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Message: [QUOTE="Cheriehoop, post: 43585, member: 127"] I went to one of those parochial league schools, Rosary. In fact our school played Bishop Ludden's Green Machine team for the city/county/parochial League championship at the old War Memorial. Our center was all of 6' and a half inch tall but all those kids lived and breathed basketball. I worked with Lou Nelipowitz at the Northside CYO and BFDC Camp for a number years. He did play for Assumption and graduated about 1957. He told me he got some heat from the Polish community for playing for his neighborhood school, Assumption over Sacred Heart. Unfortunately he passed away way too young in his early 50's almost 20 years ago. As Orangeyes alluded to St John the Evangelists' had a phenomenal team around the middle 60's. They were special and I think a small extremely talented player named Downey led them. Sacred Heart, mostly of Polish descent, always had excellent teams when I was in school and always seemed to have the tallest players. St Pat's, St John the Baptists (Satalin brothers), St Anthony's, St Vincent's, Cathedral, St Lucy's, Most Holy Rosary, Evangelist, Assumption and Sacred Heart made up the Parochial League as I recall. The only team that could claim it was from the East side was St Vincents' since most of the teams were centered in the West, south and North sides. The gyms themselves could be the subject of a book. Many like the St Pat's and St John the Baptists gyms served double duty as auditoriums and gyms. At both these small gyms folding chairs would fill the stages. Some didn't even have usable gyms to play in for extended periods of time having to play/practice in rented gyms or grammar school venues. Rosary played in other venues from 1947 to almost 1960 after its gym burned down. St Vincent's gym was condemned but continued fielding good teams while having to play and practice elsewhere also. Those bandbox home gyms were filled to more than capacity every Friday. Even at our new large gym in the 1960's , you had to get there early enough with your dollar in hand to get a seat. It is was a phenomenal league where simplicity, fundamentals, fanatic school spirit and team play was the rule. The league deserves a book, it used to have a bar on Burnet for years owned by a Rosary grad(Parochial League bar whose walls were filled with parochial school memorabilia), nice time for a literary tribute. [/QUOTE]

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