CYO Tournament born from early football classic

    Throughout most of the 1940s, the city’s Catholic Youth Organization staged a post-season football game matching the best local Catholic high school against a national prep power. The game became popular but was too expensive to continue.
    So the CYO devised a basketball tournament to be played among the city’s four Catholic Prep League schools, which for years dominated their public school counterparts. It adopted the same format the Sugar Bowl used for its holiday classic. Tulane head basketball coach Cliff Wells granted the CYO use of the Green Wave’s gym for the first tournament.
    This week the CYO Tournament, now sponsored by the Allstate Sugar Bowl, will conduct its 58th games. The semifinals and finals will be played at Holy Cross Dec. 2-3.
    Basketball back then was hardly the fast-paced game of motion offenses and defensive presses and traps. But once the football season came to an end, roundball was a popular spectator sport when the Catholic schools played.
    The first tournament, played Jan. 11-12, 1951, matched favorite St. Aloysius against Holy Cross, and Jesuit against Redemptorist. Three of the head coaches – Ken Tarzetti of Jesuit, Lou Brownson of Holy Cross and Joe Galliano of Redemptorist – were football coaches first and basketball coaches second.
    St. Aloysius was the exception. Its mentor was the soon-to-become legendary Johnny Altobello, who would coach two schools to five of the CYO Tournament’s six titles.
    Pat Dorian, 77, was a sophomore on Holy Cross’ team in 1951 and recalls the first tournament.
    “The crowd (at Tulane) was good,” Dorian recalled. “There were a couple of thousand people there. And all schools were well represented.”
    Dorian’s coach, Brownson, a former Jesuit assistant who began a wrestling program when he arrived as Holy Cross coach in 1942, used basketball to keep his football players who did not wrestle in shape. His Tigers were stocked with the best of the 1950 state runner-up grid talent, including Vince Gonzalez, Dalton Truax, Clarence Zimmerman, Charley French and Lou Deutschmann.
    “We called them the wrecking crew,” Dorian said of the Tigers.
    They also had a true basketball player, 6-4 Chester Doll, who went on to a Hall of Fame career at Loyola University.
    Jesuit had its share of standouts as well, including Charlie Gallman, Ralph Morse, Owen Brennan, Don Dresz, Jimmy Thomas, Milt Retif and Charlie Keller. Redemptorist countered with a few of its own – Mickey Figaro, Pat Powers, Billy Piglia and baseball standout “Dookie” Dauphin.
    But none of the three was as “loaded” as Altobello’s Crusaders. The roster read like a Who’s Who of prep basketball: Bobby Delpit, Dickie Brennan, Dick Treuting, Eddie Bravo, John Murret, Crit Lorio and Altobello used all 14 boys on his roster in each of the two tournament games.
    “We had never beaten St. Aloysius in three years,” Dorian said. And the Tigers didn’t get an opportunity to break that string as Jesuit won the tournament opener, 48-45. And St. Aloysius had no trouble outpointing Redemptorist, 38-23.
    St. Aloysius then defeated Jesuit, 41-33, for the first title as Delpit won the Archbishop Joseph F. Rummel Trophy winner over teammate Brennan. Holy Cross edged Redemptorist, 41-40, in overtime.