Maine high school sports fans have seen more changes to postseason play in the past three years than they have in decades.

And everyone – fans, coaches, players, athletic directors, principals, bus drivers and popcorn vendors – seems to have an opinion on the open tournament and regional realignment.

In the next few weeks, the architects of the open tournament and regional classifications, and the school principals and other Maine Principals’ Association members who voted for their approval, may have some big decisions to make.

Now that the winter sports season has ended, individual sports committees will meet to evaluate the tournaments. The MPA’s Interscholastic Executive Committee will meet to discuss the results of a survey that was sent to schools this winter to gauge opinion.

Finally, on April 25, the entire body of the Maine Principals’ Association will gather at an oceanside resort in Rockport. Opinions are sure to be raised and the discussion is sure to be lively. And like it or leave it, the fate of the open tournament and regional realignment could be decided.

A hot-button issue

Love it or hate it, there isn’t a coach around the state who won’t tell you exactly how he or she feels about the open tournament system.

“I think it stinks, to be honest with you,” said Deering of Portland boys coach Mike Francoeur, whose Rams have made back-to-back trips to the Class A state championship game under two different open tourney systems.

“With the division system, our zone is basically the Greater Portland schools along with Edward Little, Lewiston and Windham,” he added. “Unfortunately, four of those teams didn’t get a chance to play in the Civic Center because Westbrook had to play Portland just to get in, where in the other division, you had a 5-13 team playing a 6-12 team with the winner going to the tourney.”

Eastern Maine, Western Maine, north or south. The opinions from coaches are basically the same.

“I know one thing, they never asked any coaches because there isn’t a coach I know of who would have voted for this,” said Bangor boys basketball coach Roger Reed.

There are exceptions, however.

“I’ve always been for it because I believe it leaves the door open for those teams that take time to improve or grow over the season. Teams that peak late aren’t excluded from the playoffs,” said Steve Bemiss, girls varsity soccer coach at George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill. “As soon as you start saying, OK, only eight teams make it, you exclude some teams who probably are good enough or have enough talent to make a run, especially if they’ve had a lot of injuries or other factors affecting them earlier in the season.”

Bemiss’ Eagles were 4-9-1 in the 2000 regular season, but went 5-0 in the Eastern Maine playoffs before losing a double-overtime game to North Yarmouth Academy in the state final. “I know there were complaints about the Hodgdon team losing, but hey, if your team is good enough, you’re going to win and they should be more worried about continual improvement than seedings,” Bemiss said. “We’ve gone to two state games now in the last two years and we came out of 11th place two years ago and sixth place overall [No. 2 in Class C southeast division] this past year.”

Bemiss says the open tourney format doesn’t penalize teams for playing a difficult regular-season schedule, which his Eagles routinely do. It also doesn’t penalize teams playing weak schedules simply because the talent of the opposing teams in their geographic area happens to be down.

“I know as long as there’s an open tourney, I don’t mind going out and playing up a class and playing some of the powerhouses like Bucksport, Ellsworth, and MDI [Mount Desert Island] because I know they’ll continually test us and make us better in the long run,” he said.

That’s not to say Bemiss wouldn’t object to some fine-tuning of the current format.

“They need to work on the geographic layout a little better because I think they have too many teams in some regions and not enough in others,” Bemiss said.

Bemiss and many other coaches would also like to see the MPA address the curious placement of teams in regions that don’t suit them geographically, such as Mount Ararat of Topsham, Morse of Bath and Brunswick – each of which is located 30 miles or more southwest of Augusta and 60 miles southwest of Bangor as the crow flies – in Eastern Maine. This means that teams from those schools must travel almost two hours to play basketball playoff games at the Bangor Auditorium despite the fact they’re no more than 30 miles away from the Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland, site of the Western Maine Class A regional tourney.

One of the main reasons the regional realignment was voted in was to eliminate some travel time.

