M.L. Lagarde

Sport: Director

University: Tulane

Induction Year: 

By Lenny Vangilder
Tulane SID

The hardest thing a sports information director has to do, it’s been said, is to find a way to keep happy everyone in his domain- members of the media, student-athletes, coaches and administrators.

M.L. Lagarde spent a decade as SID at Tulane keeping just about everyone happy. It wasn’t just his special charm that enabled him to spread such joy, but that he had been in everyone’s shoes at least once. For his achievements as a writer with The Times-Picayune and as a member of the Tulane staff. Lagarde will receive the Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism at the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame induction ceremonies June 26 in Natchitoches.

Lagarde, who will turn 65 in September, is going as strong as ever in his current role as associate athletic director for facilities and game management at Tulane.

“I’ve been working on our football centennial, lobbying with the state legislature for the new (downtown New Orleans) basketball arena and working with the Special Olympics and the NCAA track championships.” Lagarde said, “I really haven’t slowed down at all.”

That wasn’t the case in late March of 1985. Lagarde and everyone else in the Tulane athletic department had every reason to be feeling ill when word of an alleged point-shaving scandal became the biggest story in sports.

However, Lagarde never found out about it until days later, because he had undergone a risky open-heart surgery the day before the story broke, one that nearly took his life.

“The kept me in intensive care,” Lagarde said. “I kept asking why I was there so long and why I couldn’t watch television. After the first survey (in 1982), I was out of intensive care in a day and a half.”

Lagarde grew up as an outstanding junior tennis player and was recruited to Tulane by legendary coach Emmett Pare’. His college playing career was ended after a half-season, however, by health problems. Still, he was selected to the 1946 Junior Davis Cup team. Upon graduation from Tulane in 1952, Lagarde took up teaching and coaching.

His basketball and baseball teams at Jesuit and St. Aloysuis high schools won 79 percent of their games and eight state championships. In 1959, Lagarde decided to take on a new challenge and opened Lakewood School. He was headmaster of the school until 1974, and during that same period became a sportswriter for The Times-Picayune.

Lagarde took over as SID at Tulane in 1974 and held that position for 10 years before he was promoted to assistant athletic director. Last year, he was promoted to the associate athletic director. The 1993-94 athletic season will be Lagarde’s 20th on the uptown New Orleans campus. Lagarde was the 1984 recipient of the Louisiana Sports Writers Association’s Mac Russo Award for promoting goodwill among the membership.