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Wow, 2015 was an action-packed year in the world of local sports – one of the busier 12-month stretches that we’ve had in recent memory.
Over the past year, we’ve seen miraculous stories of triumph and healing, coaching changes and state championships.
We saw professional dreams come true for some, and reality TV show hopes come to light for others.
It wasn’t easy to narrow down, but below are the Top 10 sports stories in the Houma-Thibodaux area for the 2015 calendar year.
Reminisce with us what’s been an amazing sports year.
We will surely miss all of the major players in the past year.
No. 1: Local freshman severely injured in practice, is comatose, then makes miraculous recovery
South Lafourche High School freshman Trevor Toups’ life changed forever on Sept. 29. While practicing with the Tarpons freshman football team, Toups was hit and immediately fell to the ground.
He had suffered a life-threatening brain injury.
Thanks to immediate response from coaches and trainers, Toups was taken promptly to Lady of the Sea General Hospital in Galliano, where tests showed that his brain was swollen and bleeding.
He was airlifted to University Hospital in New Orleans and taken into immediate surgery, which left him in an induced coma upon its completion.
Doctors estimated that Toups could be in the hospital for weeks – if not months – while recovering.
He recovered miraculously and rode the power of prayer throughout the South Lafourche community to recovery. He left the hospital just a couple of days after his operation. Since the injury, Toups is recovering nicely, but still faces a daily battle. The initial operation removed a piece of his skull, which required another operation to put back into place. That operation gave Toups a staph infection, which caused doctors to re-remove the skull bone, clean it, then put it back into place.
Today, Trevor is about as close to 100 percent as anyone could ever imagine. He’s expected to return to school in the spring semester, and the only signs of his injury are a long, question mark-shaped scar that will forever be a reminder of that day – one that folks in that area will never forget.
No. 2: Rebowe turns around Nicholls football team
The 2015 football season was the most anticipated year in decades for Nicholls State University.
With a new coach who has promised mountains of change, the Colonels faithful united and rallied behind this year’s team, which returned just about every major piece from the year before.
Initially the Colonels struggled. Nicholls lost five-straight games to open the year, including shellackings at the hands of UL-Monroe, Colorado and McNeese State.
But around the midpoint of the season, something changed, and the Colonels became highly competitive. Nicholls won its first game of the Rebowe Era on Oct. 17, a 38-17 victory over Houston Baptist.
The Colonels fed off that win and got two others, road victories at Lamar and Southeastern Louisiana. The victory over the Lions came via a last-second field goal to cap
the team’s 3-8 season.
But more important than the win/loss record in Thibodaux is what’s going on behind the scenes. The Colonels are becoming a recruiting leader – a program that is getting its pick of local talent. Local stars Anfernee Poindexter, Jacob Jackson and Harvey Allen are committed to the team’s 2016 Signing Class, which features more than a dozen verbal commitments already.
Combine the young blood with a defense that returns all 11 starters for 2016, and Rebowe thinks that his team is pretty close to competing for a Southland Title. Time will tell, but the Colonels are surely closer today than they were at this time last year.
No. 3: Local nearly wins WWE reality TV show
In 2015, the wrestling world fell in love with Zamariah “ZZ” Loupe. The Bayou Boeuf native outlasted thousands of entrants and earned a spot on the cast of WWE reality TV show Tough Enough.
While on the show, Loupe Lagged behind the other performers in skill, but made up for it in personality, showcasing Cajun humor, quick-witted one-liners and an all-around goofy personality, which endeared him to fans.
Despite being in the “bottom three” on several occasions, fans opted repeatedly to keep ZZ on the show. That lasted all the way to the Tough Enough finale, where ZZ and Josh were the final two men standing. Through fan voting, Loupe wasn’t able to hang out, falling to his counterpart, known as “The Yeti.”
But all was not lost for Loupe. Because of his popularity, WWE offered the local a developmental contract, which he accepted. Today, ZZ is in Florida training to be a full-time WWE star. He is currently featured on another reality program, which gives an in-depth look at WWE superstars and how they train on a day-to-day basis. Loupe has said multiple times that his dream is to be a WWE star.
No. 4: Star QB misses 2015 season with car crash injuries
The 2015 season was supposed to be the Year of Harvey Allen down on the bayous of South Lafourche.
He ended up missing the entire season, watching in agony from the sidelines.
Just weeks before the start of the 2015 football season, Allen and teammate Larry Mack were severely injured as passengers in a one-car crash on the Bourg-Larose Highway. The vehicle carrying the football players lost control at a curve, swerved off the road and crashed into trees.
Allen suffered the worst of the injuries, sustaining a fractured pelvis, bruised Lung and punctured bladder in the crash. Mack suffered a fractured pelvis and injured hamstring.
Instead of playing the 2015 football season with his team, Allen was on the shelf for every game, routinely seen cheering on his guys in his No. 11 uniform top. Mack was able to return at the midway point of the season, but never found firm footing and didn’t enjoy a huge impact.
But this story does have a happy ending.
Both Allen and Mack are 100 percent now, and each will continue their careers at the college level.
Allen signed with Nicholls State University, where he will be a slot receiver and kick returner for the Colonels. Mack opted for the JUCO route, pledging to Coffeyville Community College in Kansas.
No. 5: Nicholls baseball enjoys big year, sees 3 players get drafted
The 2015 season was a memorable one for the Nicholls baseball team.
