MPA moves ‘A’ baseball to Augusta Geography main concern

The Eastern Maine Class A baseball championship game is set to follow the division’s basketball tournament south next year.

The Maine Principals’ Association baseball committee voted this week to move the Eastern A final from Mansfield Stadium in Bangor to Augusta next June. The Class A state final, held every other year at an Eastern Maine site in rotation with a Western Maine site, also will be relocated to Augusta.

The changes will be part of the baseball committee’s annual report to the full MPA membership at its fall conference in November, said MPA executive director Dick Durost. Once that report is approved the site changes will become official, he said.

“We’ve traditionally held these games at one place until there was a reason to make a change,” said Durost. “People shouldn’t look at this as a one-year move. The intent of the committee’s vote is to move forward until there is another reason to make a change.”

The rationale for the Class A site changes follows that used last year when the MPA membership approved moving the Eastern A basketball tournament from the Bangor Auditorium to the Augusta Civic Center beginning in 2006. The same schools that play Class A basketball in Eastern Maine also play in the Class A baseball ranks.

“We looked at the geography of the Class A schools in Eastern Maine, and Augusta is a more central location than Bangor,” said committee chairman Scott Shibles, athletic director at Deering High School in Portland.

The Classes B, C and D regional finals will continue to be played in Bangor, as will state finals on a rotating basis with Western Maine sites.

“The Bangor area without a doubt continues to be a central location for Classes B, C and D,” Durost said.

The vote to shift the Class A finals comes in the aftermath of a decision by MPA officials to move this year’s Eastern A and state Class A championship games in baseball and softball from Mansfield Stadium and Coffin Field in Brewer. Respectively, to Augusta on June 14, the day before the regional finals were scheduled to be played.

Geographic considerations were the reason for the move, specifically that all four of the surviving teams were located much closer to Augusta than to Bangor. The Eastern A baseball final pitted Oxford Hills of South Paris against Edward Little of Auburn, while the regional softball final had Messalonskee of Oakland facing Cony of Augusta.

Oxford Hills and Messalonskee went on to win both the EM titles and state championships.

Shibles said he was contacted before the decision to move this year’s games from Greater Bangor was made, and “seeing who was in the game, it seemed liked the thing to do, without taking into account what it would do to Mansfield. They really do a great job up there, and this is a decision that in hindsight should have been made earlier or been suggested for another year.”

Brewer athletic director Dennis Kiah told the MPA’s softball committee Tuesday that his school no longer will host regional and state softball finals after nine years, in part because of the move of this year’s Class A finals to Augusta.

Also mentioned during the softball meeting was the possible precedent set by shifting championship game sites on short notice for travel reasons.

Shibles said much of the baseball committee’s discussion at its meeting centered on the last-minute site change for this year’s Class A finals.

“We talked a lot Monday about the move, and the position it put people in,” he said. “The decision was made with the best interest of the two teams that were going to be involved. But hindsight being what it is, it was poor timing. It’s something that should have been done weeks ago, because it really put Dave Mansfield and his complex in a bad situation. He could have rented that field out, and we owed it to him and Mansfield Stadium to have done it much sooner.”

Casavants plate a twinbill

The father-and-son umpiring duo of Bill Casavant of Presque Isle and Chris Casavant of Mapleton have officiated many games together over the past 15 years, including a variety of regional and state championship contests.

Last Saturday at Saint Joseph’s College in Standish, the Casavants achieved a unique doubleheader distinction, working behind the plate in different state finals on the same day at the same field.

Bill Casavant served as home-plate umpire for Deer Isle-Stonington’s 3-2 victory over North Yarmouth Academy in the Class D state championship game, then Chris performed the same duties for Gorham’s 7-2 victory over Mount Desert Island in the Class B title game.

Bill Casavant has umpired baseball for 35 years, while Chris Casavant, also the boys basketball coach at Caribou, has been active since 1990.