BANGOR – In the jubilant moments after winning the girls Class A state championship game Saturday night, the Cony girls basketball team greeted fans, kissed family, and hugged alumni on the floor of the Bangor Auditorium.

The Rams took the traditional photos at half-court. They climbed into the bleachers on the home side. They put the gold ball in the middle of the Auditorium floor and lay down in a circle all around the gleaming trophy.

They made themselves comfortable.

“This is our house,” the Cony student section had chanted before the game, and yes, over the years the Bangor Auditorium has been their house. No other Eastern Maine Class A girls team has won so much there, including nine regional titles.

But the Rams are also going home next year as the Eastern Maine Class A tournament moves to the Augusta Civic Center.

Cony, and earlier in the day Hampden Academy, gave the Auditorium a fine sendoff – an Eastern Maine sweep of the last Class A state games that will be played at the Bangor Auditorium since it hosted its first tourney for big schools in 1956.

The Hampden boys won their first Class A state title, beating Deering of Portland 59-49 Saturday afternoon.

Just two weeks ago, the Broncos didn’t know if they would even get a chance to experience tournament magic at the Auditorium.

A weak schedule had relegated Hampden to ninth place in the final Eastern A rankings, and the Broncos had to win a preliminary round game at Mt. Blue of Farmington just to get a taste of Auditorium ambiance.

“I’ll be honest. I know when we went to Mt. Blue, my biggest fear was that we wouldn’t get to experience playing here,” said Hampden coach Russ Bartlett. “I experienced it once as a player for one game, and you can’t describe what it felt like coming through those doors to go warm up for that game, and I wanted them to be able to experience that.

“We played real well at Mt. Blue and earned the right to come here, and then we just got on a roll.”

The Cony girls followed with a 58-40 victory over McAuley of Portland.

The tournament will move south next season, the victim of declining enrollment in the northern part of the state.

Class A once was made up of schools like Stearns of Millinocket, Caribou and Presque Isle.

Now those schools have dropped classifications while schools like Leavitt of Turner Center, Mount Ararat of Topsham, and Lewiston have been placed into the Eastern Maine region.

The Maine Principals’ Association voted overwhelmingly last November to move the Eastern A tournament from Bangor, where the boys tourney had been held since 1956 and the girls since 1976, to the Augusta Civic Center.

State championship games will alternate between Augusta and the Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland.

Norris Nickerson, the principal at Bangor High School and the Eastern A tournament director for the last three years, won’t be making the move to Augusta, unless his Rams are playing.

“One of the things that makes this place great is the close proximity of the fans to the game,” said Nickerson, who was a member of the 1958 Brewer team that reached the Class L regional final and has been part of the tournament scene ever since.

“If they ever think about replacing this facility, I just hope they take that into consideration because it’s made the experience here really unique.

“The Cumberland County Civic Center is a great venue, but it’s not a great venue for having a fan being a part of what’s on the court because they’re so far away, and the Augusta Civic Center is the same way, so it will be different,” Nickerson said.

During Saturday afternoon’s boys game, there were few visual signs of the finality of the day, save for a pregame ceremony recognizing the first and last large-school games played at the facility.

But by the time the girls game started at 7 p.m., there were a few nods to the Auditorium’s final moment. Cony fans put up a sign that read, “Thanks Bangor.”

Fans of McAuley, a Catholic girls school, also paid tribute. Many were wearing yellow shirts with a picture of the Auditorium and “Thanks Bangor, you saved the last dance for us,” on the back along with dancing nuns and the school’s signature phrase, “Nun Better.”

Sister Edward Mary Kelleher, the school’s principal, said the T-shirts were the brainchild of athletic director Joseph Kilmartin.

When Kilmartin came to her with the idea, she eagerly agreed. After all, Kelleher is a Bangor native and 1959 John Bapst graduate.

“I was in this place for many a game as a young girl,” said Sister Edward Mary, who was wearing one of the yellow T-shirts over her black nun’s habit. “I have some wonderful memories myself, and I think it’s part of our history and part of our life.”

Next year, the Augusta Civic Center will start new traditions.

Cony High has its own gym. The Rams play a few games each year during their Christmas tournament three miles down the road at the Civic Center. Cony coach Paul Vachon hosts his summer camps at the Civic Center.

He’s convinced that facility can have the same type of atmosphere as the Auditorium, but understands the place his program occupies in Bangor Auditorium lore. It was fitting the Cony girls closed up the place with a win.

“I’m so fortunate. We are so fortunate,” Vachon said. “I don’t know if the MPA thought of it that way to have the girls game the last game, but I’m glad they did, because you know what? We’re the last one standing and that’s something we can always be proud of.”

But even Cony alumni are reluctant to play tourney games anywhere other than Bangor.

“I love the tournament here,” said Ashley Underwood, Cony Class of 2003 and a current University of Maine player, her arm linked with Julie Veillieux’s, a member of Cony’s 1998 state championship team and former UMaine standout.

“It’s not going to be the same,” Underwood continued. “The atmosphere, the bleachers, it feels like the fans are right on the court.”

Cony friends, family and fans were still milling around on the Auditorium floor when an official came on the loudspeaker to request the group move out of the Auditorium and up to the lobby.

It was time for the Rams to head home – the plan was to drive to the Augusta Civic Center for a parade through town and a reception at the high school.

Dave Rollins, a former Cony star of the early 1970s, started for the doors, backing away from the place where he played high school tourney basketball and where his daughter, Katie Rollins, had just scored 24 points for the Rams.

“We don’t want to leave,” Dave Rollins said as he slowly backed out of the Auditorium.

“We don’t want to leave.”