LTC explores playing title game at neutral site

LTC officials and coaches are exploring the possibility of holding the Eastern Maine Class C football championship game at a neutral site in future years.

“We’re in the beginning of a good discussion about whether this is what we should do,” said league secretary-treasurer Mike Archer, athletic director at Orono High School.

Currently the LTC, like other conferences around the state, holds its championship game at the home field of the highest-seeded finalist. But with late October and early November weather taking a considerable toll on many fields, as well as the reliance on the Crabtree point system to determine postseason seedings, the league’s coaches have recommended moving the conference championship game to a neutral site, one preferably with an artificial surface such as Husson College in Bangor or Hampden Academy.

Due to heavy rain throughout this October, for instance, conditions for the Eastern C final at Mattanawcook Academy in Lincoln were less than ideal, with several inches of mud in the middle of the field limiting what plays both the top-ranked Lynx and second-seeded Foxcroft Academy could run.

In addition, because there presently are just nine teams in the LTC, those teams all needed a crossover game against foes from Western Maine Class C to fill out their schedules. Those crossover games proved to be the difference in the final Crabtree ratings that enabled Mattanawcook to host the EM final despite the fact the Lynx and Foxcroft had the same 8-1 record and Foxcroft had defeated MA in their head-to-head meeting this year.

MA edged Foxcroft in the ratings because the Lynx played a more pointworthy Western C foe (eventual state champion Lisbon, which lost just one game) than Foxcroft did in facing Livermore Falls. Foxcroft did defeat Mattanawcook in the Eastern C title game, but having the final at a neutral site would eliminate such controversial point ratings scenarios, and playing the game at a location such as Hampden Academy or Husson College would eliminate field conditions as a factor.

“I think it’s a great idea,” said Mattanawcook athletic director Rick Sinclair, “and not just because of how our field was torn up by the end of the Foxcroft game. You don’t want your kids competing for a championship and have the field be a factor.”

Foxcroft Academy coach Paul Withee also supports the idea, or at least having league representatives evaluate and approve the condition of a team’s home field before a championship game is held there under the current procedure.

“As coaches we talked and looked at the possibility of doing something to make sure we were playing on a facility that makes it so we’re playing football,” he said,” and now we have other options that weren’t available years ago [in Hampden and Husson].”

Archer and Mattanawcook football coach Art Greenlaw, brought the neutral site idea to the attention of the Maine Principals’ Association’s football committee at its postseason meeting this week, and were told the LTC has the power to determine the location of its championship game.

“That’s always been the case,” said MPA assistant executive director Larry Labrie. “There’s nothing to prohibit the leagues from having that game at a neutral site.”

Archer said a variety of issues would have to be addressed before such a move could be made, among them the availability of the Hampden and Husson sites, concessions, seating for visiting teams, parking and financial considerations.

Archer hopes to schedule a meeting of the LTC’s coaches and athletic directors sometime in late January to discuss the issue.

“We’d like the teams on the field to decide the games, not the fields,” Archer said. “We’re just trying to be proactive.”