First Holy Cross alumni to play in the NBA.
Leroy led the Tiger basketball team to back-to-back state titles in 1942 & 1943 garnering every accolade a basketball could garner in his career. He burst on the scene as a sophomore alongside his older brother Al in leading the Tigers to a Prep Championship in 1941 with a 16-4 record. The next 2 seasons the Tigers were unstoppable. Leroy would go on to lead the New Orleans Prep league in scoring as a junior and a senior as the Tigers went a combined 32-1 and captured back-to-back AA State Championships.
The 1942 season was particularly memorable as all 3 Chollet brothers (Al, Leroy, Hillary) were part of a 17-0 perfect season and the first state championship of any kind in Holy Cross athletics. Officials and newspaper scribes around the state lauded the Tigers team as the best prep basketball team they’d had ever seen in state history. Leroy was named to the All-State and All-Prep teams in ’42 & ’43.
But his athletic exploits were not limited to the hardwood.
Leroy was also a star on the track team where he won a prep championship with a high jump of five feet, 10 inches. He played outfield his junior year on the Holy Cross baseball team that won the city championship.
Upon graduation from high school, Leroy spent 11 months in the Navy but was discharged due to undisclosed physical disabilities. While in the Navy he led a basketball team from an air station in Colorado in scoring.
He arrived at Loyola (NO) in the fall of 1944 to play basketball for Jack Orsley. Orsley was quoted before Chollet’s first game by Loyola’s newspaper The Maroon as saying
“He will possibly develop into one of the finest basketball players Loyola has ever had.” Years later freshman teammate Jack Atchley from Jesuit HS remembered no doubt that. “In that era, Leroy Chollet was as good as anybody – if not the best.”
Chollet played one glorious season for Loyola leading them in scoring on the way to the school's only Division I NAIA National Championship in Kansas City. Chollet poured in a team's best 62 points in the 4-game tournament that culminated with the Wolfpack’s 49-35 victory over Pepperdine in the championship game. He was named an All-American and 1st team All-Tournament. Chollet also led the team in scoring 326 points in the regular season – 48 more than the next highest.
Despite only playing one year of basketball he was inducted into the Loyola Athletic Hall of Fame on Nov. 20, 1993.
Loyola stated at the time that Chollet transferred to another Jesuit college – Canisius because of academic difficulties. But there was a bigger reason - Chollet was one-eighth black.
In 1945 his younger brother Hilary was the most coveted prep football recruit in the state and a three-sport star at Holy Cross and the object of an intense recruiting battle between LSU and Tulane. After enrolling at the 11th hour at Tulane to prepare for a 10-game schedule which included powerhouses Notre Dame, Georgia Tech, Mississippi State and ….LSU. But in July of 1945, someone uncovered the Chollet secret, and word spread like wildfire throughout segregated New Orleans.
Hilary was forced out of Tulane and wound up moving to New York and enrolled at Cornell where he became an All-American on the gridiron. Sensing the tension he would have to endure Leroy followed suit and moved to Buffalo, NY, and enrolled at Canisius.
Dubbed the “Bayou Beauty”, Chollet played 3 seasons (1946-49) for the Griffs where he averaged 13.3 points per game. He became the first player in school history to reach the famed 1,000-career point milestone.
He played in 84 games and scored 1,116 career points leading the team in scoring all three years. He was the sixth member of the men’s basketball program to be voted in the Sports Hall of Fame in 1964.
"He was a great player to coach," said his former coach, Joe Niland. "He came out every day to play, and he played as hard as he could. He was a great team player." Niland noted that in those days, Canisius was rated as high as sixth-best in the nation and played some of the country's top-ranked teams.
Chollet made the most of two meetings with his hometown state LSU Tigers. On Dec. 22, 1946, the undefeated Tigers played in Buffalo and were stunned 59-50 by Canisius. Chollet led all scorers with 21 points. It was LSU’s first loss of that season.
