`A’ football, hockey official for Brewer; petition fails> Enrollment remains only guide for principals’ decision

It’s final now: Brewer’s football and ice hockey teams will move to the Class A ranks this fall.

The Maine Principals’ Association’s Interscholastic Executive Committee ruled recently that the Witches would abide its Oct. 1 headcount and move up from Class B.

Brewer High Principal Jerry Goss had petitioned the Executive Committee earlier this winter to consider factors other than the student-body numbers when determining classification.

The Executive Committee ruled against Brewer’s petition to allow the Classification Committee to consider factors beyond clear-cut numbers, MPA Executive Director Dick Tyler.

All classification appeals will be sent to the Executive Committee, as is done now, but the Executive Committee agreed to examine Goss’ idea as it may pertain to other future cases.

“It won’t change anything for us but I think it will make the process more effective in the future,” Goss said.

Brewer’s football team, which gained its third postseason berth since 1970 this season and finished with a 6-4 record in the LTC’s Class B, joins Eastern Maine’s Pine Tree Conference for the first time since 1990.

Brunswick, a former Pine Tree Conference member as recently as 1992, re-joins the league this fall. The PTC will feature nine teams and an all-conference schedule.

The move also will place the Witches hockey squad in its first season of Class A as will teams from Mount Ararat of Topsham and Lawrence of Fairfield. Brunswick will make its return to Class A.

The high school’s Oct. 1, 1996, student population total of 880 broke through the Classification Committee’s football and ice hockey Class A floor of 850 students.

The committee re-evaluated the numbers this winter and voted not to change the numbers, which forced Brewer to make its appeal to the executive committee.

The comings and goings leaves LTC Class B with just seven teams and facing the problem of how to fill the nine-game schedule preferrable to football coaches.

“The MPA’s concern is scheduling and they consider a reasonable schedule eight games,” said MPA Football Committee member and Bangor High athletic director Steve Vanidestine. “But football likes nine games.”

One possible remedy would be for the LTC B-C schools to make up the Class B shortage with inter-class play with the provision that each school has a fairly decent chance of winning a particular B-C contest, Vanidestine said.

But the MPA’s Football Committee isn’t scheduled to meet until August and some of the LTC concerns could be settled by the Classification Committee next week.

Brewer grad Jennifer Kunz put up three scoring finishes at Saturday’s New England Prep School Championships in Exeter, N.H., earlier this month.

Kunz, a Phillips Exeter Academy postgrad, finished 1.75 seconds out of first place in the 100-yard backstroke in a fourth-place time of 1:03.00.

She finished ninth in the 50 free with a time of 25.6 seconds as the winner put down a New England record time of 23.67 seconds. Kunz also recorded a 55.4 second split on her leg of the 400-free relay.

Presque Isle collected its second schoolgirl basketball state Class A championship Saturday night with a 77-49 victory against Portland at the Bangor Auditorium.

Four days later, the Wildcats became the first Maine girls team to earn a ranking in the New England Sports Network Top 10.

The squad’s 22-0 record lifted it to a ninth-place seeding by the Boston-based sports cable network.

State Class B boys champ Greely of Cumberland Center also cracked the rankings to come in at 10th place.

Greely earned the state title in a 62-49 win against Eastern Maine champ Bucksport March 1.

North Yarmouth Academy’s 3-1 win against Waterville not only netted the Panthers the Class A state ice hockey championship, but also a No. 7 spot in the NESN’s top 10.

NYA’s state-game win knocked Waterville, which had been ranked for the past four weeks, out of the final March 6 standings.