Page 4A
By GARY STEWART
Editor of the Herald
As an athlete, he was average at best. As a fan
and supporter of athletics and the community he
is a ....Champion.
Carl Champion, longtime friend of the athletes
of the Kings Mountain area and one of Kings
Mountain's most generous citizens, will be in-
ducted into the Kings Mountain Sports Hall of
Fame Monday night, April 14 at Kings Mountain
High School.
He will share the spotlight with former KMHS
football coach Bill Bates, former KMHS and
UMass basketball star Carl Smith, and former
KMHS and Appalachian State football and
wrestling standout Chuck Gordon.
Roman Gabriel, former All-American quarter-
back at NC State University and former NFL
Most Valuable Player with the Los Angeles Rams,
will be the guest speaker. Dinner gets under way
at 6:30 p.m. in the KMHS cafeteria and the induc-
tion ceremony will follow in B.N. Barnes
Auditorium.
Champion, who calls himself a "sportsaholic,"
has loved sports from the time he can remember
but admits he was never good at them. He played
baseball at Bethware High School and with the
Kings Mountain American Legion Juniors until
he joined the U.S. Army at the age of 16, and he
played some slow-pitch softball, mostly for teams
he sponsored, in the sixties and seventies. He is
an avid golfer.
His best shot at making it big in sports was in
auto racing. He was quite successful on area dirt
tracks in the late sixties but had to quit that sport
because it interfered with his landscaping and
contracting business.
But, although he never reaped much success as
a player, Champion says his life has been one
long ball game. He has traveled all over the US.
with his softball teams, some of which won na-
tional championships, and through his travels has
become close friends with some of the top names
in professional sports, including Mickey Mantle,
Barry Switzer, Whitey Ford, Clete Boyer, Tony
Cloninger, Bobby Richardson, and many others.
He frequently attends professional baseball, foot-
ball and basketball games and has been a fixture
at the Orange Bowl football game for 37 years.
But except for his family, his greatest love has
always been the people in his hometown. He is
an avid follower of the Kings Mountain
Mountaineers, has sponsored numerous teams
ranging from little league baseball and football to
adult softball, and has been most generous to nu-
merous fund-raising projects ranging from pro-
moting softball and golf tournaments for young-
sters facing life-threatening medical problems to
raising money for Shriners Hospitals.
It is not uncommon for Champion to lease a
fleet of buses to send KMHS fans to out-of-town
playoff games or to landscape, re-seed or help
build a playing facility, or foot the bill for a youth
team to go to an out-of-state bowl game.
Modestly, Champion says he is only trying to
return some of the blessings that have come his
way. But most people who know Champion agree
that even he doesn't know how much he has
helped others.
"I have just been fortunate," he says, "and I
thank the Good Lord that I have had the opportu-
nity to be around sports, because I love it. I guess
my greatest enjoyment is trying to help some-
body.
"I always loved sports. I never was a great
player but I always loved it. Where sports were, I
was. Any spare time, when I wasn't working, I
spent it taking the family all over the country to
sports events. My boys and my daughter, Ashley,
together we've seen football, basketball and base-
ball to its greatest."
In fact, Champion jokes, when he played he
saw a lot of sports...from the bench.
Champion, son of the late Lyman and Gertrude
Ledford Champion of the Oak Grove
Community, said he caught "a little bit" at
Bethware High in the 1950s under Coach Jeff
Wells. "But mostly I sat on the bench."
He also gets a big laugh out of talking about his
Carl Champion, right, and New York Yankee connections. Left to right, Clete Boyer, former Yankee manager
THE KINGS MOUNTAIN HERALD
April 3, 1997
Carl Champion, average athlete but #1 as a fan,
to be inducted into Kings Mountain Hall of Fame
i
oe
Carl Champion likes to joke about his athletic abilities, but he is a good golfer
and was invited to compete in Mickey Mantle's 1988 Riviera Fall Golf Classic.
legion baseball d&¥s di0the 81d “City “Stadiin,
where he played two years for Fred Withers and
Don Parker. He recalled one game in particular.
"Coach Parker let me go in a game one night,"
he recalled. "Keith Layton was pitching and
Johnny McGinnis was playing second base. He
sent me to centerfield. Keith threw a couple of
strikes and then this guy hit the ball. He really
cracked it. I turned around and went up that
bank at the graveyard. I was really going after
that ball, but Johnny McGinnis caught it about 20
feet behind second base. Coach Parker called me
back in and told me to sit on the bench with him.
