Hot hoop tournament feels cold snap Chilly Bangor Auditorium doesn’t faze players, but spectators bundle up

Tournament announcer Allan Snell said it all when he gave his opening comments before Saturday morning’s 9:35 a.m. Eastern Maine Class B high school basketball quarterfinal.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “and welcome to a warm Bangor Auditorium.”

Most of the crowd laughed at Snell’s sarcastic touch.

If you’ve been in the auditorium for an event this winter, especially in the past couple of days, you know just how cold it is.

Fans wear their coats during games, referees blow on their hands, building employees wisely gather in the building’s back hallway where two giant vents blow hot air, and players rub their shoulders and arms.

Bass Park director Mike Dyer said he hasn’t heard any complaints and seemed surprised to hear of the cold.

“It’s 65 degrees down on the floor,” he said. “There’s moving air, that’s what people must be feeling. … I would suspect if people are sitting out near the outside walls they’re feeling it.”

The heat in the auditorium is left on all night, Dyer added, but the current cold spell and dangerous wind chills haven’t helped.

“We’re calling for 68 [degrees] but we’re fighting that wind and outside temperature,” he said. “It’s a big old building. If there was a bigger crowd you would feel more [heat].”

Players’ opinions on the low temperatures seem to be mixed.

“I like it being cold because you don’t get so hot,” Rockland’s Annie Pennell said. “You still get hot and sweaty, but it’s not like a sickness hot. It’s really nice to have a breeze come in once in a while.”

MDI’s Leah Joy said the cold didn’t bother her while she was playing, but it was different during breaks.

“When you stop and you’re on the bench, you do feel it,” she said. “[MDI guard Shelley Gott], she sat out and I felt her skin and it was cold. She was just chilled. [I’d rather have it] warmer. But I would want to play at the auditorium anyway.”

The cold snap and lower temperatures in the auditorium brought back memories for the now-retired, longtime high school basketball coach Bob Cimbollek.

Cimbollek said he was coaching at Bangor in the early 1970s and had a game left in the season to play with Brewer. Bangor played its home games at the auditorium in those days.

“We were going through a cold spell something like now,” Cimbollek said. “The furnace at the auditorium had gone out. John Norris was the coach at Brewer and we had to get the game in so we agreed to play.”

Cimbollek said the players dressed “appropriately,” wearing sweat shirts, and some players wore stocking caps.

“It was always cold in there anyway because of the ice under the floor for public skating,” Cimbollek said.

Cimbollek said approximately three minutes into the game, he noticed the clock was not working. It is the same clock that is now on display in the auditorium food court.

“The clock was frozen, really frozen and wouldn’t work,” Cimbollek said.

Cimbollek said they found a table clock and flip cards to use as a scoreboard.

“When they complain to me now about it being too cold, I always tell them, ‘You don’t know the half of it,'” Cimbollek said with a laugh.