AUGUSTA – Momentum to alter Maine’s high school basketball playoff structure continues to build.

The basketball plenary committee of the Maine Principals’ Association voted 20-1 Thursday to recommend three significant changes, one that would move the Eastern Maine Class A tournament from the Bangor Auditorium to the Augusta Civic Center beginning in 2006.

The plenary committee, a combination of the MPA’s four basketball committees, agreed to send the proposals to the MPA’s Interscholastic Management Committee – the association’s executive committee for interscholastic affairs – and ultimately to the full MPA membership, which will vote on the changes during its fall conference in Portland scheduled for Nov. 18-19.

“There’s no question the proposals will be on the agenda at the fall meeting,” said MPA executive director Dick Durost.

Other changes being considered would move the Western B tournament from Augusta to the Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland, and advance the Eastern A and Western A tournaments from early March to the third week of February, when the B, C and D tournaments are now held.

None of the changes would be implemented without being approved by a vote of the 155 MPA member schools at their fall conference, Durost stressed.

The plenary committee discussed the changes for approximately 45 minutes during its morning meeting, which originally was scheduled for October but was moved up to allow time for the proposals to be addressed adequately in advance of the MPA fall conference.

Committee members were swayed, Durost said, by feedback obtained earlier this year by an ad hoc panel of basketball committee members set up by the MPA specifically to study the proposed changes. That committee collected opinions through four regional meetings held around the state in early May and a subsequent survey of all MPA-member schools.

In that survey, 79.6 percent of the 113 respondents supported moving the Eastern A tourney to Augusta; 86.7 percent backed moving the Western B tournament to Portland; and 75.2 percent endorsed moving the Class A regional tournaments to the third week of February.

“I think the committee took into account the strong support of the membership for those changes based on the survey results,” Durost said.

The proposed changes coincide with negotiations under way between the MPA and each of the three tournament venues on new five-year contracts to host the tournaments. The current five-year deals expire at the end of the 2005 tournaments.

The proposals also seek to address the southward migration of the state’s population in recent years and its effect on school enrollment.

For Eastern A, the Augusta Civic Center represents a more central location compared to Bangor, which is at the northernmost edge of the region – Old Town, just 14 miles north of Bangor, is the northernmost Class A school in the state.

Of the 21 Eastern A basketball schools in 2004, just six – Bangor, Brewer, John Bapst of Bangor, Hampden Academy, Old Town and Nokomis of Newport – are closer to Bangor than Augusta, and John Bapst is poised to drop to Class B after next season.

Nine Eastern A schools located south of Augusta must drive right past the Augusta Civic Center on Interstate 95 and continue 70 miles on to Bangor for its tournament games.

That geographic reality, and the fact just three Greater Bangor teams qualified for the 2004 Eastern A tournament, precipitated a 33 percent drop in tourney attendance last March, from 19,564 in 2003 to 13,010 in 2004.

“The one comment I keep hearing over and over is ‘All you have to do is look at the map,'” Durost said. “With the East-West divide for Class A being just north of Portland, that presents a pretty strong argument.”

The city of Bangor has offered some economic incentives involving security and fire protection and the rental agreement with the Bangor Auditorium in an effort to keep the Eastern A tourney in the Queen City.

“We appreciate the effort on the part of Bangor city officials to make some concessions in an effort to keep the [Eastern A] tournament where it is, but that’s just one of several factors involved in this,” said Durost.

A similar geographic scenario has played out in Western B, where most of the schools are located south of Portland but must drive through that city and then an additional 50 miles north to Augusta for their regional tournament.

If the Eastern A and Western B sites are changed, that would leave the Eastern B, C and D tournaments in Bangor, the Eastern A and Western C and D tournaments in Augusta, and the Western A and B tournaments in Portland.

That would make it possible for all regional tournaments to be held during the third week of February, Durost said, if the full MPA membership backed moving the A tourney to February.

Such a date change would end a conflict between the Class A tournaments and the Maine Educational Assessment tests, which is used to measure student and school academic proficiency in conjunction with Maine’s Learning Results standards as well as to gauge achievement relative to the federal No Child Left Behind law.

“With the emphasis on the Maine Learning Results and the MEA testing taking place in early March, it sometimes can be difficult to get kids and staff at [Class A] schools in the tournament to concentrate as much as they should on the MEAs at a time when everyone’s really excited about their basketball teams,” Durost said.

By changing the dates of the Eastern A and Western B regionals, no site would host more than three tournaments during the third week of February, a school vacation week.

“In virtually every other sport, all classes begin play at the same time and end at the same time,” Durost said. “But with basketball we haven’t been able to do that because with all of the Eastern Maine tournaments in Bangor, you couldn’t have them at the same time without starting games at 5 or 6 in the morning.

“We can’t hold more than three tournaments at one time at one site, but shifting the tournaments makes it possible for the facilities to accommodate those tournaments in the same week.”