Angela Turner – affectionately known as AT – was a multi-versatile guard that led Louisiana Tech to back-to-back national championship titles in the early 1980s The 1982 Kodak All-American is already a member of the Louisiana Tech Athletics Hall of Fame (Class of 1990) and will be enshrined into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame next Saturday night in Natchitoches.
For information on the LSHOF Induction Celebration June 24-26, visit LaSportsHall.com or call 318-238-4255.
Turner still ranks No. 3 at Tech in career scoring with 2,262 points and her No. 5 jersey hangs in the rafters of the Thomas Assembly Center. She earned her bachelor’s degree in physical education and her MBA with an accounting emphasis – both from Tech, receiving an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship along the way.
She lives in Carrollton, Texas, with her husband Troy Johnson, also an accountant. They met when she was working in Los Angeles, and are avid golfers and young grandparents.
Q: What was it like playing for Leon Barmore and Sonja Hogg?
A: Coach Barmore is the best coach that ever lived. Of course, I am a little biased. He was tough. A competitor. A motivator. And he wanted to win. He had the ability to instill that in each of us. He didn’t necessarily coach each player the same way when you got down to the specifics. He knew how to pull that out of each of us. By the same token, Coach Hogg knew what type of players to recruit to Tech. She knew what type of players could play under this system. My teammates, we all wanted to win. We weren’t jealous of each other. If one had a great game, then we all head a great game. The starting five on those teams: three were from Louisiana and two were from Mississippi. We were all local girls for the most part.
Q: How would you describe yourself as a player?
A: I was pretty quiet on the court. I liked to make my actions speak for me rather than words. I played my heart out. I wouldn’t say much or even show a whole lot of emotion on the court. It didn’t mean I wasn’t emotional. It was just my personality. Coming from Shady Grove High School where most of the attention was on me for scoring, once I got to Louisiana Tech it was all different. There were others that had just as much athletics ability as me. It was important that I could just fit into that system and not expect to be the star. I accepted that. It was more about team. It takes the whole team to be successful.
Q: What does it mean to go into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame?
A: It really means that I haven’t been forgotten. It’s been a long time since I graduated. I am a Louisiana girl. I grew up about an hour from Natchitoches. Going into this Hall of Fame means a whole lot. It shows that things I accomplished haven’t been forgotten. I remember running into Buddy Davis a number of years ago and he told me he was working on getting me into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. I had no idea. Every time I would see him, Buddy would tell me he was still working on getting me in. I know if I had one advocate, it was Buddy Davis. I bet Buddy had a big impact on me getting into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. He wrote about us all of the time. He was close to us. He helped put us on the map by the stories he wrote. He followed us all over the country. What better advocate then Buddy Davis. If he were here today, I would thank him from the bottom of my heart for what he did.
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