Former Evangeline Parish boxers inducted into hall of fame

Several former high school boxers from Evangeline Parish became the final inductees into the Louisiana High School Hall of Fame during ceremonies in Sunset June 28.
Among the 32 former boxers were Dowell Fontenot of Vidrine High School, and Donald Stephenson and Archille Vidrine, who boxed on the Sacred Heart High team. Also inducted this year was Jack Reed, Sacred Heart High boxing coach.
During the first induction last year four-time state champ Bobby Soileau, who also boxed for the Sacred Heart team was inducted. Also inducted last year were three-year champs Terrona Guillory and Larry Hollier, who both boxed at Mamou High.
High school boxing started in 1931 in Louisiana, becoming one of the state’s most popular sports. People who attended high school in the 1950s remember crowds at some of the matches in high school gyms in Mamou, Vidrine and at the Sacred Heart High gym so large they couldn’t all fit into the gym.
Vidrine, one of this year’s inductees, remembers those days when more than 20 schools would compete in a state tournament. Those two-day state tournaments were held on the LSU campus until moving to the Blackham Coliseum in Lafayette in 1950.
In his book, “Boxing, Louisiana’s Forgotten Sport,” Don Landry, one of the organizers of the Sunset induction ceremony and reunion, writes of the 1951 state championship when 250 boxers were involved in 48 bouts the first day and 61 on the second day.
Vidrine, who started practicing boxing when he was 10, lost the state championship in his weight division in 1954, won the next two state championships, then lost in his final state championship, in 1957. He was even presented with a birthday cake when he won one of the state championships on his birthday.
That was also the end for all high school boxers because in 1958, the Bishop in Lafayette ordered the Catholic schools in the diocese to refrain from boxing competition due to fears of causing injuries.
“That took away at least half the boxers” in state high school boxing, Vidrine said. “Nobody was happy,” neither the boxers or the spectators. Also in 1958, boxing ceased to be a sponsored sport by the Louisiana High School Athletic Association.
Actually, it wasn’t the end of boxing for Vidrine. He joined the U.S. Army and was stationed in Okinawa, where he was boxing champion during the two years he was there, in 1960 and 1961.
Years later, he coached his two sons, who used to have boxing matches at home. Vidrine still watches boxing matches a couple of times a month on TV.
Vidrine said he saw people at the recent induction ceremony in Sunset he hadn’t seen in 40 or 50 years. Before the Boxing Hall of Fame induction and reunion events, sponsored by the Louisiana High School Boxing Association, reunions were held in various communities around the state. One was held in Ville Platte about seven years ago.
But as the title of Landry’s book suggests, memories of what used to a very popular high school event are fading as high school boxing fades into the past.