By Tracy Gupton

When Columbia High School Athletics Director and Head Football Coach Earnest Pena informed a gathering of West Columbia Rotarians recently that Jonathan Champagne would be among a quartet of new additions to the Roughnecks Athletics Hall of Honor in 2025, the majority opinion was not why is the former Columbia High quarterback and catcher being inducted but rather why has it taken so long?

Champagne graduated from Columbia High School in 1979 and has been the definition of what his football coach told this writer many years ago in reference to who the Roughnecks Hall of Honor should include. Texas High School Football Coaches Hall of Fame member Jack Hays, who himself was inducted into the Hall of Honor at Columbia High School in 2008, said that what a CHS graduate gives back to the school and his or her community after graduation should play a large role in whether that man or woman is deserving of inclusion in the Roughnecks Hall of Honor. Well, Jonathan Clayborne Champagne checks all the boxes for worthiness in evaluating his many accomplishments over the decades.

He will be joined by Teddy DiBlasi and former Columbia High School coaches Calvin Phillips and Kim Welsch Blank when the Roughnecks Athletics Hall of Honor Class of 2025 is ceremoniously inducted at halftime of the Roughnecks’ October 17th varsity football game against their biggest rivals, the Sweeny Bulldogs, at Griggs Field in West Columbia. Coach Pena can expect a large turnout for this year’s edition of “The Battle of the Bernard,” when his Roughnecks will clash in a district contest with the Bulldogs from the other side of the San Bernard River.

Jonathan Champagne was a unanimous All District and All County selection in baseball his junior and senior seasons with the Roughnecks in 1978 and 1979, and was second team All District at quarterback his 1978 senior year. “I was very fortunate with all the coaches and teammates I had in football and baseball,” Jonathan said. “I have always been proud to be a Roughneck!”

Jonathan’s 21 years as a school board member culminated with the Wild Peach resident taking great pride in being associated with the leadership team responsible for the many recent aesthetic changes and improvements that are still ongoing at Columbia High School. He was president of the local school board in recent years. Jonathan did not seek re-election in this year’s May school board contest and today reflects on the many years he served as a CBISD trustee with pride and remains thankful to the voters for giving him the opportunity.

Selected Most Athletic Boy by his classmates for the 1978-79 school year at Columbia High School, Jonathan Champagne was also voted Best Offensive Player by his football teammates and coaches his senior year. He was the starting quarterback for the Roughnecks under head coach Jack Hays and the starting catcher for Coach Jim Batson’s Roughnecks varsity baseball team his junior and senior seasons wearing the maroon and white. He was a student council member all four years in high school and was also a standout tennis player his freshman and sophomore years at CHS.

Among the highlights of his high school football career was playing against NFL Hall of Famer Eric Dickerson in a late 1970s game in Sealy. Jonathan played linebacker his junior year when he and other fellow Roughneck defenders had their work cut out for them trying to contain the future SMU Mustang All American. Dickerson is a legend at Sealy High School who parlayed a pro career toting the pigskin for the Los Angeles Rams, Indianapolis Colts, Los Angeles Raiders and Atlanta Falcons into a berth in the hallowed Hall of Fame of the National Football League.

Champagne also checks off batting against Nolan Ryan and Roger Clemens, two of the State of Texas’s greatest pitchers of all time, among his sports career highlights. While playing baseball at Alvin Junior College, Champagne relished his opportunity to catch “The Ryan Express,” Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan of Alvin, when the then Houston Astros’ fireballer worked out with his home town’s junior college baseball team. Champagne said he hit a long fly ball while batting against Ryan in practice, leading Nolan to allegedly tell Jonathan, “Don’t do that again!”

And it was a pinch hit at bat for the Lamar Cardinals in Austin that Champagne probably had Roger “The Rocket” Clemens mumbling those same words, “Don’t do that again!” Jonathan said his Cardinals were trailing the Texas Longhorns 3-0 late in a college game in Austin when the former Roughneck standout was sent up to the plate to pinch hit against Clemens. Jonathan said he smashed a two-run homer off of Clemens but his Cardinals came up one-run short in that game, dropping a 3-2 decision to the University of Texas. Jonathan said that he and Clemens opposed each other prior to that incident when Roger was pitching for San Jacinto College and Jonathan was an Alvin Junior College catcher.

After two years of playing baseball for Alvin Junior College, Jonathan Champagne became the starting catcher for Lamar University of Beaumont. He was named All-Southland Conference catcher his senior year at Lamar University.

The son of John Champagne and the late Sarah Smith, Jonathan and his wife Anita Harris Champagne married in 1984 after having started dating right out of high school. Anita was a cheerleader at Columbia High School while Jonathan was a standout athlete in football, tennis and baseball. Jonathan grew up in Lake Jackson and began attending school in the Columbia-Brazoria School District when he was a sixth grade student at Charlie Brown Intermediate School in West Columbia. He played Little League baseball in Lake Jackson and liked to rub it in with his classmates in junior high and high school that his Lake Jackson Little League All Stars defeated the Brazoria All Stars when Jonathan was a kid.

Jonathan said he was the number one boys singles player at West Columbia Junior High School and enjoyed playing tennis for Coach Charlie Brand at Columbia High. He said he did not play baseball in high school until his junior year when he made the decision to focus on baseball over tennis. That is a decision made as a teenager that Jonathan has not regretted. He has picture books chock full of photos and newspaper clippings from his high school and college sports careers.

The former school board president currently serves as director of operations for the btel phone company in Brazoria. He and Anita are the parents of daughters Anna and Jordan and the grandparents of Brentley. Former Roughnecks athletics director Randy Lynch, who is also a former head football coach and head baseball coach at Columbia High School, is Jonathan’s brother-in-law. Jonathan and Randy, who was head baseball coach at the time, were instrumental in creating the annual baseball alumni game at Renfro Field in the Spring of 1997. The former Roughnecks catcher participated in the Columbia High alumni game the first 15 years of the event, which pits the current varsity baseball team against a collection of former players at the beginning of each high school baseball season.

As far as his involvement on the Columbia-Brazoria school board, Champagne said, “I enjoyed every day of it.” And it is the many improvements made to the campus and the football and baseball fields in West Columbia that he is proudest of. “What the kids have today compared to what we had” when Jonathan roamed the halls and football and baseball fields at Columbia High School in the mid to late 1970s, are important changes he is glad to have had a part in making over the years he served as a school board trustee.

“We stretched every penny as far as we could,” Champagne said. “I’m very proud of that.”

Lamar University catcher Jonathan Champagne pictured tagging out University of Texas runner Mike Trent