Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame: Higgins, Ardoin to receive Distinguished Service Award

Editor’s note: This is the 11th in a series of stories on the 2024 inductees into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. Induction festivities are June 20-22 in Natchitoches.

Longtime sportswriters Ron Higgins and Bobby Ardoin will receive the 2024 Distinguished Service Award from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association on Saturday night in Natchitoches.

Higgins, a Baton Rouge native who’s worked for several large newspapers in the South, and Ardoin, a fixture on the southwest Louisiana sports scene for a half-century, will be honored with induction into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame during its annual ceremonies.

The award is given based on nominees’ professional accomplishments in local, state, regional and even national circles, with leadership in the LSWA as a beneficial factor and three decades of work in the profession as a requirement.

Higgins and Ardoin both began their sportswriting careers in the 1970s and are still working today, having made the shift from newspapers to online publications.

Both have written extensively for Louisiana publications covering professional, college, amateur and high school sports since they were teenagers.

While Ardoin has worked exclusively in Louisiana covering sports and news, Higgins has worked for papers in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Shreveport as well as Memphis, Tennessee; Jackson, Mississippi; and Mobile, Alabama.

The honor, voted upon by a 40-person board from around the state, is the highest distinction that can be bestowed upon a Louisiana sportswriter.

Their names will be etched into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, joining only 73 other leading figures in Louisiana sports journalism history.

The 2024 induction class is headlined by a star-studded group of nine inductees from the competitors ballot, a group led by Drew Brees and Seimone Augustus.

Higgins, the son of the late legendary LSU sports information director Ace Higgins, had bylined stories appearing in the Morning Advocate before he had a license to drive.

After college, he worked in his hometown of Baton Rouge, Shreveport and Jackson before moving over to the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Later, he worked in Mobile and New Orleans before returning to his hometown.

A 10-time Tennessee Sportswriter of the Year honoree, he was inducted into the Tennessee Sportswriters Hall of Fame in 2011.

Higgins also served as president of the Football Writers Association of America — the only native of Louisiana to hold that office.

Ardoin has become an Acadiana and St. Landry Parish icon for his coverage of a smorgasbord of events from peewee football and baseball to a number of college and professional sports.

Among the papers he’s written for are The Advocate and the old State-Times.

While he’s being honored for his work as a sportswriter, Ardoin also has tackled hard news in dealing with anything from school boards city and parish council meetings to political corruption cases and murder trials.