Nelson’s presence fuels magical basketball times at Foxcroft, UMaine
Editor’s note: Several sports personalities with Penquis-area ties have been named members of the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2016, among them the late Ed Guiski of Dexter, former Penquis Valley of Milo player and coach Tony Hamlin, and former Foxcroft Academy stars Kevin Nelson and Dean Smith. The Observer will profile each of the honorees during the next few weeks.
DOVER-FOXCROFT — Kevin Nelson arrived at Dover Grammar School for his first day as an eighth-grader a bit intimidated.
The lanky youngster had attended classes in his native Monson, but with school consolidation the rage of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dover-Foxcroft, Monson, Sebec and Charleston had combined to form SAD 68 — and Monson middle-schoolers began taking the 25-mile bus ride to school in Dover-Foxcroft beginning in the fall of 1970.
“I thought I was going to the big city,” recalled Nelson, now 59 and living in Falmouth. “I’ll never forget the first day of going to school in Dover. I remember stepping off the bus with all the other Monson kids and my knees were shaking. But one thing led to another, and then along came basketball season.”
Photo courtesy of Foxcroft Academy
MAINE BASKETBALL HALL OF FAME INDUCTEE — Kevin Nelson, a 1975 graduate of Foxcroft Academy, is among the members of the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 20156 The 6-foot-8 Nelson led the Ponies to the 1975 Class B state championship, pictured, for the only basketball Gold Ball in school history, and he followed his high school career by starring at the University of Maine. Nelson and the other Maine Basketball Hall of Fame inductees will be enshrined on Aug. 21 at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor.
Once basketball season arrived, it was Nelson who did the intimidating.
Dover won the grammar-school league championship that year, setting the stage for a memorable high school career capped off when as a 6-foot-8-inch senior Nelson led Foxcroft Academy to the 1975 Class B state championship — the only gold ball ever won by the school in that sport.
Then came four years at the University of Maine where he led the Black Bears in rebounding for two years and also ranked among its top scorers.
Nelson will be recognized for his contributions at both levels when he is inducted into the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame during an Aug. 21 ceremony at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor.
“It’s certainly well deserved,” said Skip Hanson, Nelson’s high school coach. “He was a delight to coach.”
The road to a championship
Nelson immediately became a local basketball sensation after joining the Dover ‘A’ squad coached by Gary Larson.
“I had heard stories about this kid, I think he was 6-5 at the time,” said Hanson. “I remember going down to three or four of the games to watch him, and I remember telling (Foxcroft assistant coaches) Dave Clement and Dennis Kiah that by the time he’s a sophomore or a junior he’s going to be really something.”
That projection proved conservative, as Nelson made an immediate impact at Foxcroft.
“I’ll never forget it,” said Hanson. “The first practice his freshman year we had a pickup scrimmage just to get things started, and after I saw him play I remember saying to Dennis and Dave, ‘He’s never coming off the court again unless he’s in foul trouble’.”
Foxcroft fell to Schenck of East Millinocket in both the 1972 Eastern Maine Class B quarterfinals and the 1973 semifinals, but the next year offered considerable promise with a solid senior class joined by a talented junior contingent featuring the big man from Monson.
The 1974 season evolved into a battle of wills between Foxcroft and an Orono team that included center Tom Philbrick and current Boston Red Sox third-base coach Brian Butterfield, a future teammate of Nelson at the University of Maine.
Orono won their first meeting 64-63, and the rematch became one of the more memorable regular-season games in Foxcroft history.
A jam-packed crowd turned FA’s gymnasium into a sauna for that January 1974 contest, and both teams responded with a tournament-like performance. For his part, Nelson overcame a poke in the eye to help the Ponies earn a 58-56 victory.
“I swear I never saw a larger crowd at a game, even my senior year,” he said. “I can’t believe Roland Zwicker (the academy’s longtime superintendent of buildings and grounds) let people stand under the baskets. The place was mobbed.”
That set up an inevitable third clash at the Bangor Auditorium, where Orono escaped with the 64-63 victory and the Eastern Maine title.
In their three meetings that winter, Orono outscored Foxcroft 174-173.
“Those were all great games,” said Nelson, a Bangor Daily News All-Maine first-team selection after that season.
A dream realized
Foxcroft’s 1974-75 basketball season arrived with great anticipation as Nelson was back to front a veteran squad.
“I think going into my senior season we knew we would be a good team but we didn’t know how good we would be because you can’t lose a Kevin Saunders, a Junior Bradbury or an Eric Annis to graduation and it not make a difference,” said Nelson.
Hanson settled on a roster with nine seniors in Nelson, Jeff Dunn, Dick Hatt, David Ingraham, Tim King, Scott Mountford, Jeff Brown, Roger Hewitt and Mark Joyce and juniors Kenny Burtchell and Peter Snow.
“With the people Skip picked it just clicked,” said Nelson. “We were very underrated defensively, we had a very good defensive team, and we also had a very high-IQ team as far as basketball.
The Ponies scored an early 81-63 victory over Orono and were rarely tested while winning all 18 regular-season games.
“I think there was a lot of pressure on us,” said Hanson. “We were the odds-on favorite to win, but all the kids on that team were quite poised and wanted to win as much as any team I’d ever coached and Kevin was definitely the leader.”
A 60-52 victory in the rematch at Orono reassured the team about its potential.
“We didn’t say it out loud,” said Nelson, “but I think at that point we began to think we could run the table in terms of the regular season.”
Foxcroft defeated Limestone in the Eastern B quarterfinals and Van Buren in the semis, leading to one more meeting with Orono for the regional crown.
“It was still close at halftime,” recalled Hanson, “I remember going into the locker room and saying to Kevin, ‘You’ve got step it up.’ We went out for the second half and he got the ball at the foul line and just thundered down the lane and laid it in — you couldn’t dunk back then.
