball squad were named Thursday as the winners of the Corbett Awards by the Allstate Sugar Bowl and the Greater New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame.
The Corbett Awards are presented to the top male and female amateur athletes in the state and are based on achievements from the entire 2009 calendar year through May of 2010. It is the sixth time since 2000 that LSU has swept both honors.
The honorees will be recognized at a banquet on Friday, July 23 at the Louisiana Superdome.
The Corbett Award was created in 1967 to honor the late James J. Corbett and to commemorate his many contributions to intercollegiate athletics and specifically to the Sugar Bowl. When looking through its history, Corbett Award winners have gone on to great success, including 14 NFL players, six Major League baseball players, four NBA players, including two Hall of Famers, three WNBA players and eight Olympians, including seven Gold Medal winners.
2010 Male Corbett Award Winner – Louis Coleman, LSU Baseball
Louis Coleman is one of the most decorated pitchers to come from one of the most successful teams in LSU baseball history. A right-handed hurler from Schlater, Miss., Coleman bypassed an offer from the Washington Nationals to return to LSU, and proved to be an integral part of the Tigers’ run to the 2009 National Championship. He was the starting pitcher for LSU’s game one victory over Texas in the championship series and also pitched the final two innings of the game three championship clincher, striking out the side in the bottom of the ninth inning to put the exclamation point on the victory. He also was the winning pitcher in LSU’s Super Regional triumph over Rice.
In 25 appearances in 2009, which included 16 starts, Coleman recorded a 2.93 earned run average. In 129 innings he allowed 23 walks and struck out 142 – the eighth-highest single-season strikeout total in LSU history and the fourth highest total in the nation that year. He was second in the nation in wins with 14 and fourth in strikeouts. He was a consensus first-team All-America selection and the Southeastern Conference and Louisiana Sports Writers Association Pitcher of the Year. For his career, the 6-4, 190-pounder registered 29 wins (eighth all-time in the LSU annals) and 303 strikeouts (No. 9 all-time for the Tigers).
2010 Female Corbett Award Winner – Susan Jackson, LSU Gymnastics
Susan Jackson became the first gymnast in LSU history to win the NCAA All-Around national title, capping off her senior season with an individual national title on beam with a 9.9625, a second-place finish on the vault, and a fourth-place finish on the bars at the NCAA Championships in April. The Spring, Texas, product became the school’s first recipient of the Honda Sports Award as the nation’s top collegiate female gymnast. Jackson was also the recipient of the prestigious AAI Award, given annually to the nation’s top senior gymnast as voted upon by collegiate coaches. In addition, she was named the 2010 Southeastern Conference and Central Region Gymnast of the Year.
Jackson finished her career with three individual titles, a first for the LSU gymnastics program. Her four First Team All-America honors this year make a total of 12 for her career. In addition, Jackson is a two-time SEC vault champion and an SEC beam champion, and as one of the nation’s top elite-level performers, she was a four-time member of the USA National Team during her club career. In addition to her school-record performances at the NCAA Championships, she also set the LSU record for all-around titles in a single season with 11. In all, Jackson tallied 45 individual titles in 14 meets – 12 vault titles, 11 all-around, nine bars, seven floor and six beam – to end her career with 74 titles, third most in program’s storied history.