BANGOR, Maine — With temperatures still in the 80s and a dew point approaching 70, what better time for a Maine basketball pop quiz?
1. Which former Solon Bobcat has been recognized by his conference peers as a college coach of the year in five different decades?
2. What Mount View of Thorndike product led the University of Maine women’s basketball program to its first 20-win season and went on to play professionally in Finland and Austria?
3. Who is the only schoolboy basketball coach in Maine history to win state championships in two different states?
4. What former Bangor standout earned All-New England honors in the high school ranks before going on to captain the University of San Francisco men’s basketball team?
5. Which former Class C high school player went on to become the only player in University of Maine women’s basketball history to score more than 2,000 career points and grab more than 1,000 career rebounds?
Here’s a bonus question: What do they have in common, besides their on-court success and passion for the game?
The answers: Dick Meader, Emily Ellis, Gene Hunter, Danny Drinon and Liz Coffin, respectively. They are among those who will be inducted Sunday into the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame.
More than 600 people are expected to attend the event at the Cross Insurance Center, which will begin with a buffet meal at noon followed by the induction ceremony at 1:30 p.m.
Twenty players, seven coaches and two officials will be honored in the second class to be inducted since the hall of fame was established and based at the Cross Center in 2014. Also being recognized are seven “Legends of the Game” and the 1954 Ellsworth High School boys basketball team, which played in the New England tournament semifinals before a crowd of 13,000 at the Boston Garden.
“I think there are some, probably most all of them, in this group that could have gone with that first class,” Tony Hamlin, chairman of the hall of fame’s selection committee, said.
Players become eligible for induction 20 years after their playing days conclude. Coaches with 20 years of experience are eligible immediately, while those whose careers were less than 20 years must wait 10 years after their last coaching assignment for eligibility.
This year’s class is slightly larger than the inaugural group of 22 in 2014, in part because of the older generations of candidates who are being considered during the formative years of the hall of fame.
“We have some things to consider, like the age of some of the inductees,” Hamlin said. “But we’ll have 35 players in after this year, so we’ll probably go back to 15 next year and by five years we’ll have 75 to 80 and we’ll be off to a pretty good start.”
Meader, a Solon native who has coached at the University of Maine at Farmington since 1993 after 17 years at Thomas College in Waterville, and Hunter, the Aroostook County product who guided high school teams to state championships at Morse of Bath, South Portland and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, are among a septet of coaches being inducted who have combined for more than 3,500 career victories and 23 high school state titles.
Other coaches being inducted are Dick Barstow (Central Aroostook of Mars Hill, Presque Isle and Katahdin of Stacyville high schools), Art Dyer (Medomak Valley of Waldoboro, Westbrook, Fairfield University), Dwight Littlefield (Valley of Bingham), Bruce MacGregor (Husson University) and Roger Reed (Bangor HS, Bangor Christian).
Drinon, Ellis and Coffin will be joined as player inductees by Ray Bishop (Morse HS, So. Maine), Wayne Champeon (Greenville HS, University of Maine), Denis Clark (Winthrop HS, Springfield University), Steve Condon (Presque Isle HS, UMaine), Maureen Burchill Cooper (Deering HS, So. Maine), John Edes (Ellsworth HS, Colby College), Paul Fortin (Lewiston HS, Hardin-Simmons University), Peter Kelley (Caribou HS, Harvard), Keith Mahaney (Fort Fairfield HS, UMaine), Ed Marchetti (Morse HS, Colby), Edward “Bo” McFarland (Scarborough HS, Bowdoin College), John Norris (Bangor HS, Georgetown, UMaine), Nick Scaccia (Sanford HS, Colgate University), Marcie Lane Schulenberg (Cony of Augusta, Boston University, New Hampshire), Ted Shiro (Waterville HS, Colby), Gary Towle (Cony HS, Providence College, Assumption) and Bob Warner (Thornton Academy, UMaine).
Representing officials in 2015 Maine Basketball Hall of Fame class are Peter Webb and Jack Coyne.
Webb, Maine’s basketball commissioner for the last quarter-century, also has served on the International Association of Approved Basketball Officials executive committee for 13 years, highlighted by a term as president in 2002. He also has been an active game official for 50 years.
Coyne is regarded as one of the top referees in Maine history. A former Cheverus of Portland and University of Southern Maine player, he went on to referee for more than two decades as was on the verge of working a full schedule of major NCAA Division I games before his career was cut short by a freak accident that resulted in knee replacement.
Those being recognized as Legends of the Game are longtime official and former Maine basketball commissioner Mike DiRenzo; former official and Western Maine tournament director Bob Whytock; David Dorion of Bath, a fixture with the Morse High School and local youth basketball programs for 50 years; veteran broadcaster George Hale; Kim London, a JV coach at Katahdin of Stacyville for three decades; former Old Town coach and administrator Bernard McKenzie; and Marcia Adams, a 1975 Cony of Augusta graduate who went on to play two seasons with the All-American Redheads, a barnstorming team that has been inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.
