Ray Roy: Between 1954 to 1955, our beloved Istrouma High School had gotten beaten there by Baton Rouge High to go to the state championships. So we went out . . . Alvin did, he went out to the coaches, Coach Brown and them we knew real well, and offered that we would go set up a weight program for them. We set it up out there and then in the summertime, they all came to . . .
Petra Hendry: To the gym?
Roy: . . . to the gym. They brought them in a bus. And in that group was Billy Cannon, who became a Heisman award winner. And the LSU . . . Some of the other LSU players started coming when Billy went out there. And that was the time when Paul Dietzel was coach and Paul came to the gym and started getting his LSU players to come and . . .
Hendry: So LSU didn’t have its own weight room then, so . . . ?
Roy: No. No, they didn’t. That was . . . Nobody in colleges were lifting weights then. Nobody in high school was lifting weights. Nobody in pro football or pro basketball was lifting weights. We started it all, right there, starting with the Istrouma High football team. They won eight out of eleven state championships in a row. I mean, they lost it a couple of times. They lost in the finals one time. But it was just a dynasty that they built out there and it all started with the . . . So all the other kids started coming in there. There we had the summers were full and it just attracted other things.
-- Ray Roy, interviewed by Petra Hendry, 2005