MPA awards Falcons share of title

The Interscholastic Management Committee of the Maine Principals’ Association on Thursday upheld the appeal of a scoring error at the Class B state wrestling championships and declared Camden Hills of Rockport and Mountain Valley of Rumford co-champions.

Camden Hills originally was awarded its sixth straight outright state title by a two-point margin (166.5-164.5) at the Feb. 12 meet, leaving Mountain Valley as the runner-up for the fifth time in the last six years.

At about 1:30 the following morning, some three hours after the end of the meet, Mountain Valley coach Gary Dolloff discovered a scoring discrepancy in the 103-pound division, in which Camden Hills was awarded two extra points after the Windjammers’ Murphy McGowan received a first-round bye and then won his next match.

In such scenarios, a wrestler receives two points for a bye only after winning his next match. In this case Camden Hills was awarded four points for the bye because of what was determined to be a glitch in the computerized scoring program.

Those two extra points proved to be the difference in the team results – until Thursday, when Mountain Valley principal Bruce Lindberg presented his school’s appeal to the IMC during its regular meeting in Augusta, and the committee ultimately decided to declare co-champions.

“My principal called me this afternoon, and for me there was a big sigh of relief,” said Dolloff. “I’m very, very overwhelmed, because we haven’t had a state wrestling championship here since ’81 [at the former Rumford High], and we’ve never had one before at Mountain Valley.”

“Our position all along was that we’d leave it up to the MPA to do what was right,” added Camden Hills athletic director David Cook.

Mountain Valley’s appeal initially was denied by the MPA’s wrestling committee, not because the error didn’t exist but because according to National Federation of State High Schools Association rules used by the MPA, teams must file such appeals within 30 minutes of the end of the meet.

Mountain Valley then took its appeal to the full MPA through the Interscholastic Management Committee, essentially the executive committee of the association’s Interscholastic Division.

“The committee felt that with such a large number of teams in the tournament that it would be very difficult for a coach to be able to keep track of the scores of up to 20 other teams and raise a scoring concern within the time frame of the rule,” said MPA executive director Dick Durost. “So the committee felt it was appropriate in this case to set the rule aside and declare co-champions.

“It obviously helped that the committee wasn’t going to be in a position to have to take a championship away from anyone,” he added.

Dolloff was training three of his wrestlers, Brendan Bradley and brothers Chris and David Smith, for this weekend’s New England championships to be held in North Andover, Mass., when they got the news.

“They kids were all relieved,” Dolloff said. “They’ve felt like state champs all along, and now it’s official.”