Family influences pivotal for Hall of Fame inductees Holloway, Fowles
By JASON PUGH, Written for the LSWA
Those who followed the Tioga Lady Indians basketball team when Kathy Holloway coached noted the team’s tough defense. That wasn’t modeled on how young Kathy Stewart played at now-defunct Poland High School.
Holloway, inducted last Saturday night in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in Natchitoches as the Dave Dixon Louisiana Sports Leadership Award winner, established a long-standing Class C state tournament record by scoring 86 points across two games while at Poland.
Her basketball skills were honed at home, on a metal rim that her father hung on the side of the family’s wooden garage. A photo in the Hall of Fame museum shows elementary school-aged Kathy shooting baskets on that backyard goal.
That led to her All-State playing career at Poland in southern Rapides Parish near Lecompte, and sparked a lifelong love of basketball. Holloway, a math major at LSU where there was no women’s team in the 1960s, entered the education field and launched career in high school sports, first as a championship head coach at Tioga then as the first female president of the Louisiana High School Coaches Association, achieved in 1986, and as the president of the National High School Athletic Coaches Association in 1992.
“Title IX was passed in 1972,” said Julie Wilkerson, one of four high school All-Americans Holloway coached at Tioga. “That energized someone like Mrs. Holloway.”
That energy may have indirectly led Holloway to her trailblazing positions within the coaches associations she eventually chaired.
“In those days, there was All-Star Week and on the Friday before the all-star games on Saturday, there was the final meeting of the coaches association to elect the president,” Holloway said. “One of the guys who was running asked me at the barbecue, ‘Will you vote for me (for president)?’ I said, ‘Yeah, if you’ll vote for me if I ever run.’ He said, ‘There ain’t ever gonna be a woman president of this association.’ That sealed it for me.”
Following her gilded administrative career, the NSCA in 2021 created the Kathy Holloway Women of Inspiration Award that honors a female “that has promoted female athletics by either coaching, serving, supporting or leading high school female athletic programs that focus on changing lives and inspiring women to strive for greatness.”
Holloway remains involved in the sport she loves, working closely with the Upward Basketball program at First Baptist Church in Pineville where her son, Stewart, is the pastor.
“She’s been involved the past 13 or 14 years,” he said. “It’s a fantastic way to use her skills to invest in another generation.
“Mom didn’t win a lot of state championships, but she’s been a champion in a lot of other ways.”
A close bond between siblings helped deliver a signature moment for the LSU women’s basketball team when it landed Sylvia Fowles, a 6-foot-6 standout from Miami.
Brought to LSU by coach Sue Gunter, who promised Fowles nothing more than the opportunity to complete for playing time, Fowles teamed with fellow Louisiana Sports Hall of Famer Seimone Augustus (a 2024 inductee) to usher in the golden era of Tigers women’s basketball – one that included four straight Final Four appearances.
“In my home visit, (Gunter) told me she wasn’t starting me as a freshman, that I had to earn it,” said Fowles via a Zoom call from Chicago where her Portland Fire were preparing for a WNBA game Friday night against the Chicago Sky. “That motivated me to be around her. I was signed, sealed and delivered after hearing her say you had to work for everything you want.”
Fowles, who is now an assistant coach with the Fire, averaged a double-double at LSU before a prolific WNBA career with the Chicago Sky and Minnesota Lynx where she averaged 15.7 points and 9.8 rebounds per game in her career.
Four Olympic gold medals, two WNBA titles and a spot of the WNBA’s 25th Anniversary Team only buttress a resume that came in a sport Fowles once regarded as “dumb,” thanks in part to her three older brothers.
“Growing up with them, I was allowed to play defense only,” she said. “I didn’t learn the rules of the game until eighth grade. I didn’t there were two ends of the court playing simultaneously. It was that moment I realized I was getting cheated. I didn’t think the sport was dumb after that.”
Although her brothers failed to share the full extent of basketball with their younger sister, Fowles never missed an opportunity to help someone else.
“She’s the best center of all time in women’s basketball” said former Minnesota teammate Lindsey Whalen. “She had a relentless will to rebound and to get to her spot on the block. She had great hands. Then there were times you’d look over and she’s helping put towels away or doing anything she could to help someone else.”
Contact Jason at pughj@nsula.edu