![](http://www.syracusenewtimes.com/newyork/file-172-.jpg")
Champion, a standout high school player, knew all about one of the schools, Syracuse University. But he had never heard of the other one, Le Moyne College. “Wow,” Champion thought. “What’s going on?” Le Moyne was ahead 78-76 at the Carrier Dome. But Wes Johnson—an Iowa State transfer who was playing in his second game for the Orange—sank a 3-pointer with 22 seconds left to give SU a 79-78 lead. Le Moyne broke SU’s press and the Orange never got settled on defense. Le Moyne’s Chris Johnson wriggled free on the left wing and swished a 3-pointer with 8.3 seconds left to give the Dolphins an 81-79 advantage.
Wes Johnson, who would lead SU to a 30-5 record, a Sweet 16 appearance and be named the 2010 Big East Conference Player of the Year, missed a 3-pointer with three seconds left. The Dolphins sank a free throw at the end to clinch the 82-79 win. Le Moyne, the tiny Jesuit school located about six miles from the Carrier Dome, had pulled off one of the biggest upsets in college sports history.
“How is this happening right now?” Champion asked himself.
Since the highlights were plastered all over ESPN that night, Champion learned that Le Moyne is a Division II basketball team from the Northeast-10 Conference. The Dolphins’ improbable victory that night planted a seed in Champion’s head, and six months later he signed to play at Le Moyne. “Before, I didn’t really want to go Division II,” he said. “But after hearing that and seeing that, it changed the way I thought about it.”
Champion will get his own crack at the Orange when Le Moyne visits SU at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 9, at the Carrier Dome. It’ll be the sixth time in seven years that the Dolphins and SU will play an exhibition game.
The Dolphins’ unlikely win over the Orange last year was just the first step in Champion’s 550-mile journey from Logansport to Le Moyne Heights. Several other factors fell into place for Champion and Le Moyne coach Steve Evans.
Throughout his senior year at Logansport High School, Champion was looking at midmajor Division I schools and smaller schools in Florida, Missouri and Indiana. While Champion made it clear he wanted to play basketball, the schools weren’t sure what to make of him. That’s because Champion is also an outstanding baseball pitcher, and he spent the spring and summer before his junior year playing baseball instead of AAU basketball, where college prospects put themselves on the recruiting map.
Last spring, Logansport head coach Mark Victor sent e-mails to many college basketball coaches, including Evans. The e-mail described Champion’s attributes and included a YouTube video of Champion playing basketball.
Evans was interested, but he wanted to see Champion play in person. Fortunately for Evans, Champion was selected to play in an Indiana all-star game with several Division I recruits on Sunday, April 18. Unfortunately for Evans, his modest recruiting budget was shot—and it was already Thursday. So Evans hopped on a 10 p.m. train out of Syracuse on Saturday, arrived in South Bend, Ind., at 9 a.m. Sunday, grabbed a cab to the airport to rent a car, and drove about two hours to Marion, Ind., for the North/South Indiana All- Star Classic.
Evans watched Champion, liked what he saw and had dinner with Champion’s family after the game. The two sides hit it off, and Evans asked Champion to make an official recruiting visit to Le Moyne a few weeks later.
Bill Champion, Nate’s father, said a lot of schools had started to show interest in his son around that time. But what helped separate Le Moyne from the pack was the memory of the Dolphins’ upset over SU. “When you’re talking to a team that beat Syracuse, that’s something special,” said Bill Champion, who’s now in his 12th year as an assistant basketball coach at Logansport. “We were impressed by that. It was like David beating Goliath.”
Nate Champion knew after his visit to Le Moyne that he wanted to play for the Dolphins. He said everyone he met was helpful and he was confident he’d have the support system he’d need being a 10½-hour drive from home. “He’s where he should be. I believe that,” Bill Champion said. “I want him to go and play where he can be successful and have fun.”
Nate Champion, who is majoring in biology, is a 6-foot-3, 178-pound left-hander whom Evans will use at point guard, shooting guard and small forward. Champion should have an opportunity to play, because the Dolphins are reloading after losing their leading scorer and rebounder, Laurence Ekperigin, and stellar point guard Damani Corbin.
