Former Virginia State University head coach and CIAA champion Lou Anderson has passed away.
Anderson passed away on Friday morning at the age of 87. He was a football fixture in Richmond, VA for more than half a century.
The Richmond, VA native attended historically black Maggie Walker High School before starting at Kitrell Junior College in North Carolina. He would finish his collegiate career at Claflin (SC) where he played both football and basketball.
Anderson spent 20 years as a head coach in the RVA area before taking over the program at Virginia State University. He led VSU from 1990 through 2001, winning back-to-back CIAA titles in 1995 and 1996. He was twice named CIAA Coach of The Year.
“Coach Anderson has touched the lives of not only his former football players, but many others throughout the VSU community,” former Virginia State athlete and current Florida A&M University VP of Athletics Tiffani-Dawn Sykes said in an awards ceremony in 2018. “He was always a class act – a man of great integrity who put the educational interests of students front and center.”
Anderson was inducted into the John McLendon, CIAA Hall of Fame in 2013.