Cholet U21

Antoine Rigaudeau's number 4 hangs retired at La Meilleraie, set aside for a player who came up through Cholet's academy before a career that reached the Basketball Hall of Fame. Between them they sum up what the academy has been built to do since the senior club, Cholet Basket, was founded on 18 June 1975: turn out players who leave, and keep winning while they're still there. Nando de Colo, Killian Hayes and Kévin Séraphin all passed through the same ranks.

The Espoirs side has done the winning in volume. By the close of the 2025–2026 season it had claimed the French youth championship nine times, stretching back to 1987–1988, and added a seventh Trophée du Futur in the same season the league title arrived. The senior team has its own list — a Pro A title in 2010, French Cups in 1998 and 1999, a Leaders Cup in 2008 — but it is the junior side that has kept the trophy count climbing almost every year of the last decade.

Both play out of La Meilleraie, a ground built in 77 days and opened in September 1987, holding 5,191 people in red and white.

The pipeline behind all of it started life as Académie Gautier, the name under which Rigaudeau and Bilba first came through the doors. It now operates as La Pitch Académie.