By Kyle Roberts
When Dave Anderson arrived at Ruston High School in 1991, no Bearcat had won an individual state title at the state track and field meet in 14 years.
Two decades and multiple state championships later, the man whose name now hangs over the Bearcats’ track is headed to the Louisiana High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame.
Anderson will be inducted with the LHSAA Hall of Fame class of 2027 in April, becoming the third Ruston High coach to earn the honor, joining L.J. “Hoss” Garrett (1980) and Chick Childress (1990).
“As a high school coach in the state of Louisiana, it’s the most prestigious award you can be given,” Anderson said. “It’s something you don’t aspire to. It’s probably more a sign that people appreciate the work done. I was given a lot of opportunities along the way, and I tried to make the most of my opportunities and to make sure that we left a mark everywhere we went.”
Anderson learned of the honor while driving to Ruston last week.
“Prior to 1991, no Bearcat had won a state championship in any event, boy or girl, at the state track and field meet since 1977,” Anderson said. “Really, until 1990, when we won the state championship at Neville in cross country, no north Louisiana team had won a state title.”
The turnaround came quickly. In Anderson’s first season, Ruston won the outdoor track and field state championship — the first Class 5A title ever awarded, as the classification was created that year.
“There were a lot of cultural shifts,” Anderson said. “I think the expectations were raised. That immediately brought a bunch of street cred. Success breeds success, so they say, and we were out of the blocks pretty hard, and we tried to just keep that momentum for the next 20 years.”
That momentum produced one of the most decorated runs in Louisiana high school athletics. From 1991 to 2011, Ruston’s track and field and cross country programs won 55 district championships, 21 regional championships and nine state championships, along with 16 state runner-up finishes and five national championships. Bearcat athletes captured 180 individual state titles, set 16 LHSAA state records and earned more than 200 all-state honors, and nine of Anderson’s former track and football athletes went on to play in the NFL.
Across his career, Anderson’s teams won 30 state championships and finished as runner-up 32 times in Louisiana, Arkansas and Oregon. His athletes set 16 LHSAA state composite or Class 5A records, won nine national championships and represented the United States in five foreign countries. Ruston was the top-finishing public school in the state’s highest classification at the state cross country championships 15 times.
Anderson was a two-time National Federation of State High School Associations finalist for national track and field coach of the year, in 1992 and 2004, and was named the Louisiana Sports Writers Association’s track and field coach of the year four times. He served as president of the Louisiana Track and Field Coaches Association from 1996 to 1999 and received the association’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010.
He was inducted into the Ark-La-Tex Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Bossier High School Athletics Hall of Fame in 2021. That same year, Ruston High dedicated the Dave Anderson Track and Field Complex in his honor.
Anderson also made his mark as an athlete, setting the Northeast Louisiana University school record in the 10,000 meters and the Bossier High School record in the 2-mile.
Anderson was quick to share the credit.
“I’m very thankful and grateful for the opportunity to be a Bearcat and to pour into the lives of the student-athletes there,” Anderson said. “This isn’t a single person’s award. There were a lot of people that contributed along the way, starting with the people across the dinner table. My family supported me and sacrificed a lot so that I could try to build the program that I did.”
Anderson pointed to the Garrett family — the reason he helped create the Hoss Garrett Relays in 1993 — as well as then-Lincoln Parish Superintendent Gerald Cobb and then-Ruston High Principal Danny Garbarino.
“There are so many people in the community to be thankful for,” Anderson said. “I’m just thankful for their belief in me to give me the chance, and I tried to make the most of my opportunity.”
Cobb was inducted into the LHSAA Hall of Fame as an administrator in 2015. Ruston’s other inductees include athletes Tommy Hinton (2007), Brad Laird (2010), Dan Childress (2011), Johnny Robinson (2020) and Bert Jones (2021).