But Chollet wasn’t done tormenting his home-state team. The two teams met again the next year on Dec. 14, 1947. Chollet was forced out of the game that day with a twisted ankle when his foot slipped through the newly installed basketball floor. Chollet had only 3 points on a field goal and a free throw at the time of his injury, but he returned and added 17 points in the last 20 minutes of the game lifting the Griffs to a 52-44 win.
Those were the only two meetings ever in basketball for the two schools.
After graduating from Canisius, Leroy signed with the Syracuse Nationals of the NBA playing in 63 games over two seasons. In their first season in the NBA, the Nationals went to the NBA Finals after beating the Philadelphia Warriors and New York Knicks but lost to the Minneapolis Lakers in six games.
After a couple of years with the Nationals of the NBA, he played two more seasons in the ABL.
Chollet moved to Lakewood, Ohio, and took a job at St. Edwards as a teacher and coach. He married Barbara Knauss and they had two sons (Dave & Laurence B) and a daughter (Melanie). Both his sons graduated from Princeton and both lettered in sports at Princeton.
Leroy was born March 5, 1925, in New Orleans and died from ALS on June 10, 1998.
From SI Vault -- Written by Basketball Hall of Famer Alex Hannum who was a rookie with Chollet on the 1949 Syracuse Nationals…Al Cervi was player-coach. 8 years older than Chollet.
Maybe the toughest guy I ever saw in the game was Al Cervi, the little player-coach of mine at Syracuse. Cervi came off the streets of Buffalo and never went to college. He was controversial and did not have the respect of all his players, but he was called "The Digger" and that's what he was. I saw Al back down only once. It was my first year in Syracuse, when a tough rookie guard named Leroy Chollet, in from Buffalo like Cervi, joined the team. Cervi did not use Chollet much, and Chollet did not agree with this appraisal of his talents. He did not agree with much of anything Al did.
Near the end of the season, we clinched the division title on the road. Before the next game, Cervi and Chollet got into one of their regular arguments. Among other things, Leroy told Al he would make a better coach. "All right," Cervi said. "Tonight's game, you're the coach."
Cervi would always end every pre-game speech by announcing the lineup. "All right," he'd say, "we'll start Peterson at the center, Ratkovicz, and Schayes, Gabor...." Then a pause, as if he was mulling his fifth choice over, followed by: "and Cervi." He would snap his name off quickly, then lead us onto the floor.
When Chollet took over that night, he imitated Cervi perfectly, naming the lineup (mostly his buddies, not the regulars) and then finishing up: "and Chollet." Cervi was boiling inside, but I've got to give it to him, he didn't go back on his word. We won the game, too, and as a final insult, Chollet did not send Cervi in until the last 30 seconds or so—about the usual time Cervi sent in Leroy.
Afterward, Leroy got to thinking about his accomplishments of the evening. He stormed back to the hotel and up to Al's room, where he told him point-blank he was going to beat him up and throw him out the window. Cervi stared back at Chollet, tensed for a moment but at last moved away as some of us came between them. Al knew that if he lost, Leroy was going to toss him out the window.
Ramon Vargas – Author of the Book – Fight, Grin, & Squarely Play the Game wrote –
“There is no telling how far Leroy Chollet could have taken Loyola, if not all of New Orleans, in his soph, junior or senior seasons. But New Orleans didn’t wait to find out, because Leroy Chollet’s family was part black – and regrettably, shamefully, maddeningly, in this city, in those days that was unacceptable.”
CAREER:
1941-43 Holy Cross – New Orleans, LA (High School)
1944-45 Loyola University-New Orleans (College)
1946-49 – Canisius College (College)
1949-50 – Syracuse Nationals (NBA)
1950-51 – Syracuse Nationals (NBA)
1950-51 – Utica Pros (ABL)
1951-52 – Elmira Colonels (ABL)
1955-56 – St. Edwards HS – Lakewood, Ohio (High School) Assistant Coach
1956-60 – St. Edwards HS – Lakewood, Ohio (High School) Head Coach
