BANGOR – Playing at night and wearing white is a nice goal, but the Calais girls basketball team proved it can wear blue, play in the afternoon, and still win big games.

The lower-seeded No. 3 Blue Devils knocked off No. 2 Central of Corinth 67-57 in an Eastern Maine Class C semifinal game.

Calais was playing as the visitor in an Eastern Maine tournament game for the first time since 1995, and the Devils’ players, coaches and fans couldn’t quite get used to that.

“We came in here kind of nervous having to wear blue, but it didn’t matter what color we were wearing,” said sophomore forward Danielle O’Brien. “We’re the same team and the same players and we pulled it out.”

When the Calais fans filed into the Auditorium they started to sit on the home side of the Bangor Auditorium, but were asked to move to the visitors’ side.

The Calais players went into the home locker room instead of the visitors’ locker room.

And Calais coach Bob McShane went to sit on the home bench, not the visitors’.

“After I talked to [Central coach Diane Rollins] I went over and tried to sit on her bench because we’re so used to going there,” he said. “Our fans had to be kicked out. But blue came out good for us today. We’re in our 11th consecutive final, which I never thought this team would do. I’m really proud of them.”

Tammaro to be remembered

Longtime Downeast basketball referee Tony Tammaro will be remembered in a statement read by public address announcer Allan Snell on behalf of the Maine Principals’ Association Saturday morning during the intermission between the Class D girls and boys championship games.

Tammaro died last August at the age of 82.

Maine basketball commissioner Peter Webb said that he had been approached to draft a statement about Tammaro.

“[Tammaro] worked 38 straight years in the tournament. They’ll read a statement to honor him. It’s a good gesture. He was legendary as a sports official,” Webb said.

Tammaro officiated for approximately 60 years and in eight decades. Webb estimates that Tammaro refereed 4,500 high school varsity and college basketball games.

Teams from the Downeast Athletic Conference wore black bands on the shoulder strap of their uniforms during the regular season and at the tournament.

Maine Public Broadcasting Corporation (MPBC) will televise the ceremony as part of their championship coverage.

Tracking tourney turnstiles

Whether overall attendance is up is a question that must wait for Saturday’s regional championship session to be answered, but this is much is clear seven days into Eastern Maine’s tournament week: Class D crowds are beating the bigger schools.

According to tournament director Bill Fletcher, total attendance at Class D quarterfinal and semifinal games are up from last year while B and C are both down.

Through Friday afternoon, the total fan count for Class D games (six sessions in all) is 10,907. Class B is 10,327 for six sessions, and Class C is 8,241 for five. Friday night’s attendance figures for the final two Class C semifinal games were unavailable at press time.

Going by average number of fans per session, Class D is averaging 1,817.8 while B is next at 1,721.2 and C is third with 1,648.2.

Last year, overall attendance for the entire Eastern B-C-D tournament dropped .01 percent. That translates into 548 fewer fans from 2001’s total of 44,714.