For the second-straight season, the Colonels competed favorably in the Southland Conference, earning 34 wins, while posting an 18-11-1 mark in league play. For the second-straight season, the Colonels were not able to parlay that success into paydirt at the Southland Conference Tournament, falling in two-straight games in Sugar Land, Texas.
But the fruits of Nicholls labors were still evident at the 2015 MLB Draft, as a record-high three Colonels were picked and given the opportunity to chase their professional dreams. Pitcher Grant Borne was picked by the Washington Nationals in the seventh round of the draft. He signed and is a member of the team’s farm system. Also selected were Stuart Holmes (35th round) by the Toronto Blue Jays and Ryan Deemes (36th round) by the Houston Astros. The Colonels will begin the 2016 season in a few weeks, and the team again has high hopes for the future.
No. 6: VCHS soccer wins state championship
The Vandebilt Catholic soccer team got the revenge it was looking for in March, beating an old-time foe to win the Division II State Championship.
Long a state power, Vandebilt rolled through the regular season with growing pains, sometimes struggling to pick up the style of first-year coach Paul Shenton.
But by the final weeks of the season, Vandebilt was a polished gem – one fully capable of pushing past anyone in the Division II playoff bracket.
The Terriers earned the No. 5 seed, rolling through North DeSoto, Benton and East Jefferson to get into the State Semifinals.
While there, the Terriers looked a bit like a team of destiny, scoring a thrilling 2-1 home win over No. 1 Beau Chene to earn a spot in the finals.
In the final match, the Terriers topped No. 7 Ben Franklin – the same team that had beaten Vandebilt 4-1 during the regular season.
Terriers goalie Charles Doskey was a mammoth in the title-winning match, making several Herculean saves to keep Ben Franklin out of the net.
No. 7: Nicholls bass nearly wins National Championship
Prior to 2015, most people weren’t aware that Nicholls State University had an active bass fishing team.
But by the fall, that changed, because the Colonels were officially among the best in the nation.
Spearheaded by one-two punch Tyler Rivet and Allyson Marcel, the Nicholls Bass Federation earned a spot at the Bassmasters Collegiate National Championships in Wisconsin.
While there, Nicholls impressed, holding the overall lead after Day 2 of the three-day event, before finishing third.
More than 80 teams competed in the event, which was won by Texas A&M duo Josh Bensema and Matthew McArdle.
Throughout the event, social media exploded in support of Rivet and Mar-
hurt.
“Drew tore a ligament in his foot and still played in two meaningless games,” Adams said. “Now you tell me: How in the world did that not fall on Garrett Grayson to play in those games? You have to cut the umbilical cord and let him loose.”
“Play the kid. Find out what he can do,” Reid added. “I think they would be better off to try and prepare for the future – especially if you cannot win the bigger games today in the present.”
The Sean Payton situation is another that has fans in a tizzy.
Thibodaux native Bob Guidroz is one of many local New Orleans fans who don’t think Payton will be the coach of the team beyond the season.
He said he thinks the team’s unstable ownership situation is a turn-off, and it’s something Payton doesn’t want to be tied to long-term.
“He had a good time, but I think he sees green grass in the other pasture,” Guidroz said.
Galliano man Timmy Ross agreed and said he thinks Payton will be heading to either of two places – one job which is currently open and another which isn’t yet, but might be soon.
“How could he say no to being with the Colts?” Ross said. “They have Andrew Luck. Who wouldn’t want to coach Andrew Luck for the next decade? I think he goes there or he goes to Dallas. I think his heart has been in Dallas for a long time, but the timing just never was able to be quite right to make it work.”
But while Ross and Guidroz have Payton going elsewhere, Houma native Adam Angeloz said he doesn’t think Payton will be coaching anywhere else.
“His heart is here. I don’t think he is going to go,” Angeloz said. “I think in the last month of the season, he has looked more committed than he has looked in a very long time.”
But no matter how pessimistic some may seemed to have been about the team, just about everyone agreed that the team was going to someday resume its position as a winner.
Allemand said the team is rebuilding, but he thinks there are plenty pieces in place who will be a part of a future winner.
He said New Orleans’ 2015 draft class was a good one, and he can’t wait to see those players grow up in Black and Gold.
Guidroz and Ross agreed, and said they both think the team can win a Super Bowl in the next decade, assuming, of course that the team plays its cards right in the next few offseasons.
They all can’t wait to see how it shakes out – no matter which side of the fence that they’re on.
“That’s our team, and we love our team,” Ross said. “Win, lose or draw, that’s who we are all-in for.”
“We might holler about what they do on the field, but we love them,” Guidroz said. “They’ll get back to winning. We know it. We just wish it would be today and not tomorrow, but hey, that just gives us something to look forward to. I think we all expect the future to be bright.”
‘The window is closed. There’s no way to do this without it taking a few years. And a few years in the NFL unfortunately means a couple more tough seasons for our Saints.’
Paul Allemand
Local diehard chiming in on the Saints
South Lafourche High school freshman Trevor Toups with his family. Following a life-threatening brain injury suffered at football practice, Toups was expected to be hospitalized for weeks. He left the hospital a few days after his emergency surgery.
Bayou Bouef native Zamariah “ZZ” Loupe attracted fans across the country through the WWE reality TV show “Tough Enough.”
South Lafourche senior quarterback Harvey Allen missed his final high school season after an August car crash left him with multiple fractures and a torn bladder.
