The way Troy Weaver sees it, Carroll Holmes had more impact on his growing up as a teenager than any high school teachers.

Not only would Holmes take him to Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington, D.C., and back home every day, but he would coach Weaver for two hours a day on the basketball court before Weaver graduated in 1986, whereas teachers would instruct him for 45 minutes or so each day. Holmes worked at Carroll from 1979 to 2003.

On Oct. 15, Weaver and a few hundred others gathered at his alma mater to dedicate the Carroll Holmes Court and the George H. Leftwich Gymnasium. Weaver, who gave a speech honoring Holmes, is the general manager of the Detroit Pistons and considered one of the hottest executives in pro basketball.

The event was something of a who’s who of former Archbishop Carroll basketball players who proudly wore the green-and-gold, such as former Wizards coach Eddie Jordan, who led the NBA team to four straight playoff appearances. Leftwich’s former Carroll teammates Billy Barnes, who coached and taught at the school, and Tom Hoover, who had a seven-year NBA career, also attended. NBA Hall of Famer Dave Bing, who played against Leftwich and Carroll while he attended Spingarn, also came.

Nostalgia was in the air, as some old-timers recalled an era when the school was known as “John Carroll” and many students took streetcars to school.

During his speech, Leftwich told the crowd about how he fulfilled four valuable ambitions at Archbishop Carroll, a school he found through Hoover and another basketball player, Willie Wells. After bouncing around at three D.C. public high schools during his ninth grade after his family had moved, he attended Archbishop Carroll and found a purpose in his education, which led to his receiving one undergraduate and two graduate degrees, becoming a great basketball player, developing lifelong friendships, and becoming a Catholic.

Father John Mudd, a 1961 alumnus of Carroll and the school’s director of development emeritus, recalled during his introductory remarks that after Leftwich retired in 2013, after he had served as Archbishop Carroll’s athletic director for eight years, Father Mudd asked him what he planned to do.

“I’ll try to help out around the church,” Father Mudd recalled Leftwich replying.

 “That’s the kind of man George is,” Father Mudd said.

“He’s a straight arrow,” said Roger Clark, a 1974 Carroll alumnus who played basketball for Leftwich. During his first stint working at Carroll, Leftwich coached varsity basketball for four seasons, from the 1968-1969 through the 1971-1972 seasons.

An eight-foot high statue of the late “Big John” Thompson Jr., a Carroll teammate of Leftwich’s who became a Hall of Fame basketball coach at Georgetown University, overlooked the proceedings, to the left of the podium.  Somehow, Cardinal Patrick O’Boyle, who while archbishop of Washington founded Archbishop Carroll as the first integrated Catholic high school in the Washington, D.C. area in 1951, would also be proud of what he helped create.

Holy Cross Father Edward “Monk” Malloy, the former president of the University of Notre Dame, made a videotaped greeting honoring Leftwich. Father Malloy, who is Caucasian - while Leftwich is African-American - recalled how he and Leftwich were part of a “small social movement” in integrating playground basketball courts in and around Washington, D.C., that were formerly all-black or all-white.

Leftwich has previously recounted how he decided to become a Catholic because he was impressed with his teammate Malloy’s attendance at daily Mass, even when the Archbishop Carroll team played games on the road. As Leftwich embraced his new-found faith, he and his teammates won 55 games in a row against high school teams from 1958-1960, with some Washingtonian old-timers considering point guard Leftwich the best-ever player to come from the nation’s capital. Leftwich’s basketball career did not meet its potential, in the eyes of many, because he was in a serious car accident while he attended and played basketball at Villanova University.

“I thought he was the best all-around player,” from Washington, D.C., Bing told the Catholic Standard of his evaluation of Leftwich, before heading to the airport to catch a flight back to his adopted home of Detroit, where he starred for the Pistons and later served as mayor from 2009 to 2013.

While his teams were not as decorated as Leftwich’s, Holmes seemed proud of the men his former players have become. “They’re great husbands; they’re great fathers,” he said during his dedication speech. In addition to serving as basketball coach, he was a physical education teacher at Archbishop Carroll for more than 20 years.

Holmes’ teams were considered physical and well-coached, and they had to be tough, given his competition, which included games against the teams of DeMatha Hall of Fame basketball coach Morgan Wootten, whom Holmes had played for at his alma mater, DeMatha, as well as Joe Gallagher, the coach at St. John’s, and Dick Myers, the coach at Gonzaga.

“They were scrappy, physical, and competitive,” Brian Ellerbe, Carroll’s athletic director, told the Catholic Standard, when asked about Holmes’ teams. A former coach at Loyola College (now University) and the University of Michigan, Ellerbe described Holmes as having a “teddy bear” personality off the court, but the retired coach had an intense persona while coaching his players.