Most of Le Moyne’s other freshmen had either signed before last year’s SU game or were redshirted last season. But the Syracuse game did help Le Moyne get one other newcomer, Wagner College transfer Colin Seckal, who also lives in Indiana. “That game helped so much in that it gave us an identity to be able to recruit outside of a comfort area that we’ve been used to in the past,” Evans said. “And the fact that Nate said yes, it leads to the next kid, possibly, out in Indiana.”
In the end, Champion didn’t base his decision solely on that shocking night last November. But Le Moyne 82, Syracuse 79 didn’t hurt, either. “Honestly, I don’t know if I would have heard of Le Moyne {without that game},” Champion said. “It gets kids’ attention when you can say we’re a Division II school and we beat Syracuse.”
Tickets for the game at the Carrier Dome, 900 Irving Ave., cost $10 for adults, $6 for children, and are available by calling 443- 2121 or going to www.suathletics.com. Members of Le Moyne’s Hardwood Club will receive tickets; for more information, visit www.lemoynedolphins.com or call 445-4412.
—Matt Michael
Magic Carpets
This weekend you can shop for a genuine Tibetan handmade rug and at the same time help struggling Tibetan Buddhist monks preserve the culture and religion of their homeland, now in its sixth decade under Chinese occupation.
On Saturday, Nov. 6, and Sunday. Nov. 7, the Zen Center of Syracuse, 266 W. Seneca Turnpike, will host the ninth annual Tibetan rug sale on behalf of Jewel Heart, an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based not-for-profit organization. Jewel Heart is supported locally by acupuncturist and practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism Jennifer Waters.
Waters came to Syracuse 15 years ago to continue her studies with Sherry Chayat, the leader of Syracuse’s Zen community for nearly four decades. Under the roof of the Zen Center, located along Onondaga Creek in the old Joshua Forman home, Zen Buddhists and Tibetan Buddhists practice their distinct paths and studies side by side.
Waters will be at the Zen do on Friday, Nov. 5, to help unload the rugs, which are handmade in Katmandu, Nepal, by Tibetan refugees. She will be there all through the sale, which takes place on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
“There’s something about the carpets,” said Waters in a phone interview conducted while chaperoning her daughter trick-ortreating through the streets of Syracuse.
“Once you get one, you end up buying more. These are dedicated practitioners. It may sound sort of new-agey, but when you put them in a room, they raise the vibration of your house. Even if you don’t buy one, you should come just to see them. They make you want to spend time with them. I have to drag my 6-year-old daughter away from them.”
Unlike many Oriental rugs, these are not antiques, but newly made. Waters said that visitors to the sale can even custom design their own carpet with their preferred shapes and colors, and order them. Ujjen Tsewang, a Tibetan who, like millions of his countrymen, fled the Chinese Communist invasion in 1959, when he was just 3 months old, is bringing all 300 rugs from Ann Arbor. The largest of the rugs are 10-by-13 feet and range in price from $1,800 to $2,700, depending on the density of the weave. The smaller rugs, 2-by-3 feet, can be had for just $300. “The large rugs are made by five people, and it takes them three to four months to complete it. They can be in any color, and they last as much as 300 years,” said Tsewang, who runs Jewel Heart.
Like most Tibetan exiles, Tsewang does not know if he will ever be able to return home, but he appears committed to helping keep the Tibetan form of Buddhism and the Tibetan language and culture alive. Jewel Heart, which lists the composer and musician Philip Glass on its board of directors, supports young Tibetan Buddhist lamas studying in exile in India, as well as a variety of charitable efforts within Tibet itself. Jewel Heart raises approximately $1.5 million annually to carry on its work. It was founded in 1988 by Gelek Rimpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher who now lives in Ann Arbor.
The monks at the Loselling Monastery in southern India are the direct beneficiaries of the sale of the rugs, according to Tsewang. After accounting for costs, approximately 30 percent of the purchase price will go to provide food and lodging for the nearly 3,000 monks studying and living in Loselling.
For more information, call 423-8614.
