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Nicholls State University softball’s Megan Landry has been nominated for the NCAA Women of the Year Award, the organization announced Wednesday.
Landry, a Central Catholic High alum, is one of a record 585 female college athletes who were nominated for the award. Established in 1991, the NCAA Woman of the Year award recognizes graduating female college athletes who have exhausted their eligibility and distinguished themselves in academics, athletics, service and leadership throughout their collegiate careers.
A two-time NFCA All-Region honoree, Landry concluded her pitching career with a 27-12 record and a 1.66 ERA in her senior campaign and leaves as the Colonels’ all-time leader in wins with 80. She ranks third all-time on the strikeout list with 573, and her nine saves also are tied for the school record.
A three-time all-conference selection and the 2018 Southland Pitcher of the Year, Landry accounted for 18 shutouts and three no-hitters in her four years at Nicholls.
Landry helped lead the program to new heights as the Colonels made the Southland Tournament four straight years — a first in school history — and entered the postseason as the No. 2 seed or better. In 2018, Nicholls won its first regular-season championship since 1996.
In the classroom, Landry was a three-time Southland All-Academic First Team selection and was named Student-Athlete of the Year following her junior season. She graduated summa cum laude with a 3.97 GPA in December, earning a degree in secondary education — English. Landry took three courses towards a Master’s in Education Leadership in the spring and posted a 4.0 GPA. She also garnered CoSIDA Academic All-District twice in her career and received Academic All-America Second Team honors in 2018.
A Pierre Part native, Landry was vice president for the Nicholls Student-Athlete Advisory Committee while also spending time volunteering with numerous organizations. She served as a bible study leader and mentor for the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, or FOCUS, and recently started as a FOCUS missionary for the next two years.
The NCAA nominees competed in 23 different sports across all three NCAA divisions, including 262 Division I nominees, 131 from Division II and 192 from Division III. Multisport student-athletes account for 144 of the nominees. Landry is one of 77 softball players nominated.
Next, conferences will select up to two nominees from the pool of school nominees.
Then, the Woman of the Year selection committee, made up of representatives from the NCAA membership, will choose the Top 30 honorees — 10 from each division.
The selection committee will determine the top three honorees in each division from the Top 30 and announce the nine finalists in September.
From those nine finalists, the NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics then will choose the 2019 NCAA Woman of the Year.
The Top 30 honorees will be celebrated, and the 2019 NCAA Woman of the Year will be named at the annual award ceremony Oct. 20 in Indianapolis.

Morgan City High School held its all-sports awards ceremony in early May. Below are honorees in baseball, softball, swimming and tennis.

Marijuana is having a moment. Experts recently dubbed cannabis the fastest-growing industry in the U.S. Legal weed generated $10.4 billion in the United States in 2018, and the number of “plant-touching” jobs is expected to pass 500,000 by 2022, according to New Frontier Data, a cannabis market research and data analysis firm.
Investors have taken note, pumping $10 billion into North American cannabis businesses last year — a good sign for budding entrepreneurs hoping to cash in on the green rush.
But be warned, the cannabis industry is not for the faint of heart. Everything is harder — from opening a bank account to finding office space to hiring qualified employees — says Shane Schmitt, general manager of Wy’East Oregon Gardens, a cannabis cultivation and processing facility in Portland, Oregon.
“It’s more difficult than starting a business in any other area,” says Schmitt, 43, a seasoned entrepreneur who previously worked in finance and construction. “There’s not a playbook for an industry that people still think should be illegal.”
To succeed, you need more than a solid business plan and ace team (though those are crucial, too). You need to be truly passionate about cannabis, and not in the “I like to smoke weed” kind of way.
“I have a different definition of passionate now. Passionate to me is ‘What are you willing to take pain for?’” Schmitt says. “There’s been a lot of pain.”
Doing your research from the get-go can help you stave off some of that pain. Groups like the National Cannabis Industry Association can help you connect with people working in the space, including in crucial areas like legal support, consulting and insurance. And cannabis conferences — yes, those are a thing — can help you network with other “ganjapreneurs.”
These lessons from industry vets can also help you anticipate potential challenges.
DO WHAT YOU KNOW
You don’t want to jump into a new venture with no relevant experience. The cannabis industry is no exception.
“People often want to run a dispensary or set up a cultivation center and I ask, “Well, have you ever done retail? Are you a farmer? Are you a botanist?” says Morgan Fox, a spokesperson for the NCIA.
Instead, do what you know — whether that’s accounting, public relations or plumbing — and put a cannabis spin on it.
“The thing about cannabis is you can apply it to pretty much anything,” says Zac Smith, 38, founder of Traveling Hands Massage, a San Diego-based mobile massage company that uses oils infused with THC and CBD.
While Smith had nearly two decades of experience as a massage therapist, he had very little experience with making cannabis oils.
“I was making the oil myself at home. It was messy and I realized there was no way I could keep it uniform,” Smith says. So he found a guy with years of experience extracting THC and making oils to handle that aspect.
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS
The legal cannabis industry is heavily regulated, but those regulations often don’t cover every possible business application. That means business owners like Ivan and Anne Wood have to take extra precautions to make sure they’re in compliance.
The Woods run Mangia Ghanja , a cannabis-infused catering company in San Diego. Under recreational use rules, they can cater private events but they can’t charge customers for cannabis-infused food unless the client provides them with the cannabis, the Woods say.
“If we decided to have an event and infuse the food and charge an entry fee of $1, then we are breaking the law,” Ivan says.
There aren’t specific cannabis rules for the culinary industry in California, Anne says, which makes it difficult to find legal help to decipher regulations. “It’s so new that we’re still blazing that trail to figure out how to make it work.”
BEWARE THE GREEN TAX
“If you’re touching the plant, everything costs twice as much,” says Schmitt of Wy’East Oregon Gardens. In reality, though, the markup can be more than double.
A regulatory license with the city of Portland, for example, is $3,500 per year for a cannabis business. That’s in addition to state licensing fees, which can be as high $5,750 per year. A traditional business might pay a few hundred dollars a year.
The so-called green tax applies to actual taxes, too. Plant-touching cannabis businesses can’t deduct any business expenses on their taxes, so they pay the full effective tax rate.
EMBRACE THE COMMUNITY
Cannabis entrepreneurs have to jump through a lot of hoops and they face a lot of uncertainty. But that has created a strong community that fledgling businesses owners can tap for advice.
“Talk to other successful cannabis business to find out what they’ve done to get where they are,” says Anne Wood. “There are plenty of people who will put their arms around you and share their experience.”
This column was provided to The Associated Press by the personal finance website NerdWallet.
RELATED LINKS:
—NerdWallet: How to buy marijuana stocks http://bit.ly/how-to-invest-marijuana-stocks
—National Cannabis Industry Association https://thecannabisindustry.org