Hall of Fame Class of 2024: Stacie Gremillion
https://admin.ragincajuns.com/common...f_Fame_SB.jpeg
Stacie Gremillion was born too early.
After all, what kind of numbers could she have compiled for UL's softball team if she hadn't played her entire collegiate career in a dead-ball, dead-bat, pitcher-dominated era?
"Oh, she would have loved to play in the game today," said long-time Ragin' Cajun softball coach Yvette Girouard, for whom Gremillion was one of the key early recruits in the program's infancy. "She'd be in heaven with the bats we have now, with the lively ball and with that miniscule strike zone."
Regardless of those drawbacks, the Baton Rouge native put up numbers that Cajun players chased for much of the next two decades. When Gremillion finished her four-year career, she held every major Cajun offensive record on her way to four selections to the All-Southland Conference first-team and being honored as Louisiana's collegiate player of the year.
"When she got here, it was like we finally have a power hitter," said Ursula Quoyeser, one of the members of UL's first-ever team in 1981 and the left fielder to Gremillion's center field for two seasons. "She brought another level of play, a higher level of play … she was just that talented."
More importantly, she was one of the driving forces in the Cajuns' first-ever postseason appearance, helping lead UL to the National Invitational Tournament as a senior in 1987. Now, of course, postseason play for Cajun softball is a given, with UL making the NCAA Tournament field in 34 of the last 35 years.
Because of that, Gremillion will be inducted into the UL Athletic Hall of Fame on Friday as part of the university's Homecoming celebration, one day before UL meets Sun Belt rival Arkansas State in the annual Homecoming game. She will be inducted along with baseball players Eddie Mouton and Hunter Moody, football standout Elijah McGuire, soccer's Yazmin Montoya Gutierrez and legendary track and field coach Bob Cole at the annual induction ceremony at the UL Student Union Ballroom on McKinley St.
The offensive numbers Gremillion compiled in that four-year career were eye-popping in a time when pitchers threw from only 40 feet (now 43) and games ended up 1-0 and 2-1 more often than not. Of the 47 regular-season games UL played in her senior year, 31 of them were shutouts for one of the two teams.
"It was all about defense and pitching," Girouard said. "You just held onto the edge of your seat and waited for a break. Stacie was part of a transition for us, when it started moving more toward an offensive game.
Gremillion set UL career marks for runs (122), hits (178), RBI (91), doubles (29), triples (16), home runs (13), stolen bases (55), total bases (278), slugging percentage (.482), extra base hits (58) and sacrifice flies (10). She also set single-season records for hits (60), doubles (12), triples (seven), home runs (four), stolen bases (18), total bases (98), slugging percentage (.590) and sacrifice flies (five), as well as four single-game records. She was the first Cajun ever to hit two home runs in a game during the "white ball" era.
What's lost among those records was her prowess as an all-around player.
"She was our first five-tool player," Girouard said. "Not only could she hit, she could catch, she could run, she could throw, she could steal bases. Just an aggressive and heady player."
Quoyeser, herself a 1992 inductee into the UL Athletic Hall of Fame, said she and Gremillion made a pact that nothing would find the grass on the left side of the outfield during their two years together.
"We challenged each other, we encouraged each other," Quoyeser said. "We caught every ball that was anywhere close. We joked about not telling each other if we were on the warning track or about to hit the fence, we just had to catch the ball. We made each other better."
It wasn't a foregone conclusion that Gremillion would be a Cajun. Her older sister was playing at Nicholls State at the time and the programs were having similar success.
"I knew how good she was in high school, but I was so uptight going in there because Nicholls was recruiting her really hard, they wanted both," Girouard said. "But her folks couldn't have been nicer. They wound up being great friends of my momma and daddy, and the families stayed connected the rest of their lives."
The Cajuns compiled an overall 130-59 record and went 38-6 in SLC play with four titles during Gremillion's career, but postseason play didn't happen until her senior year when UL got a 1987 NIT invite. And even that was in question late in the year when the program suffered through the tragic death of junior infielder and two-time all-conference selection Lesley Zeller in an auto accident.
"The team still voted to go," Girouard said. "At that time it was unbelievably hard to get into the NCAA with such a small field, especially for a program that didn't have full scholarships. But it was exciting to get to the NIT, a first-time thing. It set a tradition, and Stacie was a big part of that."
