Cheverus girls basketball players celebrate a basket late in the fourth quarter against Lewiston last season. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

The number of high school basketball teams in the state’s largest enrollment class would nearly double under a proposal from a Maine Principals’ Association panel.

The MPA’s classification committee on Tuesday morning reviewed a basketball committee plan that would keep the current five-class system in place but increase the number of Class AA schools from 14 (15 for girls) to 28 teams.

The classification committee approved plans for several sports, including football. Those approved plans will go out to schools for review and potential appeals. The classification committee did not vote on the basketball plan but did express general support. The basketball plan will also be sent to schools for further scrutiny prior to the next classification committee meeting on Feb. 11.

The basketball plan calls for 16 teams in Class AA South. Current Class A schools Noble, Massabesic (boys), Westbrook, Kennebunk, Falmouth, and Biddeford would move up, and Portland, Windham and Cheverus would shift from AA North to AA South. Thornton Academy, Sanford, Bonny Eagle, Deering, South Portland, Scarborough and Gorham would remain in AA South.

The new 12-team AA North would include current Class A North teams Hampden Academy, Mt. Ararat, Camden Hills, Brunswick, Messalonskee, Skowhegan, Mt. Blue and Brewer, with holdovers Lewiston, Oxford Hills, Edward Little and Bangor.

Class AA basketball would be for schools with 670 or more students. It creates a large-school division nearly identical to what existed under the old four-class system, last used in 2014-15.

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“It seems like how it used to be,” said Chad Pulkkinen, 10th-year head boys coach at defending Class AA champion Windham. “We would be in the South and the North would be adding teams like Skowhegan, Hampden, Brewer.”

Portland boys basketball coach Joe Russo said he thinks the proposed North-South split is uneven from a competitive standpoint. Portland has won three AA North titles in eight seasons.

“I thought the North-South thing, with Portland in the North, I was OK with it,” Russo said. “Now, you go forward and those North teams as a whole get weaker and now in the South there might be seven, eight good teams.”

The other notable feature of the basketball plan is that Class D would be for schools with less than 100 students, with nine in the South and 10 in the North.

Classes AA though C would each have 28 teams. The other enrollment ranges would be 100-224 for Class C, 225-450 for Class B, and 469-669 for Class A.

“Really, the adjustment has been (changing) D to under 100. That has a ripple effect all the way through. And we heard from the AA schools that they wanted more teams in their league,” said Mike Bisson, assistant executive director of the MPA.

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There would also be significant realignment in the middle three classes. For instance, nine current Class B South and nine current B North schools would shift into Class A.

Class C teams Hall-Dale, Dirigo and Winthrop from central Maine, as well as Traip Academy in Kittery and Waynflete in Portland, would be in B South.

Classification committee member Jeff Hart, the athletic director at Camden Hills who coached the Camden boys to 502 wins over 37 seasons, said this was the best basketball plan he’d seen in years, “and I say that knowing the (Camden Hills) Windjammers will be in AA.”

Classification committee member Cliff Urquhart, the AD and girls basketball coach at Southern Aroostook, which will be in Class C with an enrollment of 108 students, wondered why Class D wasn’t simply left at its current 0-129 student enrollment. Urquhart noted several schools with fewer than 100 students that have won Class D basketball state championships in recent years.

Basketball committee chair Ryan Wilkins, the principal at Hartford-Sumner Elementary School, said his committee had heard repeatedly from Maine’s smallest schools that they could not compete with schools three and sometimes even four times their size. Island schools Isleboro, Vinalhaven, and North Haven each have fewer than 40 students.

There is also strong sentiment to end the two-year 25% experiment that allowed teams to drop to a lower class if they had won less than a quarter of their games the four previous seasons. Noble’s boys team, currently first in Class A South Heal points, is one of several teams playing down.

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Football changes approved

Football’s 11-man ranks will still have four classes, but there are significant adjustments. Deering, which previously petitioned down to play in Class B, will join Class A North, and Massabesic will return to Class A South. Deering and Massabesic last competed in Class A in 2018. That follows Noble, Portland, South Portland and Windham returning to Class A in 2023. Football committee member Lance Johnson, the AD at Thornton Academy, said Deering and Portland have indicated they will play in Class A.

Brunswick will return to Class B North in its second year back in 11-man football. Defending Class B state champion Falmouth will move from the North to the South.

Classes C and D will now be statewide divisions with 13 and 15 teams, respectively. Class D powers Wells and Foxcroft Academy, which have combined to win six of the last seven Class D state titles, have been placed in Class C, for schools with 400-634 students. Based on April 2024 enrollment, Wells has 400 students and Foxcroft has 431. Both schools have indicated to the MPA they would prefer to remain in Class D, said Bisson.

Morse and Greely are moving from eight-man to 11-man. Morse was placed in Class D, per its request. Greely is in Class C.

Football teams granted a petition to play down a class are eligible for playoffs, something not allowed in other sports.

Eight-man football will continue with both a Large School and Small School class, with each having a North and South division. This past season, the Large School class was a statewide group.

The classification committee also approved plans for field hockey, soccer, wrestling, tennis and cheering, each with relatively few changes compared to past seasons. Volleyball’s proposal to create a fourth statewide class was sent back to the volleyball committee for further fine-tuning because the SMAA schools placed in Class B are likely to petition to play in Class A, creating the possibility of having 20 Class A teams and only seven Class B teams.

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