“I don’t remember how many points he had in the third quarter but he dominated on the glass and everywhere else and we crushed them after that.”
Going for gold
That 73-49 victory over Orono advanced the 21-0 Ponies to a battle of the unbeatens for the state championship against 21-0 Medomak Valley of Waldoboro, which averaged 94 points per game in winning the Western B tourney.
“We just had to stop listening to what the prognosticators were saying about how they had just blitzed their opponents coming into this,” said Nelson.
The Ponies responded to the call of a sold-out crowd of 6,000 at the Augusta Civic Center by establishing a tenacious defensive tempo that contained the explosive Panthers.
Nelson, meanwhile, won his individual battle with 6-foot-6 Medomak center Alan Baran by scoring 28 points as Foxcroft scored a 56-53 victory.
The gold was coming home.
“We were the first team from Foxcroft to get to this point, so we just laid it out there, executed Skip’s game plan and everybody responded,” said Nelson, who was named first-team BDN All-Maine for the second straight year and finished his high school career with 1,468 points. “Look at the score, 56-53. If that wasn’t a defensive game I don’t know what is.”
Off to college
Nelson offered a unique skill set for the many college basketball programs that recruited him.
First was his height, combined with an offensive game that extended to 15 feet from the basket and the agility to dominate the lane at both ends of the court.
“He had such a good jump shot around the foul line and foul line extended that he could start to take that step toward the basket and pull up and bang it home, and he was so dominant on the boards he could go get the rebound if he did miss,” said Hanson. “He always had a good sense of where he was and where the ball was.”
Nelson’s inside play was enhanced by a tip he got from rival coach Ed Guiski of Dexter — another 2016 Maine Basketball Hall of Fame inductee — while attending a summer basketball camp.
“Ed gave me one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received, and here it was my junior year and I still had to play against him the next year,” said Nelson, “But he took me aside and said, ‘Instead of making yourself a tall big man, make yourself a wide big man.’
“Years later I thought that was pretty good of him to give me that advice because it helped me become a better player — and it came from someone who knew what he was talking about although I didn’t know what a good basketball player he was until later on.”
Nelson also was left-handed, a fairly rare commodity among Maine big men.
“It really helped him a lot because there were so few left-handers in high school,” said Hanson. “In practice you’d get used to it but you get in a game when you’re playing against somebody just twice a year, and even though you knew someone was a left-hander everyone thinks instinctively to guard the right hand.”
Nelson drew recruiting interest from as far away as Hawaii but narrowed his options to Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Boston College and Dartmouth.
“I began to wonder,” Nelson joked, “if some of the coaches that came to my house wanted to visit me in the woods of southeast Monson or if they wanted to come up here to get some of my mother’s cream jelly rolls.”
University of Maine coach Skip Chappelle enjoyed his visits to Monson, partly to see Nelson’s parents Hollis and Rose but also with the belief that this recruiting target could provide his program a mobile, poised center for the next four years.
“Kevin was a jewel,” said Chappelle. “For one thing he was different in that he was lefthanded and it was a different look for teams to deal with. He probably could have been a little meaner playing where he played inside, but that’s not to say he wasn’t tough. He was tough, he more than held his own inside.”
Nelson ultimately decided to attend Maine.
“I wanted my mom and dad and family and friends to be able to come to the games, it meant a lot to my folks,” he said. “My dad bought a used four-wheel-drive Jeep Wagoneer just to make sure they could get to the games if the weather was inclement. They were not going to miss games.”
Nelson was mentored as a freshman at Maine by legendary Black Bear forward Bob Warner.
“He was an icon if you ask me, the most explosive and powerful player I ever went up against,” said Nelson. “I learned a lot from him and tried to take those things and use them as my career moved on.”
Nelson finished his college career with 1,089 points and 754 rebounds in 93 games.
“More than any numbers I put up in college, I got a chance to learn from Skip and (assistant coach Peter (Gavett) and all my teammates, people that were some of the best to ever play at Orono in my estimation,” Nelson said.
Memories remain
Nelson played for an Augusta-based semi-pro team, Tangerine Limousine, after he graduated from UMaine as well as in several men’s leagues — including for the Dover-Foxcroft-based Village Outfitters in the Tri-County League.
He worked for the Maine Department of Environmental Protection for more than three decades until he retired, and today he‘s in business related to the family tree farm along with older brother Shawn — a vocation that includes the production and sale of wood-based cremation urns.
But decades later, the chance to reminisce about his basketball career — particularly at Foxcroft Academy — remains a source of great joy for this Piscataquis County sports legend.
“It’s something you don’t fully appreciate until years pass,” said Nelson. “But I think the word pride comes into play, you’re proud of what you did. You think of the friends you made as teammates. I thought we had a very special chemistry as kids that started with Skip and went down through the coaches to the players and managers, Jimmy Herring, Keith Chadbourne and Joe Dean.
“It was a really special time.”
Photo courtesy of Foxcroft Academy
1975 STATE CHAMPS — Kevin Nelson, center pictured with his head coach Skip Hanson and teammate Jeff Dunn after the 1975 regional final, helped the Ponies capture that season’s Class B Gold Ball to finish his high school career. Nelson’s play on the court for both Foxcroft and the University of Maine earned him enshrinement in this year’s class of the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame.
Photo courtesy of Foxcroft Academy
QUITE THE PRESENCE IN THE PAINT — 1975 Foxcroft Academy graduate Kevin Nelson is among the members of the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2016. The 6-foot-8 Nelson, who grew up in Monson and today lives in Falmouth, helped the Ponies win the Class B state championship as a senior before playing four years of Div. I basketball at the University of Maine where he scored over 1,000 points and grabbed over 750 rebounds in 93 games for the Black Bears.