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Kent Lowe (LSU) – Achievement Award - University Division
by Alissa Cavaretta, LSU Athletic Communications Graduate Student Assistant
 

If you walk into LSU’s Pete Maravich Assembly Center five hours before tipoff for any men’s basketball game, you are sure to see a bespectacled man surrounded by his trusty iPad, loads of game notes and network announcers. To his left is his large cup of unsweet iced tea, and to his right is his cellphone that he is never without.
 
For more than a quarter of a century, Kent Lowe, LSU’s Senior Associate Athletic Communications Director, has been at midcourt for hundreds of Tiger basketball games, but that doesn’t begin to describe his contributions to sports at LSU and throughout the state of Louisiana.
 
This year, Lowe will be honored with the CoSIDA Achievement Award, presented annually to an assistant or associate in an athletics media relations office who has made outstanding contributions to the field of college sports information, and who by his or her activities has provided exceptional service and dedication to their institutions or conference office.
 
Lowe is the recipient of the university division award; the college division recipient is a fellow CoSIDA member hailing from the southeast — Shane Herrmann, associate sports information director at NCAA Division II’s North Alabama.
 
“Exceptional service and dedication” are descriptors that would appear in any biography of Kent Lowe. During his nearly three decades in Baton Rouge, Lowe has seen it all and just about done it all.
 
From a scorer’s table where he witnessed two electric typewriters short out from overuse during a monumental LSU-Loyola Marymount contest in 1990 — a game in which 289 points were scored on 211 shots (and only one overtime!) — Lowe watched Chris Jackson, Shaquille O’Neal, Glen “Big Baby” Davis, Marcus Thornton and Ben Simmons grow up in the Maravich Center.
 
As an LSU graduate student in the 1980s, Lowe saw Johnny Jones evolve from an LSU student-athlete to an assistant coach on Dale Brown’s staff for 13 years, to being named the Tiger’s head coach in 2012. The one thing that remained constant during that time was Kent Lowe.
  It has been 29 years since Lowe began working at LSU when then-sports information director Herb Vincent hired Lowe away from the Louisiana Downs horseracing track in Shreveport to serve as the Tigers’ assistant sports information director.
 
“I can say without hesitation that Kent Lowe is the hardest working, most dedicated and loyal individual I have ever met, inside the business or out,” said Vincent, now Associate Commissioner for Communications for the Southeastern Conference. “The average fan will never know what Kent has meant for LSU, but hundreds of student-athletes, scores of coaches and media from every corner of the country recognize the value Kent adds every single day to LSU Athletics in addition to the profession of athletics communications.”
 
Lowe does not know a stranger, but strangers know him because of his work with Tiger’s basketball. He is active on Twitter and always runs in the center of jokes around the office. Not only is Lowe renowned around the likes of Baton Rouge, he is a star in the SEC and around the country.
 
A No. 25 basketball jersey with a Lowe nameplate, one of Shaq’s shoes, a myriad of pictures of student-athletes with whom he’s worked and an enlarged copy of a magazine cover on which Lowe appeared fill the walls of his office. And, sitting on the windowsill next to his 2006 Final Four chair is an LSU purple bowling ball, signifying his second love.
 
Lowe bowls in a weekly league and has written an award-winning bowling column for The Baton Rouge Advocate for the last 23 years. Additionally outside of his LSU role, he is a past president and current treasurer of the Louisiana Sports Writers Association and is heavily involved with the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, producing and co-hosting the induction ceremonies television show each year.
 
His outside interests have never compromised his service to the Tigers. In addition to handling media relations responsibilities for men’s basketball, Lowe also served as the LSU women’s golf communications director for more than 25 years. That doesn’t count the hours he has spent serving as color analyst for the Tiger softball team, or the years he has coordinated media operations for annual NCAA Baseball Regional and Super Regional Tournaments at LSU’s Alex Box Stadium.
 
“There are so many memories in 29 years in one place,” Lowe said. “I learned so much from Paul Manasseh who was SID here when I was in grad school. I’m honored to be, as he called us, ‘one of his boys.’ I’ve had two great bosses — Herb Vincent and Michael Bonnette — and so many friends at LSU and at other schools who have taught and helped me along the way. To be honored by CoSIDA for this is very special indeed.”
 
In game-day form, Lowe is often found in a frenzy, pacing the PMAC with two oatmeal raisin cookies and his trademark iced tea. Games are like Broadway shows for Lowe, but after the curtain falls and the final horn sounds, it is back to business.
 
Long hours and long work-weeks are standard for Lowe, but it is all worth it for him because his work and the people who surround him are his family. He is basically an uncle in his fifth-floor office and is always available to answer questions, give advice, tell stories or give a review on what he watched on television the night before.
 
Kent Lowe is more than a communications director. He is legendary because of the time and knowledge he has acquired and shared from his 29 years of experience.
 
But, most importantly, he is a friend and confidant who is always available when needed.
 
As Vincent stated, “There will simply never be another Kent Lowe.”
 
And the world of sports in Louisiana simply would not be the same without him.