The Bangor Auditorium has been the home of the Eastern Maine Class A high school basketball tournament since the unique structure first opened for basketball in 1956.

Next March, after 49 years, that storied tradition will cease.

As expected, the Maine Principals’ Association membership voted overwhelmingly Friday to move the Eastern Maine Class A tournament to the Augusta Civic Center beginning in 2006. The tally was 61-4 in favor of the change.

The vote was taken during the association’s interscholastic division business meeting at the annual MPA fall conference held in Portland.

The relocation of the A tournament was one of three basketball-related issues voted on as part of a single package, according to MPA Executive Director Dick Durost.

The MPA membership also approved the relocation of the Western Maine Class B tournament from the Augusta Civic Center to the Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland, also in 2006, and voted to move both Class A regional tourneys from their traditional weeks in early March back to the same dates as the B, C and D tournaments in February, during school vacation.

“There was limited discussion,” said Durost, who explained members could have opted to vote on each issue separately.

“It wasn’t an east-west vote and it wasn’t a Bangor area versus KVAC [Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference] vote,” said Durost, who pointed to overwhelming statewide support for the changes, which ultimately stem from the southward migration of the state’s population.

Bangor High School boys basketball coach Roger Reed understands the geographic reality of the situation, but can’t get past what the Bangor Auditorium has meant to EM Class A basketball over the years.

“There’s nothing that matches the magic and the excitement of the Bangor Auditorium at tournament time,” said Reed, who has experienced that magic as a player for Carmel High School in the 1950s and as a coach at both Bangor Christian and Bangor High.

“The people who have been coming here for years and the tradition of it are going to be missed. I hate to see that lost to the city,” said Reed, who summed up his feelings thusly:

“I can understand it, but I don’t have like it,” he said.

To those who question Reed’s objectivity about playing postseason games in the Rams’ hometown, he points out two key factors. First, Bangor seldom gets a chance to play on the Bangor Auditorium court. Also, the Rams won only one regional title and no state championships from 1960 to 1983 despite having some talented teams and playing all its home games at the auditorium.

The switch in tourney venues was prompted by changes in Maine’s population distribution. Southern Maine has grown tremendously, creating more large high schools in that part of the state.

Conversely, the number of large schools in eastern and northern Maine has continued to decline along with shrinking enrollments. Stearns of Millinocket, Caribou and Presque Isle high schools have moved down from Class A in recent years, and John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor is headed back to B in 2005-06.

That leaves just Bangor, Brewer, Old Town, Hampden Academy and Nokomis Regional in Newport among 21 Eastern Maine Class A schools that are closer to Bangor than Augusta. Old Town, located 14 miles north of Bangor, is the northernmost Class A school.

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 tournament games.

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

Also, contracts between the MPA and the various venues expire after the 2005 tournament and are due to be renegotiated.

Armed with such facts, the MPA Basketball Committee in May formed an ad hoc committee to look at the issue. The group held four meetings throughout the state and sent out surveys to all 155 member schools. In June, it made the initial recommendations for the changes that were approved Friday.

In September, the MPA’s basketball plenary committee voted 20-1 to support the changes, and the MPA’s interscholastic management committee followed suit by a 9-0 decision.

“I commend the basketball committee for the process that they used,” Durost said. “There were a lot of steps in the review process and the issue has really been out there for at least six months.”

Those in attendance at Friday’s meeting were greeted by a large map of the state of Maine that showed the schools’ locations.

“The line between Class A East and Class A West is, in essence, the Portland city line,” Durost said. “And every Western B team with the exception of Mountain Valley, in the Rumford-Mexico area, is located south of Augusta.”

Principals opted to schedule the Class A tournaments concurrently with Classes B, C and D to end a current conflict between the A tourneys and the annual Maine Educational Assessment tests. The MEAs, which measure student and school academic proficiency in conjunction with Maine’s Learning Results standards and gauge achievement relative to the federal No Child Left Behind Law, are given during the same week the Class A tournaments now are held.

Also Friday, the MPA by a 36-29 tally voted down a proposal that would have allowed qualifying Maine high school cross country teams to compete in New England competitions. Cross country is the only sport for which Maine sends individuals to the New Englands and was, under this proposal, the only sport being considered to send teams. Individuals can still compete there.

Durost said principals were worried that some teams would have needed up to three days to travel to, compete in and return from such events. Officials also talked about the disparity in funding among different communities that might have allowed students from affluent communities to attend the New Englands while other schools would be unable to raise enough money to fund such trips, thus putting tremendous pressure on school principals.

Proponents of team competition believed the financial side of the issue should be determined at the local level.

NEWS reporter Ernie Clark contributed to this report.