The introduction of a 35-second shot clock for high school basketball may be discussed at Saturday’s Maine High School Coaches Association annual meeting.

John Bapst boys varsity basketball coach Bob Cimbollek said he planned to bring up the subject at the MHSCA business meeting in Fairfield.

“I just think it’s time,” he said. “We’re certainly doing a disservice to our kids. The game is completely different at the college level, and I think defensively it makes real sense.”

Arguing the shot clock would speed up the game and bring more fans to games, Cimbollek said the clock would only improve defensive efforts.

“It will speed the game up,” he said. “Teams won’t be able to do what we’ve done for years, which is play a patient offense and wait for the defense to make a mistake.

“It puts a lesser-talented team at risk because you’re going to have to give the ball up after 35 seconds anyway.”

Nor would its introduction change the game drastically, Cimbollek said.

“The shot clock isn’t going to change the game that much,” he said, noting the 3-pointer did more to change the game.

“Statistically speaking, the ball probably isn’t going to get shot any more often than it already is,” Cimbollek said. “Very few teams play slow and controlled anyway, and usually, you could play with a 20-second shot clock,” he said.

That’s probably true, according to Pete Webb, Maine Basketball Commissioner.

Webb recalled a pre-1956 game in which the Boston Garden shot clock was brought to the tournament to be used in a Class LL (now Class A) consolation game.

“It was a wasted effort because it didn’t go off once, and it was a 24-second clock, not a 30-second clock,” he said.

While Webb said he is not “anti-shot clock,” the idea would have to be used on an experimental basis, because the national rules committee has little interest.

“I am one of eight people in the nation on the national rules committee and there is little to no interest right now at the table,” he said.

Webb added that the additional expense of buying the shot clock and then employing someone to run it would be costly for an idea which isn’t sanctioned nationally.

But Cimbollek argued that the clock would be a one-time expense and it wouldn’t be that much more expensive for a combined 18 boys and girls home games.

And the shot clock would be good for the game, Bangor boys coach Roger Reed said.

“I know they’re going to say it’s costly, but I still think the fans would like it, the kids would like it, and I think those are good reasons,” Reed said. “It would make the game fast. It would make everybody play defense harder because in 35 seconds, you can play defense pretty hard. You’d put more fans in the stands because you wouldn’t have teams stalling.

“The game is faster,” he added. “It’s played by better athletes and it needs to be given a chance.”

Should the idea meet with a favorable response and get a non-binding resolution, it then would go to Maine Principals’ Association’s basketball committee for consideration.

Schenck’s boys and girls cross-country teams are going to the state meet at the University of Maine at Augusta Saturday.

It’s the first time that both teams have qualified for the state meet, and the boys team made it by the tips of their toes with a fifth-place finish at the Oct. 26 Eastern Maine Class D meet.

“It’s really surprising, they’re really excited,” fifth-year coach Tim Conroy said. “It’s taken us a while to get respect, to build a team that contends.

“The boys came in fifth and that was spot they needed, but you would have thought they had won it the way they were cheering,” he said.

Conroy’s first-year girls team was Eastern Maine runner-up last season, and did the same on the University of Maine course Saturday. The Wolverine girls garnered fifth, sixth and seventh place finishes to grab their second EM plaque.

The East Millinocket-based school has a trophy case with cross-country honors dating through the ’60s and ’70s, but the dual appearance will be a first, according to athletic director Ron Marks.

“He’s been doing a good job recruiting because soccer’s so big up here,” said Marks, who also coaches the girls soccer team. “We get 30 girls out for soccer, and the boys get 30 kids out, too, and there aren’t many athletes left after that.”