Deliberations leading up to the passage of a five-class system for Maine high school basketball beginning next winter delayed the generation of regular-season schedules for the 2015-16 season.
But with that proposal approved by a 67-29 vote of the Maine Principals’ Association general membership on April 30, school and conference officials around the state are now busy formulating their master schedules for the next two years.
The Big East Conference, which recently has made up about half of Eastern Maine Class B, will field 13 of the 17 schools in the new Class B North next winter.
Five schools that competed in Class C from the Penobscot Valley Conference last season — Houlton, Orono, Mattanawcook Academy of Lincoln, Central of Corinth, Washington Academy of East Machias — are now Class B schools by enrollment. They have agreed to join Presque Isle, Mount Desert Island of Bar Harbor, Hermon, Old Town, John Bapst of Bangor, Foxcroft Academy of Dover-Foxcroft, Ellsworth and Caribou in the Big East.
“As of next year there’ll be 13 teams in the Big East Conference,” said Ellsworth athletic administrator Jay Brown. “The challenge is trying to create an 18-game schedule with 12 opponents, and what we have decided to do is play every team in the Big East at least once.”
The remainder of the teams’ schedules will come from a couple of sources: second games against Big East teams, particularly traditional rivals or neighboring schools, or crossover games against PVC Class C programs.
“The challenge now is trying to keep travel down, because even though there’s 13 teams in the league geographically it’s spread out and you only have so many Saturdays for some of those trips that are quite a distance,” Brown said.
That reality — and the recently approved reduction in the Heal point differential per class from five points to two — likely will result in the continuation of such crossover games with nearby Class C rivals as Ellsworth-George Stevens Academy, Washington Academy-Calais, and Foxcroft-Dexter.
Big East and PVC officials will meet soon to formalize crossover matchups between their leagues.
Brown said plans also are in the works to retain the rivalry weekends in which Ellsworth and MDI trek to Aroostook County for Friday night/Saturday afternoon doubleheaders against Presque Isle and Caribou, with PI and Caribou coming south at another point of the schedule for similar weekend games against the two Hancock County schools.
