Tuesday night’s scene at Folsom Gymnasium in Fairfield was a bit surreal by Lawrence High School boys basketball standards.

The tiny gym was half full of spectators at best, and the home team had a more youthful appearance than normal – not surprising since it was largely an assortment of swing players and full-time junior varsity performers.

Such was the aftermath of the Bulldogs’ previous game last Friday against Lewiston, which was halted at the end of the third quarter by an on-court altercation that involved players, coaches, school staff and security and a few fans.

“It was an unfortunate thing for high school basketball, there’s no question about that,” said Lawrence athletic administrator Bill MacManus. “But I say no offense to the media, but they built it up as being a brawl, and the whole event lasted approximately 30 seconds. There was no anticipation this was coming, no expectation it was coming. In 30 seconds, the thing was over.”

While the event, be it a brawl, altercation or skirmish, surely was unfortunate, the reaction by officials of both schools in addressing the incident offers hope that all is being done to ensure it is a rarity in Maine interscholastic athletics annals.

MacManus, Lewiston athletic administrator Jason Fuller and Maine basketball commissioner Peter Webb met shortly after the game ended Friday night, then spent the weekend sorting out the situation, which resulted in both schools suspending players and coaches.

That left both Lawrence and Lewiston to field largely junior varsity squads for their next games, and both suffered lopsided losses.

Most of the suspended players are expected back for their teams’ next games, armed with a lesson learned the hard way.

“We’ve talked with our kids,” said MacManus. “We talked with our varsity team and said you have to understand what the guidelines are. There are times when you just can’t do things even though you’re doing them for what you think are legitimate reasons.

“We did the same with some other teams, and told them that in those situations you have to step back, which is a hard thing to learn because most kids want to jump right in. But they’re still adolescents, they’re teenagers, and the difference between them and you and I is age and life experiences.

“The kids know we’re not mad at them. We’re disappointed, but we’re going to hold true to the rules of the national high school federation for basketball, we’re going to hold to the guidelines that the [Maine Principals’ Association] has said we have to follow and we’re going to institute some of our own discipline with regards to what happened on the floor. That’s exactly what Jason Fuller has done at Lewiston, too.”

The incident likely will serve at least one additional purpose, to refocus statewide attention on crowd-control issues at high school events.

Because while we here in Maine can hope to remain above such frays, virtually all game settings are just an angry moment away.

For his part, MacManus – whose involvement in eastern and central Maine sports as a coach, official and administrator spans generations – remains optimistic this was, indeed, an isolated occurrence, and his interests are centered on making sure that remains the case well into the future.

“I look for the good in anything,” he said. “I don’t look for the good in the fact that we had an incident, but let’s turn something negative into a positive learning experience.”

eclark@bangordailynews.net

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