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Winn-Dixie: Where LSU's D-D Breaux gave away tickets to win fans' hearts
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BATON ROUGE, LA - "I tell you what, the gameplan is just being inside and talking to people inside the entrance way and just meet and greet."
"The ones that kind of crush you a little bit are the ones that are like 'no thanks' and just turn and walk away. But a lot of them are begging their moms like 'Come on mom, please mom please!' And we're like come on mom they're free!"
20 years before the days of 12,000 fans filling the seats of the PMAC every night, Winn-Dixie on Burbank was D-D Breaux's home away from home.
Three miles down the road from campus, the grocery store was where she made her sales pitch one family at a time.
"Hey I've got some tickets for the gymnastics meet this Friday if you want to bring you and your family. And they're like 'I've never been, that's a great idea I'd love to do that. How many can I have?' So you give them four and by the time they make two aisles in the grocery store they come back saying 'Maybe if I can get two more, my neighbor will come and bring her kids."
"It was always about having the will and the effort and the purpose."
"Here's the purpose and here's why we are doing this: to put more people in the stands because once we got people to come and see the team, we knew the excitement and the event would sell itself. If you look at the PMAC on Friday nights, people are coming to see what we've got."
And the people of Louisiana won't quit cheering on their Tigers. From three to four thousand in the early years to standing room only here in year 41 on the job, D-D Breaux has broke a lot of records and seen a lot of firsts for her program, but there's still one to check off that list.
"To win the national championship, that's our goal that's what we want to do, that's the real crown. We talk about the stick crown but that would be the real crown for this team and this program and this university."
"You have to be at the door and be willing to knock on the door and kick it down and everything has to be right. We were so close last year, everything was almost right, we were so close the year before, it was so right."
"I would never fought the battles that I've fought or done the standing in front of the Winn-Dixie store or go where the fans were if I didn't believe that it was going to be a reality or a real thing and it's a real thing now."
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