This is an article to recognize the 50th anniversary of the Country Way All-Stars and their record-breaking 45-4 1973 Maine State Semi-Pro basketball championship season. Basketball has been essential for Mainers suffering through long, cold, and dark winters for decades. Maine basketball buffs are blessed with opportunities to see high-quality basketball in person and on a wealth of digital sources.

Fifty-four years ago, the options were not so plentiful, especially in rural areas of western Maine like the Norway-Paris region known as Oxford Hills. Before Scott Graffam arrived to build a boys’ basketball program that perennially qualifies for post-season tournaments, Oxford Hills High School basketball teams endured a 24-year tournament drought between 1964 and 1988, making long winters even harder to bear for local sports fans.

Meanwhile, local restaurant owner Henry Paradis had a vision – that a semi-pro basketball team could lift the spirits of Norway-Paris sports fans by “bringing the local area into the sports spotlight” – and it worked, maybe even beyond his expectations. In 1970, Henry self-funded the Country Way basketball team, named after the restaurant in south Paris, operated by Henry and his wife Barbara. His team played home games at Oxford Hills High School, donating net gate receipts to the school’s Athletic Fund.

Bill Haynes grew up in Waterford, a small farming community in the Oxford Hills school district, and made the varsity squad as a freshman on the last basketball team from OH to make the post-season tournament for 24 years, later starring for the Vikings, scoring over 20 points per game as team captain his senior year.

Paul Bessey played high school basketball for coach Ray Miclon at Buckfield High, setting a school scoring record with 1,863 career points, winning the Messina Award, and leading the Bucks to the Western Maine final against Casco in 1968. Bessey remembers, “We should have beaten Casco. My cousin Leslie Douglass was the missing link. He was a year ahead of me. We would have won with him on the team. We lost Ray Miclon in 2020. He was a great coach who really made the game fun.”

 

At the University of Maine at Orono (UMO), Haynes played varsity basketball for coaches Gib Philbrick and Skip Chappelle and formed a close bond with teammates renowned for their achievements and contributions to Maine basketball, including co-captain Paul Bessey of Buckfield, co-captain and UMO
rebound record holder Nick Susi of Pittsfield, and high-scoring forward John Sterling of Oakland. This team faced national collegiate talent in the Yankee Conference, including a rising star at UMass named Julius Erving.

The Country Way’ers struck gold in their inaugural season of 1970-71, winning the Lewiston Recreational League with just one loss in 15 games, relying on a lineup of local talent, including several players from Oxford Hills.

Don Guilford Sr was the coach, while I.J. Pinkham, Fred Lovejoy, Chris Weston, Bradley Payne, Ken Whitney, Don Guilford Jr., and Bob Strong were the key players. Paul Bessey and Nick Susi were co-captains for two consecutive years at Maine, getting Skip Chappelle off to a great start in 71-72, his first season as head coach, achieving Maine’s first winning season in sweven years with the most wins (15) by a Maine team in 11 seasons and the third highest winning percentage (.600) of Chappelle’s storied career.

The Black Bears defeated every team in the Yankee Conference that year, which included Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and this year’s repeat NCAA national champions, Connecticut. After the win over URI in Orono, Chappelle remarked, “An NIT team like Rhode Island isn’t supposed to get beaten by farmers from Maine.”

In Spring 1972, professional basketball in Maine was limited to privately funded semi-pro teams who motored from town to town through the winter months and entered tournaments across Maine and New England to test their mettle. Haynes returned home and joined the Country Way team which already included Lewiston High and Husson College great Dick Giroux, Bridgton Academy coach Ken Whitney who played at UConn, Viking coach Fred Lovejoy, as well as several players with Maine college experience at UMF (I.J. Pinkham, Brad Payne, and Steve Williams), and USM (Ray Bishop and Don Guilford, Jr.). Haynes invited former UMO teammates Nick Susi and Craig Randall to join the local hoopers.

The best-known semi-pro team in Maine in the early 1970s was the Griffin Club, sponsored by legendary South Portland bar owner Eddie Griffin. Griffin is also known for luring Boston Celtics players to Portland in the off-season with “promises of good basketball and all the lobster they could eat, all the beer they wanted to drink, and a place to sleep above the bar afterward.”

Combined with members of the Griffin Club team, Country Way played their first exhibition game with traveling members of the Boston Celtics at Oxford Hills gym. With NBA Hall of Famer and Celtics MVP Dave Cowens playing for the Country Way/Griffin team, they won that game 105-103, thrilling local fans and setting up friendly grudge matches to be renewed the following Spring.

By the Fall of 1972, two more of Bill’s UMO teammates, Paul Bessey and John Sterling, had joined the team. They became known as the Country Way All-Stars for the 72-73 season, widely recognized as possibly the best semi-pro team ever assembled in the state of Maine, featuring the top five scorers from the 70-71 Black Bears and “bench strength that could start for any other semi-pro team.”