That's about the way I played sports. But I loved
it”
Actually, Champion might have come to be a
pretty good ballplayer. He must have had some
talent in him because all his children - Chris,
Kevin, Ashley and Justin - were outstanding ath-
letes at KMHS and Justin is a redshirt freshman
football player at NC State. But Carl dropped out
of school at the age of 16 to join the Army. He
spent three years in the service, including 30
months in Germany. He completed his high
school education in the service and when he re-
turned home received his diploma at Bethware.
He moved to Florida where he ran a landscap-
ing company for T.A. Altman from 1958-66, then
came back home to open his own business. He
had always had an interest in auto racing and he
talked his uncle, Howard Champion, John Grant
and some others into building him a race car.
Buck Showalter, Frank Howard and Tony Cloninger.
drt add oo
“That Was in the spring of 1967," he recalled. “Tt
was a 1954 race car. We took it to Shelby
Speedway, backed it off the trailer and just scald-
ed everybody and won the race. That was about
the same time that Freddy Smith was starting out.
I won several races from there on until I quit."
His racing career lasted five years and he was a
regular at tracks in Shelby, Gaffney,
Rutherfordton, Columbia, Spartanburg and
Charlotte. But he was forced to give up racing be-
cause of his landscaping business.
"My insurance company approached me and
said that they would not write my insurance, lia-
bility or workman's comp, if I kept racing,” he re-
called. "I could either race or be in the contracting
business. | had to make a living so I got out of
racing. I guess I loved racing about as good as
anybody, but I couldn't race and run my busi-
ness."
During that same period of time, Champion
sponsored’ a number of little league baseball
teams. Slow-pitch softball began to experience a
boom in this area and he sponsored numerous
teams in area church and industrial leagues.
He also organized a traveling team which in-
cluded area players such as Dewitt Guyton, Jim
Guyton and Gene Tignor. It was in a tournament
at Grover in 1971 when he met Art Shoemaker of
Belmont, who was coaching the Groves Thread
team.
At the end of that season, Shoemaker recalled,
Groves dropped its softball program and he
A AE hc or 0 SAR,
Carl Champion, right, and his best
friend, Art Shoemaker, in their softball
playing days
needed a sponsor because he felt like his team
had the talent to win state and national champi-
onships. He said he remembered the enthusiasm
of "that Champion man" down at Grover and he
called Carl to see if he would be interested in
sponsoring the team. Champion jumped at the
opportunity, and not only did a national champi-
onship softball team evolve from that agreement,
but also a lasting friendship between Champion
and Shoemaker. :
"Art's my best friend," Champion says. "There's
nothing I couldn't call him and get him to do, and
he knows it's the same way with me. We've trav-
eled together and had a lot of good times togeth-
er. The main thing is he's just as big a sportsaholic
as I am. Therefore, we make a good team."
Even though they became best friends and Carl
was putting up the money to take the team all
over the U.S. to play softball, Champion said
Shoemaker didn't take that into consideration
when making out his lineup.
"I was on the roster as a player," Champion
laughed, "and we were at this big tournament
and I wanted to play. I kept aggravating him
about putting me in, and I told him I was the one
putting all the money up and I wanted to play.
He just looked at me and said, 'you go sit on the
bench, this team's here to win.' So I didn't even
get to play on my own ball team. That goes to
show you I wasn't too good of a ballplayer.”
Shoemaker would probably agree that
Champion didn't need to be in the lineup in a na-
tional tournament. But he says an athlete never
had a greater friend than Carl Champion.
"Friend to the athlete would be fitting to de-
scribe Carl, who is a true Kings Mountain sports
legend," says Shoemaker. "He was average as a
participant but a giant as a fan, promoter, spon-
sor, organizer and contributor to all Kings:
Mountain sporting events. No task is too large or |
small for him to undertake. He has made Kings |
Mountain a far greater community because of his
major contributions. No man has ever inherited a
name that is more fitting than his - Champion."
Get your Hall of Fame tickets
Tickets for the April 14 Kings Mountain
Sports Hall of Fame are $10 each and include a
barbecue meal catered by Town and Country at
6:30 in the KMHS cafeteria, and the induction
ceremony that follows in B.N. Barnes
Auditorium. Tickets are available at McGinnis
Department Store, Carolina State Bank, and the
Kings Mountain Herald.
Carl Champion, left, was a close friend to the late
New York Yankee great, Mickey Mantle.
TST RE EES
to
RG
RT