PORTLAND (AP) – Maine sports teams are struggling to attract non-conference schools to Orono, forcing Black Bear teams to travel more, spend more and come up with creative contracts with opposing teams.

After two football teams opted out of agreements to play at Maine this past fall, athletic officials scrambled to get Shaw University, located in North Carolina, to come to Orono.

Maine won 62-12, but Shaw is a Division II team, meaning the win didn’t carry any weight had Maine positioned itself to be considered for the Division I-AA football playoffs.

Head coach Jack Cosgrove said he hears all the time about teams not wanting to come to Orono to play. If Maine had won its season finale against New Hampshire, it would have had a 7-4 record; but it had no hope for an at-large berth in the playoffs because it would have lacked seven Division I wins – with the win over Shaw not counting.

“I’m frightened to death about the future,” Cosgrove said. “I’m trying to find games for next year and the year after. The frightening thing is having to end up going on the road.”

It’s not just football. Other sports programs also have trouble persuading non-conference opponents to come to Orono.

Maine suffers from its remote geographic location – it’s a long, expensive trip to Orono. And some sports programs suffer because they succeed, making other teams wary of spending travel money on a game that’s not a sure win.

The men’s basketball team is starting five home-and-home contracts on the road this year with Harvard, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Mount St. Mary, Saint Francis (New York) and whoever Maine plays in ESPN’s Bracket Buster. The contracts call for those teams to play in Orono in the future.

Ted Woodward, the men’s basketball coach, said the team is forced to play a high number of road games to ensure that there’ll be home games down the road. The team this year has 18 games scheduled on the road and only 11 at home.

“We figured the best way to do that was to bite the bullet, start five series on the road and have those five games come back to us,” said Woodward. “You really have to work hard to get an extensive home schedule. You have to be innovative.”

Woodward says it’s hard to draw opposing teams to Orono because of travel and cost considerations, meaning the Black Bears team simply has to travel more than what’s ideal and to make deals for home-and-home series.

Other sports teams feel the pinch, as well.

Softball coach Stacey Sullivan lined up just 46 games this year, 10 below the 56 allowed by the NCAA. The team can’t afford to play more games on the road, and opposing teams refuse to come to Orono, she said.

Sullivan tries to soften the travel load by scheduling non-conference opponents en route to conference games. Other schools can’t do that with Maine because there are no other Division I schools in the state.

“No one else is up here,” said Sullivan. “We’re in a tough situation, regionally. We’ve tried to stop going to places in hopes of getting them to commit to us.”

Sullivan said she agreed to travel to Dartmouth College, but the Big Green would not commit to returning the game to Maine.

“It’s the same with Massachusetts-Amherst,” she said. “We’ve played down there, but they refuse to make the trip to Orono.”

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Information from: Portland Press Herald, http://www.pressherald.com

AP-ES-12-10-06 1315EST

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