But some teams still had long trips to make because of the huge geographic scope of the regions. In the Northeastern division of Class C, for example, the Madawaska boys basketball team had a preliminary game at Piscataquis in Guilford, a 452-mile round trip, where the Owls lost 84-30. In Northwestern Class D, the Islesboro boys literally crossed the state to play Forest Hills High in Jackman.

Despite the extra mileage and travel time, Brunswick boys coach Todd Hanson was happy with the change the new divisional open tourney system brought to his playoff setup.

“Because we’re kind of in-between, we played one group of teams in the regular season last year and then a totally different group in the tournament,” Hanson said. “We played a KVAC [Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference] schedule last year against Eastern teams and then went to the Western Maine tournament.

“I like playing in Eastern Maine and the Bangor Auditorium much better, but I wish they could straighten out the seedings better.”

Hanson said he doesn’t like the lag time between the end of the regular season and the start of the playoffs for top seeds and would like to eliminate potential 18-0 vs. 0-18 team matchups.

Then there are those quarterfinal matchups which seem more appropriate to semifinal and final round games.

“The example I remember is 18-1 Calais playing 19-0 Hodgdon in the first round,” said Ellsworth boys basketball coach Dan Clifford. “I don’t think the tournament is about that kind of an early round matchup. You shouldn’t have those.”

Although Clifford’s team benefited mightily from the current format – the 7-11 Eagles would have finished 11th overall in Eastern Maine Class B and out of the playoffs under the old system, but advanced all the way to the East semifinals this year thanks to the new format – he does not count himself among open tournament proponents. Well, not totally.

“Most of the coaches I know like it the way it used to be,” Clifford said. “If I had my first choice, it would go back to the old way with 50 percent getting in. My second choice would be this.

“I don’t like this because you don’t always know until a couple days beforehand who or where you’re playing a playoff game. I also think it can be unfair to teams that deserve to be at the Auditorium. The Searsport girls had just four losses, but they lost in the prelims and didn’t get in.”

Ah, yes, that ongoing argument about top-seeded teams not getting what they deserve.

That argument was front and center after two-time defending Class A state champ Bangor (14-4) beat annual tourney contender Lawrence of Fairfield, which had a solid 12-6 record coming in.

“This is what’s wrong with it. For us not to go is wrong. For them not to go is wrong. Of all the teams going, this team [Lawrence] probably deserves to go probably more than the rest, especially those who have never played in this area,” said Reed. “It’s just not right for teams who win 12 games to close their seasons out in another team’s gym.

“What’s a tournament without Lawrence?” Reed continued. “They’re a perennial tourney team that earned the right to be there, and it’s sad that a kid like Trafton Teague, who’s really a great player, won’t be there. For him not to go there after all he’s done is a crime. It’s a shame.”

This from the winning coach? It’s not hard to imagine how losing coach Mike McGee felt.

“I told the kids life isn’t fair. Sometimes a bunch of … nitwits control your fate and that’s what happened,” McGee said. “We would have been seventh and played Presque Isle. Who knows? We could have had a ticket to the championship.”

How it all came about

The open tournament – called the competitive model and designed by Cape Elizabeth High athletic director Keith Weatherbie – was voted into place Nov. 18, 1999, at a general meeting of the MPA. Of the 89 schools at the meeting in a Portland hotel, 53 school voted in favor of the open tournament, 36 voted against it. There are 151 MPA member schools.

It was the first time the postseason had been expanded since 1979, when the principals association endorsed a policy that allowed teams finishing among the top 50 percent, based on Heal Point standings, to advance to the postseason. Before 1979 only the top eight teams in each class qualified for the playoffs.

Now, everyone would have a shot to play. Not all of the schools liked it, but as Brewer principal Jerry Goss said at the time, they would make it work.

Under Weatherbie’s competitive model, the top teams in each classification receive byes for the first round of the playoffs, with the number of byes depending on the number of teams in the class. The rest of the teams play a series of preliminary games to determine the top eight teams.

