Running is a way of life to Melody Lam, and the way she sees it, the Maine Principals’ Association is threatening that way of life.

“It’s a lifestyle to me. I’m a runner year-round and it consumes most of my time,” the Mt. Blue High School junior said. “The dedication I’ve put in over the past years is not something that I want to throw away.”

That is why Lam, one of the state’s top high school distance runners, helped organize a protest lap at the KVAC indoor track meet at Colby College on Saturday. The target of the protest was an MPA ad hoc committee’s proposal to cut costs for high school sports in Maine.

The controversial plan, which is expected to be voted on by the MPA’s Interscholastic Management Committee on Jan. 26, would decrease the number of games in most sports and the length of seasons in others, and limit the number of exhibition games teams can play. It would also cut the number of teams that would qualify for postseason play, and bar Maine athletes from competing in New England competitions.

MPA officials say the changes are necessary to help most sports programs and teams survive during the current economic and budget crisis and keep all teams on a level playing field.

“I think a lot of people out there may not have recognized just how dire the situation is,” MPA executive director Dick Durost said. “This is the worst financial situation that we have seen in the 40 years that I’ve been around this, even worse than the early 1990s. We are seriously looking at some schools and some communities having to completely drop sports, or drop individual sports or drop subvarsity sports if they don’t get some relief.”

But critics argue that the plan is ultimately unfair and will take opportunities away from student-athletes. They believe a statewide solution is too broad, and that cost-cutting measures for athletics should be left to local school officials.

“The bottom line is, they shouldn’t be the ones that are making these decisions,” said Kelley Cullenberg, the Mt. Blue cross country coach who also has a son and daughter who compete in high school athletics. “The school needs to be able to make them.”

Scary situation

Virtually everyone agrees that something needs to be done. School officials have been actively looking for ways to cut costs since 2007, when rising fuel prices coincided with a five-percent cut in the state’s fuel reimbursement to schools.

Fuel prices began dropping in late 2008, but that good news was offset by some bad when Gov. John Baldacci announced that he would propose a $27 million cut in state education aid.

“At that point in time we were starting to hear from superintendents and principals that budgets, particularly in the spring of this year, were really going to get hit hard and that some places, frankly, were looking at whether they could even keep their spring sports program in place for this year or not,” Durost said.

“The situation is a little scary at times,” Lewiston athletic director Jason Fuller said. “We don’t have the exact numbers yet for next year, but we have a rough estimate and we’re not talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars in cuts. We’re talking millions. When you look at that cut, obviously athletics will have to do its share.”

With that in mind, and concerned about competitive imbalances that might arise, the MPA membership decided in November it needed to take action, Durost said. It formed an ad hoc committee consisting of principals, superintendents, athletic administrators and sports officials to address the issue on a statewide level.

The 15-member committee met on Dec. 17 and made the following recommendations:

• reduce the maximum number of countable competitions by two if the present number is 12 or more, and by one if the present number is 10 or fewer. For example, the basketball season would be cut from 18 to 16 games that are countable for Heal points, while golf would be cut from 10 matches to nine.

• cut the length of ice hockey and swimming seasons by one week, to save on the cost of renting pools and rinks.

• limit all sports to two non-countable dates, including scrimmages, exhibition games, preseason and holiday tournaments.

• in Heal point sports, allow the top half of teams in the standings to qualify for the playoffs. Currently, the top two-thirds qualify.

• withdraw from the New England Secondary School Principals’ Association’s competitions, which athletes in sports such as cross country and track and field currently compete in.

Positive feedback

The committee forwarded its recommendations to the 155 member schools of the MPA for feedback before the Management Committee makes a decision to give schools the chance to prepare budgets for next year.

“In terms of principals and superintendents, almost all of the feedback that I’ve had from them has been very positive,” Durost said. “I think the school people, particularly those that have the ultimate responsibility around the finances, understand the bleak picture that’s out there and understand the need to do something.”

Many schools and conferences had already taken steps before the school year started, mostly to reduce travel costs. Trips for boys’ and girls’ teams and varsity, JV, freshman and middle school teams have been consolidated. Some schools, such as Lewiston and Edward Little, share a bus if their athletes are going to the same event. Subvarsity schedules have been altered to replace some of the longest road trips with closer competition. Many schools, such as Lewiston, have also cut back from three referees to two for most basketball games.

“We’ve done some things differently than we’ve ever done them with transportation this year and we’ve saved some money from that,” Fuller said. “We’ve made changes in how we schedule subvarsity games and the number of games they play, and that’s saved some money for us.”

Fuller said he knows the ad hoc committee faced a daunting task, but he and many Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference athletic directors are opposed to the plan.

“I commend them for giving us some reasonable ideas, but I think there are some flaws in some of the things they proposed,” he said. “I’m never big on cutting games. I just think if you cut games you’re taking opportunities away from kids.”

Cutting games will save money, but the savings are minimized by lost gate receipts and concession sales, Fuller said. He’s also concerned about disproportionate percentages in the proposed reduction in games. Cutting two games from lacrosse, which currently plays 12 regular season games, takes a bigger chunk out of the season than sports with 18-game schedules such as basketball.

