Louisiana Athletics Hall of Fame Class of 2025: Dr. Ed Dugas

He accomplished a lot during his 39-year career in public education, including 34 years of service to the university that was USL during his career. Untold numbers of former students and staff members benefitted not only from his wisdom and experience, but also from his benevolent nature and his inherent desire to help people.

He's still doing all of that as he reaches his 86^th birthday, but it's ironic that Dr. Ed Dugas' lasting legacy as a volunteer – and finding success in that role required him to embrace technology that was foreign to him and to most people at the time.

Pre-social media, pre-Facebook, back when e-mails were far from common, Dugas saw a need for something to allow former Ragin' Cajun athletes to identify, locate and communicate.
"He asked me what I thought about an alumni directory but just for student-athletes, something where he could gather information and have it where they could find each other," said John Dugas, his son and a member of the UL athletic staff. "I told him there was this new thing called the internet."

A quarter-century later, the Athletic Network (athleticnetwork.net) is a far-reaching source of information, with hundreds of thousands of documents, stories, photos and bits of information. More importantly, it contains thousands of profiles of Ragin' Cajun athletes, coaches and staff, spirit groups and fans, providing an invaluable resource to members of those groups.

"The idea and the plan was simple, but the scope of it was massive," said the younger Dugas, now associate director of facility management for athletic facilities. "But he saw opportunity, and I knew at the time that he's going to work harder than anyone else and he's going to see things through."

Twenty-five years after his "retirement" from his storied career with the university and his many roles in physical education, he's still doing that. The Athletic Network remains his dedication and his contribution to the university that has been his passion since he enrolled at then-USL in 1958.

Dugas is being honored for those efforts with induction into the UL Athletic Hall of Fame on Friday, Sept. 5, as part of a full weekend of Hall of Fame activities that includes the Cajuns' second home football game of the season against McNeese on Saturday, Sept. 6.

He will be inducted along with football's Brett Baer, basketball great Kevin Brooks, golf standout Richard Ainley, baseball great Corey Coles and women's softball standout Haley Hayden at the Friday night ceremony.

Doors open at 6 p.m. with the ceremony beginning at 7 p.m. in the McElligott Club of the new Our Lady of Lourdes Stadium. Tickets are available from the Ragin' Cajun Athletic Foundation at RCAF@louisiana.edu or by calling (337) 851-7223.

As of this fall, there are almost 20,000 profiles on the Athletic Network, a number that constantly increases. The information is available free to anyone without restriction, and any former athlete or member of an athletic-related group can join. Recently, the Network was expanded to welcome profiles of anyone interested in Cajun athletics as a FAN (Friend of the Athletic Network).

Not bad for a founder who was a long way from being tech-savvy after 34 years on the USL staff, most of that time in the Department of Physical Education and Kinesiology from 1967-2001.

During that career, he served as a department head in physical education, director of graduate studies and director of student teaching in the College of Education. He was the executive director of the Louisiana Association of Health, P.E., Recreation, and Dance for nine years, served on the Governor's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports under four different governors, and had professional involvements in areas too numerous to mention.

Son John said that someone with that busy a background doesn't just retire to a life of leisure.

"He was already talking about what he was going to do when he retired," he said, "and thinking of what he could do that would be of benefit to the university. That's how he thinks … he's not the type that's going to travel around in an RV.

"As long as he was a professor, he resisted all the computer stuff. I told him that anything on paper would be obsolete before the ink was dry, but doing it online made it a living thing. At that minute I saw the lightbulb go off and the wheels start turning. In a very short time, he went from never using a computer to having one on his desk with two monitors so he could work on two things at the same time."

Mike Spears, a former UL cheerleader who owned Firefly Digital, was instrumental in the original concept, and Dr. Dugas eventually went to then-president Dr. Ray Authement with the idea in late 2001.

"Dr. A kept waiting and finally asked him how much money he needed, and my dad told him none," John Dugas said. "It was the easiest approval ever."

Liz Landry, also a lifelong USL staff member, helped set up office space and many other necessities, but it was Dr. Dugas' own abilities at networking that made the Athletic Network a success – along with his seemingly tireless work ethic. The great majority of the information now on the site passed through his computer at some point.

The Network continues to evolve. Dr. Dugas' next project and goal is to digitize old video and films, and preserve that for future generations.

"He's working in that direction now," John Dugas said. "It's another massive project, but that's what excites him. What keeps him going is when people e-mail him and tell him they talked to a former teammate or coach that they hadn't talked to in 30 years, and the reason they did was the Athletic Network. Helping people make those connections has kept him working this hard all these years. No one else would have done this."

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University of Louisiana at Lafayette Athletics

Louisiana Athletics Hall of Fame Class of 2025: Dr. Ed Dugas

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