Kevin Foote: 2025 might have been the worst athletic year in school history

The Marsh
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Kevin Foote: 2025 might have been the worst athletic year in school history

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The UL football team takes the field against Rice Owls during their NCAA football game at Our Lady of Lourdes Stadium on Saturday, Aug. 30. STAFF PHOTO BY Brad Kemp

The 2025 calendar year is now over.

As far as UL athletics is concerned, it’s good riddance with an exclamation point.

Quite frankly, it was a downright miserable year for the Ragin’ Cajuns.

Yes, athletic years and calendar years aren’t the same and yes, there were a few pretty good performances.

For instance, the men’s track and field team won the indoor title and finished third outdoors, while the women’s squad was fifth in the indoor and second in the outdoor.

Soccer was 7-6-5, made the Sun Belt Tournament and tied for the most conference wins since 2013.

Golf is hard to quantify as an individual sport, but the Cajuns were effectively 98-44-2 against all the teams they competed against in tournament fields throughout the season.

With that said, it was the worst athletic year for UL in recent memory – perhaps in nearly 50 years, or arguably in modern history.

Just to throw out a few possibilities, football was 0-10 in 1973 and baseball only 14-19, but men’s basketball was elite 25-4 and beat No. 7 Houston in the NCAA Tournament.

In 1981, football was 1-9-1, softball was 6-14 in its first year of existence, men’s basketball was in a 15-13 transition season and women’s hoops was 10-14, but baseball enjoyed a 40-23 campaign.

Again, much of this is subjective depending on how you weigh transition seasons, varied expectations and non-revenue sports.

Of course, one could easily contend the basketball death penalty years of 1974-75 were the worst years local fans have ever endured.

For most UL fans in this era, though, an athletic year is based on football, men’s basketball and the two diamond sports.

Fortunately, football rallied with four straight wins late to earn a bowl berth, before falling to Delaware in the 68 Ventures Bowl.

No, 6-7 wasn’t what anyone in these parts had in mind in August, but it still ended much better than the 2-6 start suggested.

It’s far too early in the process to project how football will be next fall. The only good thing thus far is the early rumors of portal departures are at positions of strength depth-wise.

Men’s basketball enjoyed the wonder and excitement of a coaching change after a 12-21 season the year before that resulted in coach Bob Marlin being fired last December.

But then coach Quannas White’s Cajuns got off to a 1-11 start to the season. That’s a rough calendar year for the school’s once glamorous sport.

Fortunately, UL has won two straight games heading into Wednesday’s home game against South Alabama, so there’s some reason to believe better days could be ahead.

The unique thing about 2025, though, is UL fans have always been able to hang their hat on the softball program, even if all other programs were struggling.

That wasn’t the case in 2025. In coach Alyson Habetz’s first season, the optimism from the exciting hire faded with the program enduring its worst season since 1988 at 29-25.

All signs point to a more unified effort in 2026 with much more talent and experience in the circle, but last season was indeed culture shock at Lamson Park.

For the record, softball was still 29-16 in 1988, while football was 6-5 in the Brian Mitchell era and baseball went to an NCAA regional for the first time at 41-23.

Baseball didn’t help either this year. Coming off a Sun Belt championship the year before, coach Matt Deggs’ program took a step backward this past spring, finishing 27-31 for the worst record since 2012.

Unlike softball, the truth is transition seasons have always happened in this program after successful three-year NCAA regional runs, but this one came in the midst of a rough year overall at UL, so it was harder for some to swallow.

The jury is still out on how much happier the Russo Park fans will be this spring with a new pitching coach and a revamped roster. It’s hard to image winning fewer than 30 games again, though.

The bottom line is with the future of men’s and women’s basketball total unknowns at this point, it’s critical for the two diamond sports to return to form if 2026 is going to provide some needed relief to Cajun fans.

Perhaps no program was a better example of how rough a year it was for UL as a whole than women’s basketball. Last season wasn’t all that bad overall, finishing 13-16 and 9-9.

But the offseason that followed might have been the worse in school history in any sport – not having a single player return from last season’s roster and not even being able to fill out a coaching staff until well into the current season.

As a result, the team started out 0-11, before Monday’s win over NAIA Dillard ended the losing streak.

For the record, the fewest combined basketball wins in school history is nine in 1995. (In case you’re wondering, football went 6-5 that year and softball was 49-9 and made it to the Women’s College World Series).

As for the other sports not yet mentioned, volleyball was solid a 15-11 and 7-9, while both tennis teams had losing records and neither made it past the first round of Sun Belt tournament play.

In short, 2025 produced a lot of frustration and heartache for UL fans at almost every turn.

It’s also true 2025 gave us the shortlived energy of a new football stadium and the hope of a few popular new head coaching hires that could produce dividends in the future.

For now, there’s simply the hope a new year will bring brighter days real soon.

https://www.theadvocate.com/acadiana/sports/ul_lafayette/ul-ragin-cajuns-quannas-white-michael-desormeaux/article_d72de2f3-8ebe-4cbf-a002-a489fa3c196a.html#tncms-source=aca-featured-2

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Not enough cologne to make this turd smell good

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Surprised to see this article get printed/published in the usual chummy Laffy media market. Harbinger of what’s to come?

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Someone on the other platform really blames the fans for the poor year. Said we have to go hit up business to donate not the athletic department…lmao

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Some in of those posting would rather blame the fans than look at how our administration has failed to build athletics and listen to what consumers are saying. Some of these same posters would likely blame fans for Bob Marlin being fired.

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Don’t forget. It’s actually not that bad. We’re ranked 3rd in the Bubba Cup!

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All maggard had to do was not screw up the football hire and hire a fundraiser. Instead we have a coach who has had a losing season 75% of the time. Maggard department takes in less than 12 mill and he gave himself a promotion and a raise. The bar here is so incredibly low and people still get . Mad when fans are upset when its not achieved

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Need to invest in the womens underwater basket weaving team! That draws in whale investors like flys on shat.

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Great perspective. It’s hard to understand you are in a golden era, while living it.

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Blaming the fans for losses and lack of attendance is laughable. This falls on the admin hands down. They raised prices of tailgating, outpriced the average fan and expected more people to show up.

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The fans are customers. It’s not the fans job to fill seats when the product is stale. I agree that the town sometimes takes the university for granted, but how many times does the university self-inflict itself with carelessness to the point where alumni and supporters throw their hands up and just look the other way? Look no further than the current issues the university has gone through over the last 6 months.

If the athletic department and university want more fan support, don’t go 6-7 3 out of 4 seasons and then brag about “8 straight bowl appearances” inside of a brand new stadium. Don’t create a basketball culture that divided the fanbase over the last decade. Don’t win 27 games in baseball while getting run ruled by inferior competition at home. And quit blaming the fans for not showing up. It’s THER JOB to give us a good product to make us want to spend our time at their venues.

If someone opens a restaurant, it’s not the job of people to show up to eat. The food and service have to be decent enough for them to stop by. If the food is bad, people aren’t coming. Well, the current product on Reinhardt doesn’t seem to be on par if people aren’t showing up.

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Someone just sent me the post. While I don’t think that kind of fan is still the majority of our base, it’s still one of the saddest posts I’ve ever read. Imagine looking at these last 12 months and thinking, “Yep. It’s the fans fault.”

Mind boggling behavior, just to curry favor with people who can’t stand you.

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