BANGOR – It first became apparent something was wrong when Woodland players Kaitlyn Leeman and Ashley Marble each took a tumble near the free-throw line on the home end of the court during Thursday afternoon’s Eastern Maine Class D girls basketball semifinal.

The Bangor Auditorium roof was acting up again – leaking, this time, on the wood floor.

With 4:28 left in the second quarter and Woodland leading 30-11, the drips of water on the floor forced play to be suspended for about 25 minutes.

“At first it was coming down at a quite rapid clip, so as soon as you pulled the towel away, another drop would come,” said tournament floor manager Paul Soucy. “It finally slowed down enough for us to resume play and wipe it off occasionally.”

The game eventually started and the Dragons went on to win, but the leak and suspension of play certainly highlights the ongoing discussion about what to do with the old Auditorium.

Fans took the break in stride. They visited the concession stand, quacked and waddled when the Woodland band played the chicken dance song and chatted about the game (one Van Buren fan was overheard suggesting that the game just be restarted).

In the locker room, the Woodland team sang along with a song by the rock group AC/DC. Point guard Leeman demonstrated the slip she took on the water (“I thought she hit her head,” said a clearly relieved Arnie Clark, who is the Woodland coach).

Television crews filmed the white towels sopping up water on the floor and drips falling from the ceiling. Maine PBS switched to Western Maine tournament action.

Meanwhile, Soucy, Maine Principals’ Association representatives and tourney director Bill Fletcher discussed what to do.

“The guy from the roofing company came in and went up to check the roof,” said Fletcher. “The roof itself is dry and there are no real breaks, so we really don’t know where the leak is coming from.”

Soucy and Fletcher said auditorium workers would install plastic sheeting and drainage piping Thursday night underneath the roof to funnel the leak away to drainage buckets.

“The problem is that it’s water that’s gotten in and into the insulation over the winter and sat up there frozen for awhile,” said Bass Park director Mike Dyer. “As luck would have it, it’s thawing out.”

Dyer said the “V” where the Auditorium’s roof halves slope down into at the center has been sealed and black-topped over several times, but there must be a channel from the gradual shifting of the building.

Some people joked that the leaks would actually help prove the point of Bangor city officials, who are pushing a bill that would raise money for a new building.

“I don’t like to illustrate it this way,” said Dyer. “I suppose the cynics would say we couldn’t have scripted it any better, but there was definitely no sabotage involved.”

One version of the bill would allow Bangor to impose a 1 percent sales tax for five years to pay for a replacement for the Auditorium. City officials have scheduled its closure for 2004. Opponents of the tax say it would unfairly benefit urban areas.

The public can express its opinion about the local-option sales tax by visiting a table in the Auditorium concession area, filling out a card, and dropping it in a box. The blue cards ask the public to check off whether it supports the tax, or would rather the Auditorium should be closed and not replaced.

“Tomorrow morning we’ll have the roofers on the roof and we’ll also have a bucket truck in here after we move some of the floor to get it in here and get a tarp securely hung there to drain any leaks,” Dyer said.

The repair work, which should begin at 6 a.m., forced a scheduled Class A first-round divisional playoff game between John Bapst High School and Old Town Friday morning to be moved to Bangor High School’s Red Barry Gym. The game will start at 7 p.m.

Shane Davis, a 13-year-old from Bucksport, just happened to be watching the games Thursday but he proved to be a big hero. Davis, son of Steve Davis, a member of the Auditorium security detail, was given the job of wiping the floor while play was going on at the other end of the court.

Shane had some help from Maine Commissioner of Basketball Pete Webb, who helped him judge when it was safe to quickly run on to the court and wipe up the water.

“He didn’t know he was going to be pulling extra duty,” Steve Davis said during the break.

Dragons do the chicken dance

While fans were waiting for the Woodland-Van Buren girls game to resume, Woodland alumnus and fan Jamie Bohanon came up with a way for the Woodland side to pass the time.

The owner of DAAB DJ Services put his years of experience as an announcer and DJ to work.

First he talked to the Woodland band leader, then he told the cheerleaders his plan. Finally he jumped down in front of the bleachers and began to lead the Dragons fans in the chicken dance, a popular, line-dance type of routine that’s become a staple of wedding receptions.

“They just know I’m the type of person who can get out in front of everybody and get something going,” said the Baileyville native, who wears a purple, yellow, and green jester’s type of hat with bells hanging off the multi-colored points of his hat.

So as the band played the dance’s music, Bohanon and the cheerleaders led the crowd in the gestures of the dance such as flapping your arms like wings and hopping on one foot.

“I knew they knew it from the regular season games they’ve played because I’ve seen them do it before,” said Bohanon, who also works as a cameraman for Baileyville Public Access Television, which films most Woodland games and airs them on local cable access on a tape delay basis.

“Some of the fans wanted to do the wave, but I thought there were too many people walking back and forth,” Bohanon said. “It took me a bit to get the band to go along with it because they really don’t… It’s not one of their favorite songs, but once the crowd got into it, everybody enjoyed it.”

Michigan native new to tourney

Every year it seems the Eastern Maine tournament has a player or two who is new to the state and Tourney Week frenzy.

Count Abby Willson among the converted.

Willson, a back-up guard for Burt Barker’s Mount Desert Island team, moved to Maine in September from Tecumseh, Mich. (pop. 6,000) which is south of Ann Arbor.

She played on the varsity team as a sophomore at Tecumseh High, but never saw anything like the Eastern Maine tourney.

Willson had a good taste of the Auditorium experience Wednesday night, when the Trojans won their Class B semifinal against Caribou in front of two teams worth of cheerleaders, two of the better bands in Eastern Maine and 2,626 fans.

“Girls basketball is a lot different here,” said Willson, who speaks with a hint of a Midwestern accent. “It’s a lot more intense. In Michigan the fans were just parents. Here, it’s like the whole island is really excited.”

Willson said her MDI teammates told her about what was to come.

“When I moved here everyone was telling me, wait until tournament time starts and how exciting it is,” she said.

Knights still deciding on college

Woodland senior star Julia Knights has narrowed down her college choices, but is torn at this point between Husson College in Bangor and Maine Maritime Academy in Castine. And she understands that people might be interested in where she plays her college basketball.

Just how undecided is she?

“Julia Knights doesn’t even know where Julia Knights is going to college,” she said after the Dragons notched an 83-42 victory over Van Buren in Thursday afternoon’s Class D semifinal. “It’s just one of those decisions that’s hard to make.”