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Scholastic Roundup: A lion turns into a raptor

October 24, 2021 Andy Furman

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Bishop Loughlin’s Justin Champagnie is in the National Basketball Association – and playing for the Toronto Raptors after not being selected in the June NBA draft.

As a sophomore last season at the University of Pittsburgh, he was the lone major-conference player in Division I men’s basketball to average a double-double, scoring 18 points and pulling down 11.1 rebounds-per-game. The 6-foot-6 forward finished tied for seventh nationally in rebounds-per-game and tied for eighth in double-doubles with 18.

In wins in December against Northwestern and Gardner-Webb, Champagnie had consecutive games with at least 20 points and 20 rebounds, making him just one of three players in the past 25 years to accomplish the feat (with Oklahoma’s Blake Griffin and Purdue’s Caleb Swanigan being the others).

Those numbers pushed Champagnie to become Pitt’s first all-American in a decade, as well as the first Panther to earn first-team all-ACC honors. He finished in a tie for second in ACC player of the year voting, finishing behind Georgia Tech’s Moses Wright.

As a senior at Loughlin, he averaged 19.8 points-per-game and was named First Team, Class AA All-State.

Champagnie signed a two-way contract which will enable him to shuffle between Toronto in the NBA and its G-League affiliate over the course of the season. During the 2020-21 season, the two-way contracts were worth about $450,000. His twin brother – Julian – plays college basketball for St. John’s University. His father, Ranford, played soccer for St. John’s in the mid-1990s and was a member of the 1996 national championship team.

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Richard Collins, a St. Francis College alum reports the Brother Urban Golf Outing at the North Hills Country Club in Manhasset, Long Island on October 7th was a huge success.

As for Terrier basketball Collins notes there are six returnees and five NCAA portal transfers on the 2021-22 roster, plus three recruited freshmen. “On paper,” he said, “this group has size, talent and some significant credentials.”

The Terriers open their season Thursday, November 18th at Penn State and then travel to St. John’s on the 23rd.

The Brooklyn soccer showdown between LIU and St. Francis is set for Sunday, November 7th at the Sharks’ Long Island campus in Greenvale, New York.

And tournament play for the Terriers’ water polo team starts November 19th – currently they sport a 10-4 won-loss record – 3-1 in their conference.

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The Lady Lions cross country team at Bishop Loughlin brought home four medals at the Manhattan College High School Invitational Cross-Country Meet at Van Courtlandt Park.

That team consisted of freshmen Samiyah Samuels, Safiya Bell, Lillian McConnell and Penelope Clairisier; sophomore Adrianna Gonzales and junior Charlize Fisher Charles.

Hank Lam, the Sheepshead Bay High grad who played college basketball at Staten Island CC and later Pace University, after reading the Rico Petrocelli story said: “Rico was the best athlete to ever come out of Sheepshead Bay HS. He was also a first-team All-City basketball player in 1961 in the Journal-American alongside Billy Cunningham from Erasmus.

“There was never a doubt Rico was going to be a Major League baseball player,” Lam remembered.

In fact, Lam and some buddies from the P.S. 206 schoolyard traveled to Boston when Petrocelli was called-up to the Red Sox from Double-A.
“Stewie Levine was also from the schoolyard,” Lam said, “and was a top track athlete at Sheepshead Bay High and he spent that weekend in Boston with me.”

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Lam notes the only ball player who could adequately guard Rico in P.S. 206 pick-basketball games was George Bruns from St. Augustine High, who lived near the schoolyard and was a regular.

Bruns was a Hall of Fame guard at Manhattan College where he played with the great Larry Lembo and was coached by the legendary Ken Norton.

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Marc Chapman, who went to P.S. 206 chimes in and says, “Rico (Petrocelli) was such a nice guy. His father would yell at him when he would play with us – not to get hurt. It was funny at the time seeing a pro baseball player getting yelled at by his dad, not to get hurt.”

Charlie Brown, a track and cross-country athlete at Sheepshead Bay — who later coached wrestling at Hunter College – is a proud P.S. 206 alum. He adds: “Some of our other graduates include Carole King, Cousin Bruce Morrow (WABC-AM 770-Radio), Joel Zweig. One of my best school-day friends was my track teammate, Joel Goldberg, who was a New York State Supreme Court Justice. Kenny and Hank Lam were also good friends.”

The mention of former Lafayette High, and later Cornell University basketball star Richie Amato moved Lenny Schlein to say: “Reading about Richie Amato brought back another old memory. I was watching a Saturday college hoops game,” he said, “on local TV (probably WPIX) and Cornell was playing. I saw Amato on TV and thought, wow, he went to Lafayette, my local school. Back then it was a thrill to see a local kid on TV.”

Andy Furman is a Fox Sports Radio national talk show host. Previously, he was a scholastic sports columnist for the Brooklyn Eagle. He may be reached at: [email protected] Twitter: @AndyFurmanFSR