Anticipating the heavy snowfall predicted for today, the Maine Principals’ Association opted Friday to postpone state championship games in schoolboy hockey and regional finals in Class A boys and girls basketball until early next week.

Under the revised schedule, the Eastern Maine Class A girls and boys basketball finals, originally scheduled for separate afternoon and evening sessions at the Bangor Auditorium today, will be played in a single evening session Monday. The girls game is set to begin at 7:05 p.m., followed at approximately 8:45 p.m. by the boys final.

A similar revised schedule has been established for Western A basketball, with the girls final at 7:05 p.m. Monday and the boys game at approximately 8:45 at the Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland.

The hockey state championship games scheduled for today at the Colisee in Lewiston have been rescheduled for separate evenings. The Class B final between Winslow and Cape Elizabeth now will be played at 7 p.m. Monday, while the Class A title game between Lewiston and Cheverus of Portland will be played at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Talks had been held among MPA staff and with MPA committees for each sport during the week in anticipation of possible weather complications, said MPA executive director Dick Durost.

More specific contact was made with members of the MPA’s Eastern and Western Maine basketball committees and ice hockey committee on Thursday evening, leading to Friday’s decision to postpone the events.

“Staff met at 8:30 [Friday] morning and decided that our recommendation would be to postpone the events,” said Durost. “We contacted the committee chairs, and everybody agreed it was the right thing to do given the forecast.”

Durost said the MPA also had contacted officials of the host sites during the week to gauge the availability of the facilities on Monday and/or Tuesday if games needed to be rescheduled and received a favorable response from all three sites involved.

Durost said the affected games all were rescheduled for the evening in large part because the games now would be played on school days.

In the case of the hockey finals, the decision was made to hold the championship contests on separate nights for that reason as well as to make sure there was sufficient seating for fans interested in attending one or both of the games.

Postponement of Class A championship games due to inclement weather hasn’t been an infrequent occurrence in recent years.

It last happened in 2001, when Bangor was due to play Skowhegan in the Eastern A boys final and Cony of Augusta and Nokomis of Newport were the girls finalists.

Those games were moved to the following Monday, with Bangor and Nokomis emerging victorious en route to winning state championships the following weekend.

The 2001 Western A finals were held as originally scheduled.

Eight years earlier, in 1993, the Class A state finals between the Bangor and South Portland boys and Lawrence of Fairfield and Westbrook girls also were postponed.

On that occasion, those games were delayed until the following Wednesday because the Bangor Auditorium wasn’t available until then.

Bangor went on to win the 1993 boys state title – the Rams’ first gold ball in 34 years – while Lawrence won the third of its four consecutive state championships during the Cindy Blodgett era.