Three Evangeline boxers in first Hall of Fame class

Three Evangeline Parish high school boxers during the 1950s will join 28 other boxers, three coaches and a contributor to be honored as the inaugural class of the Louisiana High School Boxing Hall of Fame in Sunset on October 20. 

They and the other hall of famers can recall a time, ending abruptly and somewhat mysteriously in 1958, when high school boxing drew larger crowds than football. So many spectators showed up for the bouts, many had to stand outside the gym and hear second-hand accounts of the fight from people who would come outside to describe the action, recalls Bobby Soileau, one of the hall of fame inductees.

Soileau, a Sacred Heart High boxer, will be among six four-time state champions to be inducted. His first state championship season came in 1950, in the 90-pound class. He won the 100-pound state tournament the next year, and won in his class in the 1952 state championship. In 1953, he reached the state tournament with 50 unbeaten matches and only two ties, but didn’t win the 115-pound state championship. Soileau won the 125-pound classification state championship in 1954, becoming the ninth four-time champion and earning the Brink Trophy. That trophy was named for Francis G. Brink, known as the father of high school boxing after bringing the sport to Louisiana high schools and universities in 1931. The trophy was awarded to the top state tournament boxer each year. 

One of the three-time state champions who will be inducted into the hall of fame this year is Terrona Guillory, who boxed at Mamou High. Guillory won the 100-pound class in 1954, the 105-pound class in 1955 and the 115-pound class in 1956.

The other three-time state champion from Evangeline Parish, who also boxed at Mamou High, is Larry Hollier. He won in the 100-pound class in 1952, the year Mamou won the team championship. He won his second state title in 1953, in the 120-pound category, lost in the 135-pound class to former teammate Kern Ardoin of Vidrine in 1954, and went on to win his third state title in 1955, by beating state champion Ardoin in the 145-pound class.

Vidrine and Mamou high schools, as well as Sacred Heart High, would send boxers to the wildly popular three-day state boxing tournament. Author Don Landry, in his book, “Boximg, Louisiana’s Forgotten Sport,” published in 2011, describes the 1952 state tournament, when 250 boxers showed up. forty-eight bouts were held the first day and 61 bouts were held the next day, Landry writes. 

Hollier remembers when some 3,000 spectators would arrive at Vidrine and Mamou gyms for bouts every Friday from November to March in the mid-1950s. The spectators quickly used up all the seating, then all the standing room in the gyms. A couple hundred spectators coming after that would have to stand outside.

Of all the sports played at Mamou, Vidrine and Sacred Heart in the mid-1950s, “boxing brought in the crowds,” Hollier said.

Hollier joined the Army, and when he visited home, one of the highlights was watching a boxing match. But when he was at a bout in March of 1958, he was surprised when he heard an announcement that there would be no more high school boxing the next year.

“No one really knows,” why the sport suddenly died, Hollier said, although some have speculated that when the Catholic bishop took the diocese’s Catholic high schools out of boxing, half the boxers were lost.

“Even former boxers or fans cannot come up with one single answer,” Landry writes in his book.

During World War II, all athletics were suspended, and some high schools, and all four-year colleges in Louisiana except LSU, didn’t re-establish boxing after the war, according to Landry’s book. Also, fewer boxing coaches were available to keep the sport as active as it was before the war.

At least 30 two-time state champs in their weight classifications are expected to be inducted into the Louisiana High School Boxing Hall of Fame next year.

Those two-time champs will include the following boxers from Evangeline Parish:

•The late Dowell Fontenot, Vidrine High, 1940 and 1941.

•The late Donald Stephenson, Sacred Heart High, 1947 and 1949.

•Burke Guillory, Vidrine High, 1953 and 1954.

•George Buller, Sacred Heart High, 1957 and 1958.

•Archille Vidrine, Sacred Heart High, 1954 and 1957.

The first induction ceremony and reunion will take place at the Sunset Events Center, on Napoloeon Avenue in Sunset, on Sunday, October 20, starting at 2 p.m., with a reception and tour of exhibits. The induction ceremony begins at 3 p.m., and a post-ceremony reception begins at 4:30 p.m. Admission is $15 except for the inductees.