The “Big Red Machine” rolled up a record of 45 wins and 4 losses, defeated their rivals the Griffin Club for the Maine State Semi-Pro Championship, and won all 6 of the semi-pro tournaments they entered in Maine and New Hampshire. Maine Telegram Sports Editor Bob Moorehead reported, “Eddie Griffin was incensed that his pride and joys couldn’t win in South Paris, where the restauranteurs looked like the University of Maine at Orono alumni club.”

Bob Walker of the Advertiser Democrat in Norway reported, “Most basketball veterans agree that Henry Paradis has fielded the most awesome display of talent ever put together in Maine,” and “If there’s a better basketball team in the state of Maine than (this) Country Way juggernaut it’s a well-kept secret.”
The team may have also set some mileage records in setting their basketball records. Six of the players live in Bangor and they made every game.

Nick Susi travels from Boston every week, noted Paradis. “We traveled in rain and snow, and we played everyone that wanted to play us.” Coach Don Guilford, easily the coach of the year in Maine basketball, added, “It was just our year to put it all together.”

 

The 1973 Country Way All Stars was also known as the “Big Red Machine.” UMO student newspaper “The Maine Campus” announced the “basketball game of the year” in May 1973. Legendary sixth man Don Nelson of the Celtics had assembled his “strongest team ever to make a post-season tour” to play a three-game series against the Country Way All Stars, starting in Old Town.

The Big Red Machine would be joined by UMO senior and Boston Celtics draftee Peter Gavett for the Celtics series, in a matchup that would serve as a prelude for Gavett’s tryout with the Celtics later that Fall. Nelson said, “We will bring players that will get the job done, but we’ve been told of the talent on
the Country Way so it should be a great game.” Paradis added, “We’ve been told that this year we don’t get any help from any other NBA player.”

The series between Country Way and the Celtics was a big hit with fans and the games were tightly contested. Boston got by Country Way in overtime at Old Town and by close margins at Mt. Blue and Oxford Hills. The fourth game added in Waldoboro was all Boston, but not before Country Way put the pressure on for more than three periods led by Paul Bessey’s 36 points. Bob Moorehead captured the surreal atmosphere of the game before a packed gym in South Paris: You take a kid from Waterford, another from Buckfield, one or two from Downeast, and a couple from Orono, put them up against a bunch of guys from an NBA team who have been playing together all season, and it takes the local boys a little while to get over their self-consciousness.

Even the refs and the crowd reacted in hushed tones at Oxford Hills gym as they watched men who a couple of weeks ago battled the New York Knicks on television play the hoop crazies from downstreet. Arguably the best semi-pro team ever assembled in Maine accomplished something special in 1973.

Based in South Paris, a town that wasn’t even on the basketball map because their local high school was 9 years into that 24-year tournament shortfall, the 1973 Country Way All-Stars lifted the spirits of an entire region. The talented players of Country Way are fondly remembered and recognized in New England basketball circles.

Nick Susi was the leading vote-getter (35%) in a 2020 92.9 FM “The Ticket” (Bangor) Drive Time Poll of All-Time best Big Men in UMaine history, was the career leading rebounder at Maine, and remains in the Top 3 All-Time in average rebounds at 10.8 RPG. Paul Bessey accumulated 121 career victories as a Maine high school coach, leading Orono to a state championship in 1981, and was inducted into the New England Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006. Bill Haynes continued to anchor local town league teams in the Oxford Hills region, reaching the finals 70% of the time and winning 6 championships in 13 seasons. Dick Giroux, Ray Bishop, and I.J. Pinkham are in the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame.

1973 may have been the peak of the statewide semi-pro basketball era in Maine. The competitiveness and quality of play that year led League leaders to consider doubling the number of teams in the league the following season. Suddenly the Arab Oil Embargo in the Summer of ’73 caused the 73-74 season to be cancelled because the cost of energy soared. It was no longer cost-effective for small businesses to pay for teams to travel all over New England and adult basketball became more localized.

Before every NBA bench warmer could make a million-dollar salary, Don Nelson was happy to bring NBA legends like Tom Sanders, Dave Cowens, Paul Silas, Paul Westphal, and other NBA players to make a post-season tour through Maine high schools, thrilling local fans by bringing real NBA talent to play Maine’s most dominant semi-pro team for $1,500 per game. Bob Moorehead reminded us that this kind of thing doesn’t happen to kids from tiny western Maine towns like Waterford or Buckfield. Paul Bessey recalled, “We were the ‘hoop crazies from downstreet.’ We just loved playing together and we wanted to see how far we could take it.” Henry Paradis achieved his vision to shine the sports spotlight on the Norway-Paris area, and then some.

Alan Chute grew up in South Paris and followed the 1973 Country Way team closely as a 13-year-old obsessed with basketball. His interest in the sport began watching his cousin Bill Haynes star for Oxford Hills in the mid-sixties. He has researched newspaper articles on microfilm over the past three years to document the story he experienced as a fan that has been forgotten over time. Readers who would like to share any memories or stories from the Country Way team are encouraged to E-Mail the author at [email protected].