Tourney changes on agenda MPA basketball committee sets meeting

The full basketball committee of the Maine Principals’ Association will meet in Augusta Thursday, and on its agenda are proposed changes to the state’s high school basketball structure that, among other things, could move the Eastern Maine Class A tournament from the Bangor Auditorium to the Augusta Civic Center beginning in 2006.

Under the proposals, which gained support earlier this year from an MPA ad hoc committee set up to study the issue as well as from a survey of MPA member schools, the Eastern A tournament would move to Augusta while the Western B tournament would shift from Augusta to the Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland.

These proposals are designed to address shifting school enrollment patterns throughout the state. In Eastern A, for instance, more schools are located closer to Augusta than they are to Bangor – nearly half of the basketball teams in the division must drive right past the Augusta Civic Center and travel another 70 miles to reach the Bangor Auditorium to play tournament games.

The situation is similar in Western B, where most of the competing schools are located south of Portland.

Another proposal endorsed by the ad hoc committee would move the Class A tournament to the traditional February school vacation week, when the B, C and D tournaments currently are held. This move has been recommended so the A tourneys don’t conflict with the Maine Educational Assessment tests, a key component of Maine’s Learning Results education standards.

The MPA basketball committee meets twice each year, typically in March and in late October, but the fall meeting was moved up to Thursday in order to consider the proposed tournament changes in time to present any recommendations to the full MPA membership for consideration at its fall meeting in November.

No changes would become official until approved by the full MPA membership.

There’s no guarantee the full basketball committee – which has 26 voting members – will take action on the proposed changes Thursday, said MPA executive director Dick Durost, noting that the committee may decide it needs more information to make recommendations.

But it’s likely some recommendations will come out of the meeting, he added.

“That’s the thinking going in,” said Durost. “They may decide they need more information, but we’re going into the meeting expecting to have a conversation on the subject and hoping to have some recommendations.”

The proposed changes coincide with ongoing negotiations between the MPA and the three basketball tournament venues – Bangor, Augusta and Portland – on new five-year contracts that would run from 2006 through 2010. The current contracts expire after the 2005 tournaments.