Football: UL Football team to honor Shunick

Tim Buckley, Daily Advertiser, August 22, 2012

The University of Louisiana at Lafayette Ragin’ Cajuns football players will carry Mickey Shunick with them for the 2012 season.

Team members will wear a decal portraying a girl on her bicycle on their helmets throughout the season, UL Sports Information Director Brian McCann said Tuesday night.

The name "Mickey" will be spelled beneath the bike.

Shunick, a UL student at the time of her death, was kidnapped while riding her bicycle on a Lafayette street and killed in the early morning hours of May 19.

Brandon Scott Lavergne pleaded guilty Friday to Shunick’s murder, and that of another woman, Lisa Ann Pate, in 1999. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, to be served at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.

A football staff member proposed the sticker to Hudspeth and the team, and the Cajuns coach approved it.

"Phenomenal idea," Hudspeth said after practice Tuesday night.

"We’re just honored," he added, "to put that on the back of our helmets, to represent our entire student body."

When Lavergne pleaded Friday, court documents showed that Shunick fought him after he followed her and intentionally struck her bike with his pickup truck.

Shunick first sprayed Lavergne with Mace, then stabbed him several times with his own knife.

Taken for dead with stab wounds of her own and driven to a sugar cane field in north Acadia Parish, she later jumped up and stabbed Lavergne several times in the chest.

He then shot and killed her.

"What an inspirational story of courage — someone just fighting for her life," Hudspeth said. "I know our team is just very, very proud to honor one of our own students."

UL opens its season Sept. 1 against Lamar at Cajun Field.