Maine Principals’ Association officials don’t suffer many paper cuts opening thank-you cards.

The administrators that oversee high school extra-curricular activities in the state rank right up there with moms and newspaper columnists in that category.

All is well when the food is on the table, the cows are giving milk, the trophies are polished and the games start on time.

Life as an appointed MPA official often parallels holding elected political office. Being an authority figure, wearing an acronym, having a plush office in Augusta and banking a salary quite a few bucks higher than a department store greeter makes you an easy target.

When anything is out of order, we’re pretty sure we know whom to blame.

So what about the 99 44/100 percent of the time when the process is pure as Ivory soap and the engines are humming?

You guessed it. Nobody notices.

I’m betting most of the armchair critics didn’t wrinkle their eyelashes recognizing that track and field athletes from all three MPA enrollment classifications were allowed to compete Saturday at the New England championship meet in Connecticut.

Getting them all there wasn’t simple as paying the punitive tolls in York and Hampton Beach and ordering hotel room service.

Maine’s Class A and B runners, jumpers and throwers had no concerns. Once their times and distances at last Saturday’s state championship meets beat the qualifying threshold, their tickets were punched.

But then it had to go and rain small farm animals in Dover-Foxcroft, rendering the Class C state site unplayable and postponing the proceedings until Wednesday.

Class C athletes and coaches were informed early in the week that their athletes consequently would be ineligible for the New England showcase.

That news was greeted with the glee befitting a loud belch in Sunday school. And you-know-who fielded the complaints, even though it had zero jurisdiction in the matter.

So the MPA did what comes naturally and got its fingernails dirty for the kids. By Wednesday morning, the world remained safe for democracy. Class C athletes wouldn’t have to pull a Rosie Ruiz in order to compete at the next level. New England officials agreed to reserve bib numbers for them.

One administrator estimated that the principals’ office spent 50 hours exchanging e-mails and phone calls between Saturday’s postponement and Wednesday’s forbearance.

Five. Zero.

Chew on that the next time you feel compelled to log onto an internet message board as “dadlivingvicariously2010” and talk of ivory towers or inaction.

The principals absorbed an extraordinary amount of abuse from the peanut gallery — and particularly the track community — when they issued a series of cost-saving recommendations a year ago.

One of those was to withdraw Maine’s track, wrestling, skiing, cross country and cheerleading athletes from competition at New Englands.

Predictably, those who would have been affected went ballistic. The MPA membership ultimately line-item vetoed that portion of the proposal.

Here’s hoping that the organization hears at least as much thanks for getting our kids into that regional meet as they did abuse for questioning the need to get them out of it last year.

Somehow I doubt it.

Nobody’s been harder on the MPA than the guy with the devilish smile overlooking this space.

The principals have made some inglorious errors in judgment over the years. But they’ve consistently owned them and corrected them. Undoing the disaster that was the two-year open tournament experiment comes to mind.

Too often the MPA takes the backhanded slap for issues that are beyond its control. The unending saga of Cheverus High School star Indiana Faithfull is a golden example.

No matter how that situation unfolds in the courts, somebody, somewhere will rip the MPA. And why? All it did was enforce a well-intentioned rule that exists to preserve fair competition for an overwhelming majority of the athletes in this state.

Once lawyers and judges and parents got involved, it was taken out of the sanctioning body’s hands.

Too bad, because 99 times out of 100 the MPA makes the right decision for the greater good.

We’ve been spoiled. Interscholastic sports run so smoothly in this state that the few speed bumps get magnified.

Hard work, behind-the-scenes work and thankless work equal clockwork. In this case, it all added up to give our best track and field athletes what for many of them will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

And for that, even if few other people will swallow hard and say it, I will.

Thanks.

Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His email is [email protected].