—Ed Griffin-Nolan
20th Century Journey
Political assassinations, the civil rights movement, the Beatles and Rolling Stones, the moon shot, Woodstock—all popular culture watersheds that occurred in one exhilarating, exhausting and enduring decade, the 1960s. Almost a half-century old, the 1960s continue to entice sociologists, musicologists and historians in a way that no other decade of the last millennium has.
As part of his series on “America in the Twentieth Century,” John Robert Greene, Paul J. Schupf professor of history and humanities at Cazenovia College, is beginning to tout America in the Sixties (Syracuse University Press; 200 pages; $19.95/softcover) right here in the Salt City. Greene presides over a book signing and reading on Tuesday, Nov. 9, at 5 p.m. at the Onondaga Historical Association, 321 Montgomery St. It’s the national launch of the fifth in his 10-book series. And considering the subject matter, it’s sure to resonate with many New Times readers.
“Of all the decades of the last century, people’s opinions are the most set on the 1960s,” said Greene, 55. “Everyone who is our age finds something in the ’60s that doesn’t just resonate, but it’s all important. It’s our social building block. This was when we became thinking adults, and our memories of that moment may be different from everybody else’s.”
Greene has found that when he gives these book-by-decade talks, they are made more effective when he lists potential topics for discussion on a board, and lets the audience decide what they want him to talk about. It’s a natural format for curious, historically minded audiences like those who frequent the OHA.
“People who attend OHA events are really savvy consumers of local literature and of natural history,” Greene noted. “I’ll be talking to a great audience. And the fact that it is the national launch of the book—I wanted to have that here in Central New York—it’s my home, I was born and raised here.”
Instead of a comprehensive look at any of the decades Greene has already written about—the 1920s, 1950s and 1970s, with the 1940s and 1910s on their way, produced in the order they were contracted—he and SU Press decided to organize the chapters in each book thematically. “It is one of my fervent, firmly held beliefs that most textbooks stink,” he noted. “I’ve written a couple; they stink. I wanted to create a series that would engage readers in the history of the 20th century in a manner that was actually interesting in some way. Thematically is the best way to deal with a decade, and it’s also a good structure for teaching.”
That’s what makes a Champion a Champion: Le Moyne freshman Nate Champion came to town from Indiana after learning the Dolphins had dissected the Orangemen on their Carrier Dome home court.
So instead of writing about the years leading up the Vietnam War, Greene instead wrote about the war itself in a chapter called “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.” Rather than examining each year touched by the civil rights movement, he penned the third chapter, “We Shall Overcome” as an overview. Further, Greene noted recommended readings at the end of each chapter, extremely helpful to readers who may want to delve a little deeper into a subject matter.
Above all, however, Greene hopes readers find these books as engaging to read as they are for him to write. “I want people to enjoy my books in the bathtub and still have them be a serious piece of history,” he said. “Let’s face it, how many toads do you have to kiss before you finally find your prince? How many books do you have to read to find a really engaging book?” Next on Greene’s docket come the 1930s, clearly not as fun to write about as the 1960s, but certainly important to the 20th century.
“It’s not going to be an FDR book—we have plenty of those,” he said, referencing Franklin Roosevelt. “It’ll look at culture, both high and popular culture, what the Depression did to everything. That’s my working premise right now.”
Until that book gets finished, Greene is happy to promote the book about the decade we can’t seem to escape. “This makes a great Thanksgiving and Christmas gift,” he touted with a grin. “I encourage everyone to buy 10 copies and I’ll sign anything anybody wants. You want me to sign it ‘Bart Simpson,’ that’s fine by me.”
Tuesday’s OHA event will feature book signings from 5 to 5:30 p.m., and again from 6 to 7 p.m. In between, Greene will give remarks and selected readings. For more information, call the OHA at 428-1864. Further book signings and readings will take place in the next few months. Check the Literati section of Times Table for details.
—Molly English-Bowers
John Robert Greene: The self-described teacher-whowrites, not writer-who-teaches, will impart groovy lessons at a signing for his latest book, America in the Sixties, Tuesday at the Onondaga Historical Association.
