New Top Dog at RFH: Sourlis Replaces Champeau as Rumson Boys Basketball Coach

Chris Champeau and George Sourlis ran the spectrum from co-workers to friends to intense rivals over the last decade-and-a-half and now, both are returning to the place their respective coaching careers started.

Champeau resigned as the Rumson-Fair Haven boys basketball coach in late June to take the same position at the Benjamin School in Palm Beach, Fla. On Tuesday night, the Rumson-Fair Haven Board of Education approved Sourlis as Champeau’s replacement.

“The time was right for me to start a new chapter,” Champeau said. “It’s tough because I love RFH Basketball and the town as a whole. We’ll still be back here in the summers and I’d love to help George out with whatever he needs or to support the program however I can. They have the right guy taking over; George is going to do a great job. Things are changing, but I’ll be a Dawg for life.”

Sourlis ended his three-year run as the head boys basketball coach at Red Bank Regional to return to Rumson-Fair Haven as the new varsity boys basketball coach. Sourlis spent 30 years as the Rumson girls varsity basketball coach before retiring in 2016, then ended his high-school-coaching hiatus in 2022, when he accepted the job at Red Bank Regional — three miles west of Rumson-Fair Haven on Ridge Road.

“It will feel like going home, but at the same time, Red Bank also became home,” Sourlis said. ” I have mixed emotions because I really loved our kids at RBR. What they accomplished was memorable. This was one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make in my career and ultimately, it was an offer I couldn’t pass up.

“I’m just very grateful to (Red Bank athletic director) Mike Stoia for giving me an opportunity to get back into coaching. I’m forever grateful to everyone in the RBR community.”

In 30 seasons at Rumson, Sourlis led the Lady Bulldogs to 654 wins and 14 NJSIAA sectional championships. After six years away from the high-school game, Sourlis took his first boys head coaching job when he assumed the reins at Red Bank. The Bucs went 8-15 in Sourlis’s first season, then turned in one of the best two-year stretches in program history.

Over the course of the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons, Red Bank went 43-10 en route to two outright division championships. With a 21-5 record in 2023-24 and 22-5 the following year, it marked the first time since 2006-07 and 2007-08 that Red Bank Boys Basketball won 20 games in back-to-back seasons.

This past season, Sourlis became just the second coach in Shore Conference history to reach the 700-win mark and the first coach to do so while coaching both a girls team and a boys team.

“I thanked them for what they accomplished, and more importantly how we did it,” Sourlis said. “They had two of the best years in the history of the school and it was because of their dedication and commitment. They Gave themselves two of the best years of their life. When guys graduate, I tell them, ‘I’ll always be your coach and that’s what I told those guys. I’m still your coach for life.”

Big Shoes to Fill

When Chris Champeau took over the Rumson-Fair Haven boys job in 2009-10, the program was second fiddle to the more decorated girls program, run by Sourlis. By the time Sourlis stepped away in 2016, Champeau had led the Rumson boys to a Shore Conference Tournament title — an accomplishment the girls team is still chasing.

Champeau did not catch Sourlis’s sectional championship count, but he led his boys program to back-to-back Central Jersey Group II championships in 2017 and 2018 and added a third CJ II title in 2022. After elevating the boys program to meet the lofty standards of Sourlis’s girls program, it is now Sourlis who will be hoping to live up to the standards set by the Champeau Bulldogs.

“I think what he has accomplished is pretty amazing: three state sectional titles, a Shore Conference Tournament (championship),” Sourlis said of Champeau. “That program has been one of the premiere programs in the shore and in the state. I’m certainly going to try to keep that going, but what he accomplished through his tenure was truly special.”

As accomplished as Rumson-Fair Haven was under Champeau by the usual measurements — wins, championships, college players, etc. — Champeau’s impact went far beyond the measurable. He put an emphasis on the program being part of the Rumson community and vice versa. Rumson became known for dressing more varsity players than any team in the state and those extra players were encouraged to have fun while on the bench and to let three-pointers fly when they got into the game when the score was lopsided — usually in Rumson’s favor.

“We poured our lives into this program the last 16 years,” Champeau said. “A large part of my identity is the guys in the program. I’m going to weddings now. I’m seeing former players of mine have kids. I’m all about the players. The wins are great, but we’ve got to wrap our arms around the culture and the people in the program.”

Champeau’s program was an early adopter of the more modern philosophy on offensive basketball in which teams seek out three-pointers and layups. Defense, however, remained the foundation of Rumson’s success and the formula immediately paid off when the Bulldogs rode a defensive-minded, sharp-shooting team in 2010-11 to the program’s first ever Shore Conference Tournament final appearance in Champeau’s second season in charge. Four years after dropping a tight game vs. Raritan, a similar roster made it back to the SCT final and dominated Christian Brothers Academy, 50-24, for the first and only basketball Shore Conference Tournament championship at Rumson.

