Probably not a whole lot of fans attending the annual high schoolbasketball tournaments that began yesterday at the Bangor Auditoriumrealize that this is the 50th anniversary of tournament play at thevenerable, though increasingly oft-maligned landmark.
A half-century ago, on Feb. 23, 1956, the Class S (small school)teams of East Corinth (13-6) and Mount Desert Island (13-5) took tothe floor to begin the late-winter tradition of playing beforethousands of rabid fans for post-season bragging rights at the so-called 'Mecca' of eastern Maine basketball (pronounced 'Mekker' inThe County, where the natives have never met the word they couldn'tvastly improve by inserting the letter 'r' at some point).
When Jim Trafton of East Corinth took the first shot in that first-ever high school tournament game at the new auditorium he became aninteresting two-part trivia question for the ages. That's because healso was the first to score. As Bangor Daily News Sports Editor OwenOsborne explained in the day's sports jargon, Trafton's original shot'backfired, but he came back to dunk the first deuce.' Trafton alsocommitted the first foul in the building's tournament history,allowing Marshall Taylor of MDI to make the first foul shot.
I tracked down Trafton, 67, at his Waldoboro home where he livesin retirement after a long career as a lineman with Bangor Hydro. Didhe really dunk that shot way back there when a dunk happened about asoften as a referee today makes a palming-the-ball call, which is tosay hardly ever?
'No,' confessed the man who stood six feet, three inches tall atthe time and would score close to 2,000 points in his four-year highschool career. 'That was out of my range. I could get to the rim, butI couldn't dunk...'
Sixty-nine-year-old Ken Tate of East Corinth - the retiredlongtime bus line operator and prominent grower of strawberries - wasa teammate of Trafton's who vividly recalls that opening game withMDI. 'They waxed us pretty good,' Tate said earlier this week. Andindeed they did, 72-44. No shame there. Stuff happens. 'They werereally big and strong, as I remember. And good. Especially the Hooperboy,' Tate explained. That would have been Trevett Hooper, an MDIwhiz who made the tournament all-star team.
'Our problem was that we played in a very small gym,' Traftonrecalled. 'When we got to the Bangor Auditorium with all that runningroom underneath the baskets and all that open space we were lost...'Legions of old ballplayers whose antiquated home gyms were often sosmall the opposing foul circles rubbed together will easily catchTrafton's drift.
Other teams in the 'S' tournament 50 years ago were Island Falls,Columbia Falls, Beals, Freedom, Easton and Albion. Beals won thetournament and then defeated Oxford High School for a record thirdconsecutive state championship, a mark that would expand insubsequent years.
Teams competing in the 1956 'M' (medium school) tournament:Pemetic of Southwest Harbor, Hallowell, Greenville, Lubec,Mattanawcook Academy of Lincoln, Winthrop, Corinna and AroostookCentral Institute of Mars Hill. Mattanawcook Academy won thetournament, but lost to Cape Elizabeth in the state final atWaterville. The Eastern Corp.'s Lincoln paper mill shut down at 3p.m. that Saturday so employees could attend the game.
Attendance at the opening day of those eastern Maine M-Stournaments was 3,362. Total attendance for the three days was 8,271,which was 1,451 over the previous year. Backers of the new auditoriumwho had promised that if the city built it the fans would come, wereright, and for 50 years Bangor area merchants have been smiling allthe way to the bank come tournament time.
All the while, another truism has held, first expressed 50 yearsago by Osborne in his daily sports column: 'Beals appears to have thecolor to attract followers,' he wrote. 'For some reason, each time aBeals team competes it gets the backing of almost every viewer butits rival's fans. The fabulous Beals Braves over the years have madebasketball history with a chapter all their own in the courtrecords...'
It's difficult to not like a team that had three consecutive statebasketball championships under its belt by 1956 and only 18 kids,including just 12 boys, in the entire student body. Today, asJonesport-Beals High School, with an enrollment of 84, the school'sstate title count is 20 in all sports - including nine in boysbasketball and three in girls basketball.
That's a state championship for every 4.2 kids in the building.Ask not why the public's love affair with such excellence continues.
NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail addressis olddawg@bangordailynews.net.
