HAMMOND – Southeastern Louisiana University conferred degrees on 24 student-athletes who were among the more than 1,000 graduates on Saturday at the university's spring commencement exercises.
Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu was the keynote speaker at the 10 a.m. ceremony in the University Center arena.
The university also presented its “Golden Ambassador” award to Southeastern alumni Wayne and Manuel Dugas in recognition of the brothers' outstanding service, achievements and humanitarian efforts.
Both former Southeastern football players, the St. Charles Parish natives are among Southeastern's largest donors, having contributed nearly $1.4 million to the fund raising drive to reestablish the football program and to scholarships for student-athletes. The university's athletic building is named in the Dugas brothers' honor.
Manuel Dugas worked for the Internal Revenue Service before embarking on a three-decade career as a State Farm Insurance agent. Wayne Dugas served as a high school football coach before joining the then small company Dollar General. He retired as one of the national discount chain's top procurement specialists.
Southeastern softball player Brooke Lockhart, a mathematics major from Christchurch, N.Z., was one of 13 graduates to receive the President's Medal For Academic Excellence awarded to the graduates with the highest cumulative grade point average. Lockhart has maintained a 4.0 grade point average throughout her time at Southeastern and has been twice named to both the Southland Conference All-Academic and the CoSIDA/ESPN the Magazine Academic All-District Teams.
Southeastern women's tennis players Nina Knavs and Breda Kovac, both who were All-SLC performers for the SLC regular season champions in 2008, completed their graduate studies. Both players earned their MBA's in their four years of eligibility. Former Lion tennis player Haris Huremovic also received his MBA on Saturday.
Among the Lions and Lady Lions receiving bachelor's degrees on Saturday were six former football players William Dede, Kyle LeBlanc, Aylon Putt, Chad Tedder, George Leverette and Michael Johnson.
The Southeastern tennis program had five representatives earn their bachelor's degrees on Saturday. Julien Lousao, Vladimir Paunic, Bonnie Phillips and Jana Simurkova – all All-SLC tennis student-athletes – completed their undergrad work this semester, as did two-time SLC Player of the Year Emilija Arnaudovska.
Craig Thomas, Damarris Triggs, Leonie Ezegbunam and Shayne Rayners all represented the track team. Among the other Southeastern student-athletes graduating were Justin Dyck (baseball), Brett Varnado (baseball), Jameica Gross (women's basketball), Nina Grubisic (women's soccer), Shannon Wright (women's soccer) and Dekyron Nicks (men's basketball).