The remaining teams then play the traditional tournament format (No. 1 plays No. 8, No. 2 plays No. 7, No. 3 plays No. 6 and No. 4 plays No. 5), starting with quarterfinals, until a regional champion is determined. The two regional winners play for the state title.

The open tournament only affects sports that use Heal Points to determine rankings. Those sports are soccer, field hockey, volleyball, basketball, ice hockey, baseball, softball, tennis and lacrosse. Those sports not using the open tourney are: cross country, golf, swimming, skiing, wrestling, gymnastics, indoor track and field, cheerleading, outdoor track and field. Football doesn’t use an open tournament because the ranking systems aren’t consistent across the state.

The open tournament went into place for the fall 2000 season of soccer, field hockey and volleyball. That first season three high school soccer teams turned down invitations to compete in the open tournament.

The Fort Fairfield girls soccer team did not participate because the Tigers were 0-14 and had the 16th and last seed in Eastern Maine Class D, and the school board had voted to institute a program-wide policy that the high school teams had to finish in the top 60 percent in order to play in the postseason.

The Lubec High boys were 0-13 and were last of 19 teams in Eastern Maine Class D. The school had no official policy but the team voted to not play in the open tournament. The Livermore Falls boys (0-14 and last in Western Maine Class C) also declined to play.

That fall was also the season the George Stevens Academy girls soccer team, the No. 11 seed in Eastern Maine Class C, beat the team seeded 14th, and upset the sixth, third, second, and first seeds and won an Eastern Maine championship before falling in the state final.

Later that fall the MPA considered another change, the regional realignment. At issue was some increased travel for schools in the preliminary stages. The membership decided to table the realignment in favor of more evaluation. It voted in the new regional look at the spring 2001 meeting.

The realignment split each classification into four divisions based on geographic location. Current Eastern Maine teams split into Northeastern and Southeastern regions, while Western Maine became Northwestern and Southwestern.

For the postseason, teams played within their region until there were two teams left in each region, at which point the teams crossed over with the lower seeds playing the higher seeds. The two teams that emerged from the crossover games played for the regional title, and the winner went to the state championship.

What’s next?

About two-thirds of the MPA schools have returned their surveys to the main office in Augusta. MPA executive director Dick Durost declined to reveal which way schools are leaning, but that will all come out at a meeting of the interscholastic executive committee meeting at the end of the month.

Before the entire MPA body meets in April, a number of committees will meet to discuss how their sports have fared under the open tournament and regional realignment. The interscholastic executive committee is charged with reading the surveys, gathering the results, and gauging opinion.

That group is made up of 11 administrators from schools of all sizes from all over the state, including the president and president-elect of the MPA, and liaisons from the Maine School Superintendents Association, Maine Department of Education and the Maine Interscholastic Athletic Directors Association.

Durost said the MPA hopes the surveys will focus the discussion and take some of the lengthy debate out of the general meeting.

The survey asks school administrators, among other questions about the postseason changes, if they like the current format of 100 percent of teams in the playoffs, or would prefer to go to 75, 60, or back to the 50 percent used prior to 2000-2001.

“What the committee decided to do was to do the survey to find out, if they could, whether there is a clear, solid majority of viewpoint out there and if there was, maybe they could prepare some type of a motion to take to the membership in late April,” Durost said recently. “The thought was … maybe to raise a trial balloon ahead of time, and then we could go into that with a focus in terms of what we thought people felt in terms of the open tournament going into that membership meeting.”

Anything could happen when the members meet, and a simple “no” vote in April could mean the end of the changes, which would take effect in the fall 2002 season. Then again, the membership could decide to table the discussion until next fall, or vote to keep things the way they are.

“Anything is possible,” Durost said. “There’s no question that nothing will be changed for the rest of this school year but should they decide and should there be a clear majority as to the fact that there might be a change, that could go into effect for the next year.”