In 2016-17, Rumson captured its first NJSIAA sectional championship since 1973 behind a nucleus that included Sourlis’s son, Teddy. The following season, Teddy Sourlis was again a key starter in Rumson’s march to a second straight Central Jersey Group II championship.

In his final season at Rumson, Champeau guided the Bulldogs to a 20-7 record and a second straight trip to the Central Jersey Group II championship game. He now returns to Palm Beach, where he started his coaching career as an assistant under Rollie Massimino at Keiser University. Champeau — a native of Cleveland — will try to bring to the Benjamin School what he brought to Rumson in 2009 and grew over 16 years.

“I wanted to coach, and I wanted to do it the way I knew it needed to be done,” Champeau said, reflecting on his hiring in 2009. “We’re going to have local pride. It’s going to be us against the world. I had Pookie (guard Kevin Alter) when I got the job and it started from there. We made it to the SCT final in the second year and it just grew from there. Over the years, we have just had some amazing stories. It’s been an amazing platform to change lives.”

The Next Chapter

As Champeau heads south, Sourlis will attempt to put his stamp on what has been one of the state’s more unique basketball cultures. Unlike his other two head coaching jobs, Sourlis is taking over a program with a recent track record of winning in recent years.

Sourlis’s departure also adds a new layer to the Ridge Road Rivalry between Rumson and Red Bank, which took their rivalry to a new level over the past two seasons as Red Bank emerged as one of the Shore’s top teams. Last year, Red Bank beat Rumson for the first time since 2019 and swept the regular-season series from the Bulldogs after going 1-11 vs. Rumson since the start of the 2015-16 season. Rumson paid Red Bank back by defeating the Bucs in the Shore Conference Tournament quarterfinals.

With Sourlis now on the other side and Red Bank now in the market for a head coach, the two rivals are set to clash at least two more times in 2025-26 as members of the Shore Conference Class A North.

“I am not looking forward to playing them,” Sourlis said. “Our kids at Rumson will be, but it’s going to be difficult coaching against those kids because of how much they have meant to me. I met them on Monday and it was really tough. I didn’t sleep all week trying to decide what to do and then thinking about telling the players. It was a painstaking decision.”

Both teams have graduated significant players from their rosters from this past season. Red Bank is set to return one starter in rising junior Justin Valentino, one regular contributor off the bench in junior Will Galligan and another reserve forward in senior Bennett Lopez. All-Shore guards Zayier Dean and Ryan Fisher both graduated along with Ronald Richardson, Anthony Moore and Trey Moore — all of whom started at different points in 2024-25.

Rumson, meanwhile, is set to return 6-foot-9 University of Pennsylvania commit Luke Cruz to its starting five, which bids farewell to point guard David Carr and wings Riley Gill and Carson Memmott. Rising seniors Luke Lydon and Drew Cavise will be two contributors returning along with Cruz.

“They know how to win,” Sourlis said of his new team. “We have a great player in Luke Cruz. I am meeting the team later (on Wednesday) and I’ll get to know the boys over the next few months. I just want them to understand that we need them to be as good as they can be. Coaching against them, I know they have a toughness and grit about everything they do and that’s always a good foundation.”

Full Circle

With both Sourlis and Champeau returning to their coaching roots, there is a symmetry to both of their decisions to take new jobs in familiar places. For Sourlis, in particular, the move back to Rumson brings back memories of his first year as a 23-year-old head coach, when he coached his sister, Dorothy.

As he returns to Rumson, Dorothy’s two sons — rising senior Joseph Whitehouse and sophomore Teddy Whitehouse — are students at Rumson and will have a chance to play for their uncle. Joseph is also Sourlis’s god son.

“Dorothy was the reason I started coaching,” Sourlis said. “She was playing in high school, RFH needed a girls coach, I was interested in getting into coaching, so I volunteered and ended up doing it for 30 years. Now, her kids are at Rumson, so it’s pretty special.”

Champeau, meanwhile, decided to end his run at Rumson as his daughters — both of whom graduated from Princeton University — move to New York City post-graduation. When the opportunity to return to Palm Beach to coach, it felt right for Champeau.

“In a lot of ways, we both ended up back where we started,” Champeau said of he and Sourlis. “It’s funny how it works out sometimes. This was the first time I really opened my mind to new opportunities and when this one came, it was like a sign.'”

As Champeau passed the program off to Sourlis, he expects to be back during the summers at the Jersey Shore to run his summer league at Victory Park in Rumson and to be near the Fort Athletic Club at Fort Monmouth, which he helped open and remains a partner.

“RFH will always be a part of my life,” Champeau said. “The wins and losses keep you up and night when you’re in the midst of it, but when it’s all said and done, it’s about the fellas. They’re in good hands with George.”

 

Note to the reader: The original post incorrectly stated that Red Bank won 20 games in back-to-back seasons for the first time ever this past season. It was the first time since 2007-08. The post has been updated with the correct information.