I made sure I got to the Bangor Auditorium early Friday evening so I could find just the right seat.

I wanted to be certain I’d staked out the prime spot to take in the venerable building’s storied mystique. I had been to the Auditorium a half-dozen or so times previously, sat in my reserved seat in the press table, and went away somewhat unimpressed, minus the ringing in my ears brought on by some screaming teenage Bangor fans.

But since I’d heard so much about the aura of the Aud over the years, I figured I just hadn’t positioned myself in the correct spot to soak it all in.

So before the start of the Cony-Brunswick semifinal, I carved out a spot in the nosebleeds, about three rows up in the top section. I dropped my clipboard and my bottled water into the ancient wooden seat next to me, stretched my legs over the ancient wooden seat in front of me, and waited for the aura to wash over me.

I was sure it would as soon as the teams took the floor for warm-ups. No.

Well, once the Cony pep band started playing, it was just a matter of time, right? Nope. No aura.

“Well, the game hasn’t even started,” I thought. Once Ralph Mims began to work his magic with the rock and the Brunswick fanatics adorned in orange started chanting “He’s on our side”, or the red-and-white clad Cony crazies began responding with “Mims-wick”, surely I would start getting goosebumps.

But no. I didn’t feel a thing. Even through a see-saw first quarter, there was little to separate the atmosphere here from any other tournament game I’d ever covered in Augusta. Something was missing…

People.

The building was less than half capacity. There were 2,000 people in attendance, tops.

The Bangor fans began to wander in around halftime to fill more seats, but still, this was on a Friday night, during a semifinal round featuring two intriguing matchups, one including the hometown favorites. And don’t forget it might have been the last game in Maine for the best player in the state, who will be playing for some Division I school in arenas three or four times the size of the Auditorium this time next year.

Yet climb up past the bleachers, and chances are you could find a good seat for yourself and one more for your favorite beverage.

No doubt, the Aud has its charms. The floor has more dead spots that a Stanley Kubrick film and is so slippery I half-expected a Zamboni to rumble from baseline to baseline between quarters. In recent years, there have been enough leaks in the roof to make the feds investigating BALCO blush.

Roaming the crowded hallways between games, one can’t help but appreciate how much work the arena staff and the Maine Principals Association must put in each year to keep the Auditorium a suitable venue for a month of high school basketball.

The state’s other two tournament venues, the civic centers in Augusta and Portland, have their faults, so I don’t want to pick on the Auditorium. Even her most ardent supporters admitted long ago that she’s on her last legs. The city just hasn’t been able to find someone willing to pony up the millions of dollars needed to build a new arena.

Hopefully, the Eastern Class A tournament will be long gone by the time someone does.

It wasn’t long ago that the tournament made sense in Bangor. Caribou and Presque Isle were still in Class A. Oxford Hills, Brunswick, Morse, Mt. Ararat, Edward Little and Lewiston were in Western A. On the whole, Bangor was the most convenient meeting spot for everyone from Aroostook to Kennebec County.

These days, a pilgrimage to “the Mecca” is a long, tiring haul for more than half of the teams. With light traffic, Oxford Hills can make it to in just under 2 hours. The Lewiston girls discovered this year that their annual quest for the gold ball will mean bus rides that are twice as long as when their dreams were played out on the floor of the cavernous Cumberland County Civic Center.

It’s time to move the Eastern A tournament, and we have solid geographic reasons to do so.

Fred Koerber is a social studies teacher at Brunswick High School and also the J.V. boys coach there. Recently, he pulled out a map of the state, located all 20 schools in Eastern A, and using some method I forgot five minutes after my high school geography final, back-plotted those locations to determine their geographic center.

“It’s not the parking lot of the Bangor Auditorium,” Koerber said.

No, according to Koerber, it’s Sidney, Augusta’s rustic neighbor four miles to the north. Take a wrong turn at the Maine Turnpike off-ramp near the Augusta Civc Center and there it is.

The MPA’s contract with the Bangor Auditorium runs out next year. Bid her a fond farewell. She has served the schools in Eastern Maine very well for a long time.

Move the games to the Augusta Civic Center and cut the mileage for 14 of the 20 schools at least in half. The travel for teams from Bangor, Brewer and Old Town increases significantly, of course. But all of those schools are a stone’s throw from the Turnpike,and none will have to endure more than a 90 minute ride to the ACC.

It’s not just about reducing travel time for the teams, though, that should be enough for purely competitive reasons. Folks in Farmington, South Paris, Brunswick and Auburn are much more likely to buckle up for a trip to Augusta, and the $22 it costs to buy tickets for a family of four becomes a lot more palatable when they don’t have to also set aside an extra 10 or 15 bucks for the gas tank.

Proposing that the Eastern A tournament be played anywhere else but the Auditorium is considered sacrilege by the folks up here, and understandably so. Most of their passion for “the Mecca” is based on the aura, atmosphere and mystique that supposedly make experiencing a game there so unique. They also don’t want to lose the economic boost the tournament’s presence gives local businesses.

But the state’s population is tilting south. Schools in Western Maine are growing, so Oxford Hills, Brunswick and all of the other recent additions are going to be in the East for a while, and Caribou and Presque Isle aren’t coming back any time soon.

Bangor is still the perfect sport for the Eastern B,C and D games. But the A games belong at the Augusta Civic Center.

Without fans, there is no atmosphere, no aura, and a lot less mystique.

Anyone who says the ACC can’t produce the same experience as a sold out Bangor Auditorium wasn’t there for the Valley-Hyde regional final, or the Houlton-Jay state final this year.

Heck, the roof even leaked during last year’s Winslow-Mountain Valley state championship.

How’s that for mystique?

Randy Whitehouse is a staff writer who can be reached at rwhitehouse@sunjournal.com

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