Hall of Fame inductee Champeon’s point guard skills ‘ahead of his time’

 By Ernie Clark
BDN Staff

 BANGOR, Maine — Skip Chappelle is one of Maine’s most decorated basketball players, named an All-American at the high school, postgraduate and collegiate levels.

1954 NEWPORT GREENVILLE — Feb. 25, 1954: Wayne Champeon (3), classy little playmaking guard for Greenville, is off and running, while Newport’s Stewart Smith and an unidentified mate attempt to head him off. Champeon pitched in several key foul shots in the closing minutes to give Greenville a 56-50 win over Newport. The M school teams played in the 1954 Eastern Maine Basketball Tournament.

 But ask the former University of Maine standout and head coach about Wayne Champeon, and the air of deference for his former Black Bears’ teammate is profound.

“Wayne was ahead of his time with the way he handled the ball,” said Chappelle. “There were people coming to our games just to watch him and the way he moved with the ball, the way he flowed with the game, and how it seemed like he floated in the air.”

Champeon, the 5-foot-7 point guard whose ball-handling wizardry prompted comparisons to former Boston Celtics star Bob Cousy, was inducted Sunday into the second class of the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame during ceremonies at the Cross Insurance Center.

“This is great,” said the 79-year-old Champeon, born in Greenville and a longtime resident of Dover-Foxcroft where he and his late wife Jean raised their four children — John, Joe, Jane and Judy — while he coached basketball at Foxcroft Academy for four seasons and taught mathematics there until his retirement in 1994.

“This is just the beginning [of the 2-year-old MBHOF] but it’s a wonderful thing, and to be part of it is tremendous.”

Champeon’s induction was based not only on style of play, but on results.

As a high school senior, Champeon led Greenville to the 1954 Class M state championship, scoring 28 points for the Lakers against Wilton Academy in the title game.

He subsequently enrolled at the University of Maine, but soon left and served the U.S. Army.

When he completed his military service, he re-enrolled at UMaine in 1957 and embarked on a two-sport athletic career on the Orono campus that few have matched in the 54 years since he graduated.

After playing on the Black Bears’ freshman football and basketball teams, he went on to star at the varsity level in both sports for the next three years.

“He was the real deal,” said Chappelle. “I’d go to football games and hold my breath when they gave him the ball and he ran to the outside. I thought, we can’t lose him [for basketball].”

Champeon played halfback for coach Harold Westerman in football and quarterbacked what have been described as some of the best men’s basketball teams in UMaine history, teams coached by Brian McCall that also featured Chappelle, Don Sturgeon and Larry Schiner.

Maine went a combined 52-16 during the 1958-59, 1959-60 and 1960-61 seasons with Champeon playing point guard against a mix of Yankee Conference (New England’s state universities) and State Series (Colby-Bates-Bowdoin) opponents.

Champeon was remarkably consistent during that run, averaging between 10.43 and 10.82 points per game each season while also leading the Black Bears in assists.

“The big thing was how we were able to get out and run,” said Chappelle, a 2014 Maine Basketball Hall of Fame inductee. “Don and Larry Schiner were instrumental in getting the ball off the board and I was accused a lot of times of sneaking down the floor, but when Wayne came out on the break after they got the ball to him on the wing, he was gone. If you were ahead of him, he’d catch you. If you were behind him, he’d find you. That’s the way he operated.

“I can remember plenty of games when teams would take a shot and they’d have two or three guys drop back because they knew if Wayne got the ball in his hands he was going by them.”

Champeon went on to become the first University of Maine player and just the second athlete overall to earn All-Yankee Conference honors in both basketball and football.

“The thing I remember the most when I was at Maine was that all the players were from Maine except two,” he said. “I’m not saying anything about it other than that, that’s just the way it happened, and thank God it did for (Massachusetts native) Larry Schiner coming here.

“Brian McCall was the first coach Maine hired just as a coach. He ran the show, we listened, and it was a lot of fun.”

Champeon was named twice to the Downeast Classic all-tournament team, winning MVP honors in 1961, and was a two-time recipient of Maine Campus Magazine’s UMaine athlete of the year award.

The Bangor Daily News also recognized Champeon as the university’s 1960 athlete of the year as voted on by coaches and faculty, and in 1961 he won the Washington Watch Award as the male athlete to have contributed the most to UMaine during his career.

“Coach McCall really knew how to use Wayne,” said Chappelle. “You couldn’t press him. All we had to do was give him the ball and he’d break any pressure.

“Now if you moved Wayne ahead in time he’d be one heck of an asset today because point guards have taken over the game now, especially at the bigger levels.”

Yet despite the despite the depth of his basketball accomplishments — which previously earned him induction into the University of Maine Sports Hall of Fame and Maine Sports Hall of Fame — the humble Champeon initially was a bit reluctant as he posed with the other members of the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame’s Class of 2015.

“I’ve seen guys here that I haven’t seen since I played against them in college, Ed Marchetti, John Edes [both fellow inductees that played at Colby College], and there are probably others, he said.

“I was apprehensive about being here, but I’m not now. I’m humbled, but I’m darned glad I’m here.”