Coaches point out that Maine athletes, particularly those who play spring sports such as baseball, already play fewer games than most other states, including those that also have to wait out long winters.

Lewiston baseball coach Todd Cifelli said baseball teams in New Hampshire and Massachusetts have 20-game regular seasons. New York and New Jersey play 25 games. The MPA proposal would cut his team’s season to 14 games.

“I wonder how effective these changes would be,” he said. “It is obvious that they would be hurting the student-athletes of the state.”

Cifelli thinks it’s unfair that most of the recommendations, if passed, would be implemented this spring, and says they would penalize spring athletes. He also worries about how his pitchers will be able to physically prepare for the season with just two non-countable dates to stretch out their arms. That rule would not take affect until next year.

Staying home for the holidays

Some schools are also worried about how a reduction in non-countable dates will take money out of their coffers. Last month, Rangeley High School held its first basketball tournament over the holiday break and invited boys’ and girls’ teams from Livermore Falls, Mt. Abram and Sacopee Valley. The two-day tournament raised $2,000 for Rangeley athletics, according to Rangeley athletic director Tom Philbrick.

“That was a big fundraiser for us, and I think it could develop into something bigger and stronger,” said Philbrick, who also coaches boys’ varsity basketball at Rangeley. “It was good for all the kids to come up and to get to know each other. We put teams up, we had meals together. That’s what athletics is all about, developing friendship and competing.”

“Whoever is putting that on is probably making good money,” Durost said. “Everybody else is spending significant funds to come and go to it or, in some cases, for an entry fee.”

Fuller said the tournaments are sometimes cost-efficient.

“It’s cheaper for me to pay money during Christmas vacation to go down to participate in the Maine High School Invitational (a holiday hockey tournament in Portland) than it is to rent ice time for practice times,” Fuller said. “Maybe two is not the right number. Maybe if you expand it, it’s more reasonable for schools to agree to.”

Coaches and athletic directors argue that the level of competition they can only find at holiday or preseason tournaments help their teams in the long run. Athletes that compete in New Englands feel the same way about that postseason event.

“It’s a big goal that everyone wants to get to,” Lam said. “A lot of people look forward to it. It’s a big event, so it’s really important to a lot of people.”

“It’s understandable that (the cuts) have to come from somewhere,” she added. “But the Maine running community is angry because, for the most part, a lot of people pay their own way for New Englands. It just doesn’t seem fair to us.”

Lam competed in the cross country New Englands last fall. The school paid the $15 entry fee, Mt. Blue boosters paid for lodging and she paid for the rest herself. But Durost said many schools feel they must pay to send their coaches along for the trip for liability reasons. The money spent there would be better used for the entire cross country program, rather than the small portion that make New Englands.

“It’s ridiculous that the MPA thinks they’re going to be saving enough money to make a difference by cutting New Englands,” said Cullenberg,

Critics also argue that cutting the number of tournament-eligible teams will take away opportunities from teams with legitimate championship hopes. Sun Journal research indicated that in seven tournament sports – baseball, basketball, field hockey, ice hockey, lacrosse, soccer and tennis, there have been five teams which played in their sport’s state championship game that would not have qualified for the tournament if the proposed 50-percent cutoff had been in effect during the last five years – 2008 Cape Elizabeth baseball, 2008 Waynflete boys’ soccer, 2007 Skowhegan softball, 2005 Hampden Academy boys’ basketball and 2004 Fryeburg Academy ice hockey.

Local control

The ad hoc committee is only accepting direct feedback from administrators from its member schools. But that hasn’t stopped some from trying to have their objections heard. Brewer High School cross country coach Glendon Rand organized quiet protests like the one at Colby for meets around the state Saturday and has been urging opposition to the plan at his Web site, www.sub5.com/emitl/mpa/index.htm.

Lam, 16, from Wilton, has posted regularly on her blog (www.melodyonthelam.blogspot.com) and has created a Facebook group, “Save New Englands,” with approximately 400 members. She suggests that schools need to look deeper into other areas for savings before making drastic cuts in athletics.

“A lot of things that our school buys – overhead projectors, all of the laptops, plasma-screen TVs, stuff like that – a lot of kids have been arguing that we could do without those,” she said. “We could still get a perfect education without all of the expensive things we buy.”

Some think the MPA needs to leave the cuts to local school boards and administrators and allow for other sources of revenue, such as pay-for-play and booster clubs, to pick up the financial slack.

“That’s a wonderful idea if you’re an affluent community or if you have a boosters club that has the people and the resources out there to do that,” Durost said. “I understand the argument … but if you’re in a community that can afford to play 30 basketball games as opposed to another community that only can play 18 or 20, that’s not a level playing field for what is the ultimate purpose of high school sports and the MPA’s involvement. And that is to put together fair opportunity for postseason play.”

Opponents of the plan say the playing field isn’t level to begin with, so fairness is a flawed framework for any plan to save high school athletics.

“I think the biggest thing for me is one community is not the same as another community,” Fuller said. “I think there has to be some local control. We have to allow the local people to make those decisions because they’re the ones who know what the money is and what the impact will be on the student-athletes in their community.”