AUGUSTA, Maine — The 2017 Class B basketball state championship games, originally scheduled to be held in Portland, will be played on March 3 at the Augusta Civic Center.
That decision was made without dissent Wednesday by the basketball committee of the Maine Principals’ Association in the aftermath of a two-year deal signed in late 2015 that will bring early-round games of the America East women’s basketball tournament to Portland’s Cross Insurance Arena in 2017 and 2018 on the same weekends high school state championship games traditionally have been played there.
America East will hold first-round, quarterfinal and semifinal games on March 4 and 5 in Portland, and the conference that includes the University of Maine also has use of the facility on March 3.
The Maine Principals’ Association committee considered staging the Class B finals elsewhere in the Portland area or in Bangor before deciding on the Augusta site, which already was set to host the 2017 Classes AA and A state finals on March 4 but had no games scheduled for March 3.
“In the end we felt the site in Augusta would be the best way to go,” said Maine Principals’ Association Executive Director Dick Durost. “And that truly is a neutral site because the North Bs are in Bangor and the South Bs are in Portland.
“So now by moving the championship games there, we’re looking at a site where neither region has any sort of home-court advantage, if you will, based upon having played there previously,” he added.
The Maine Principals’ Association has held state championship games annually at the Portland venue originally known as the Cumberland County Civic Center.
Durost previously said that while officials at the Portland facility historically reserved the dates the Maine Principals’ Association needed for its state finals, newer management that began operating the Cross Insurance Arena in 2015 may have been less familiar with the high school tourney schedule — particularly since the state games essentially will be a week later in 2017 than they were in 2016.
Maine Principals’ Association and Cross Insurance Arena officials first learned of their scheduling conflict in early May while meeting to review the 2016 tournament — those Class AA and A finals were played on Feb. 27 in Portland — as well as to discuss future plans.
The basketball committee discussed the availability of other Portland-area sites in an effort to accommodate a crowd similar to the 5,000 fans who turned out for the 2016 Class B finals at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor.
But the likeliest local option, the Portland Exposition Building — where Class A, AA and B South quarterfinals already are played each year — holds about 2,800, which at the least would have required separate sessions for any boys and girls state finals played there, Durost said.
“And let’s say there was either a boys game or a girls game that had a really a unique draw, we might have had to turn people away at the gate, and that’s something we never want to do,” he added. “We don’t want community members or parents or grandparents to make the trip there and then find out the fire marshal has told us that we’ve reached the limit for seating.”
Also considered briefly was moving the 2017 Class B state finals to Bangor, but with the 2018 Class B games already scheduled for the Cross Insurance Center under the existing rotation, that would have meant the state finals for that class would have been in the Queen City for three-straight years.
“We were just a little leery of having any class at the same site three years in a row because then the question is whether that’s as fair as it might be to both the north and south regions,” Durost said.
The revised 2017 state championship game schedule will have the Class B finals on March 3 in Augusta, the Classes AA and A finals on March 4 in Augusta and the Classes C-D games on March 4 in Bangor.
The Maine Principals’ Association committee has made no decisions yet regarding 2018, when it will have to find a new location for the Classes AA and A state finals originally scheduled for Portland because of the continuing conflict with the second year of America East women’s basketball tournament play at the Cross Insurance Arena.
The panel is expected to discuss that issue at its next meeting on March 31, 2017.
“We certainly know that’s an even bigger issue than the Class B games for this year because of the size of the schools and the size of the crowds,” said Durost.
