Leroy Chollet

Leroy Patrick Chollet (March 5, 1925 – June 10, 1998) was an American professional basketball player who led Loyola University New Orleans to its first national championship. Chollet and his brothers attended Holy Cross School in New Orleans and excelled in sports. After a year in the United States Navy, Chollet enrolled at Loyola and led the Loyola Wolf Pack to the NAIA men's basketball championship in 1945. Louisiana schools were segregated at the time. When Chollet's African American heritage was revealed, he moved to New York and played three seasons for Canisius College. In New York, he passed as white; Canisius would later claim Chollet to be the school's first African American basketball player.

Chollet played for several professional teams, including the Syracuse Nationals. During the inaugural season of the National Basketball Association (NBA), he became a role player behind established veterans, and the team made it to the 1950 NBA Finals. An ankle injury limited Chollet's second year in the NBA. The Elmira Colonels, an American Basketball League team, signed Chollet for his third and final season. He retired from professional basketball, married Barbara Knaus, and moved to her hometown, Lakewood, Ohio. They had three children: Lawrence, Melanie, and David. In Lakewood, Chollet worked on the construction of St. Edward High School and became a teacher and varsity head coach for the school. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame at Holy Cross School, Loyola, and Canisius.

Early life and high school
Leroy Chollet was born to Olga and Alfred Chollet on March 5, 1925. His paternal great-grandmother was black. By the standards of the time, this meant Leroy Chollet and his family were subject to racial segregation laws in the South. The family moved from New Roads to New Orleans, where they passed as white. Leroy, his older brother Al, and his younger brother Hillary grew up in Mid-City New Orleans. All three brothers attended Holy Cross School, which refused admission to black students. The brothers excelled at sports, and Leroy led the basketball team to consecutive state titles in 1942 and 1943.

College career


Chollet served eleven months in the U.S. Navy before being discharged and moving on to college. He attended Loyola University in New Orleans from 1944 to 1945 as a student athlete, during a season that played out against the backdrop of World War II. Loyola alumni followed the team from overseas, writing battlefield letters back to the current players, and the school held Mass in memory of former students who were killed in action. The team faced traditional Dixie Conference opponents and armed forces teams from across the Southern United States.

During his freshman year, Chollet led the Loyola Wolf Pack to Louisiana's first national basketball championship. After a slow start, he became the team's leading scorer. In the low-scoring semifinals of the 1945 NAIA basketball tournament, Loyola fell behind 30–21 before Chollet and team captain John Casteix led the Wolf Pack on a late-game scoring run; they beat Southern Illinois by a single basket. In their final game, Loyola defeated Pepperdine University, with Chollet scoring a game-high 18 points.

His younger brother, Hillary Chollet, had become a high school football star, recruited by rival colleges Louisiana State University (LSU) and Tulane. After Hillary chose Tulane, the family's genealogy came under increased scrutiny. Louisiana colleges were segregated, and neither Tulane nor Loyola accepted black students at the time. Chollet's Wolf Pack teammates wanted him to stay at Loyola but could not influence the unfolding events. Amidst public rumors of their African American ancestry, the Chollet parents endured harassment, the family was ostracized socially, and both brothers were pushed out of New Orleans' white universities. Hillary went out of state to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Leroy left Loyola and joined the United States Coast Guard. In 1946, he transferred to Canisius College, a private Jesuit college in Buffalo, New York. The rest of the family followed them to Upstate New York. Al, the eldest Chollet brother, described the experience as "being run out of town".

Chollet played three seasons for Canisius during an era of post-war growth for Western New York sports. Canisius sold out the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium for the first time, and the school played games in Madison Square Garden to audiences of over 17,000 fans. While Chollet was on the team, Louisiana State University traveled to New York twice and lost to Canisius both times. Canisius's 55–45 win over Baylor was the first televised basketball game in Western New York. Chollet became the school's first player to total 1,000 points. In 1949, Chollet scored 14 points to push the school record to 1,116 total points in the final game of his senior season.

In New York, the Chollet family again passed as white. Louisiana newspapers did not openly publish their ancestry, and the family was not a part of the local black community. Canisius later claimed Leroy Chollet as their first African American basketball player. Chollet was inducted into the Canisius Hall of Fame in 1964, and the Loyola Athletic Hall of Fame in 1993.

Professional career


Chollet signed with the Syracuse Nationals for the NBA's 1949–50 inaugural season, after the Basketball Association of America (BAA) and National Basketball League (NBL) merged. In the NBA's early days, the most successful and popular franchises were the smaller Midwest teams that had originated in the NBL. Syracuse was one of the league's smallest markets. The NBA was ostensibly a white league at the beginning, with Wataru Misaka, an American of Japanese descent, the only openly non-white player.

In the NBA, Chollet was a reserve guard tasked with facilitating. No longer a primary scoring option, his role was to set up plays and distribute the ball to the teams' veteran players. The Nationals were led by future Basketball Hall of Famer Dolph Schayes, all-star Billy Gabor, and player-coach Al "The Digger" Cervi. Syracuse made it to the first NBA Finals in 1950 but fell to the Minneapolis Lakers in six games.

During his first season with the Nationals, Chollet feuded with Al Cervi over playing time. Chollet told Cervi that he would make a better coach during an argument. When Cervi responded by making Chollet coach for a game, the rookie benched his own coach. According to teammate Alex Hannum, "Chollet did not send Cervi in until the last 30 seconds or so&mdash;about the usual time Cervi sent in Leroy."

"'One game [Cervi] got so fed up with me he said, 'You coach the team,' He had this habit of naming the starting lineup in the huddle before a game. He'd say 'Schayes, Hannum ... and Cervi,' then run on the court so nobody could say anything. So I did the same thing. 'Schayes, Hannum ... and Chollet.' We won that game, too.'"

Chollet began his second pro season as player-coach of the Utica Pros, an American Basketball League team that farmed players to larger NBA teams including the Nationals and the New York Knicks. Chollet became a top scorer in the ABL; he was recalled by Syracuse mid-season, but barely played after an early ankle injury. His third and final season of professional basketball was with another ABL team, the Elmira Colonels. During the 1951–1952 season, he announced that he was retiring from professional basketball to seek a stable coaching position.

Later life
Chollet married Barbara Knaus and moved to her hometown, Lakewood, Ohio, after his professional basketball career. They had three children: Lawrence, Melanie, and David. Upon learning of a new Catholic school being built in Lakewood, St. Edward High School, Chollet got a construction job there. After construction was completed, St. Edwards hired him as a teacher and coach. Chollet was the varsity head coach from 1956 to 1960 and retired from teaching in 1985. He was an administrator for community sports programs at the Lakewood Recreation Department from 1960 to 1980 and tended bar at Kluck's, a local landmark. Chollet died in 1998 and was buried at Milan Cemetery.

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ABL
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College
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