A massive investment could transform Greater Bangor's role in statewide athletics – Bangor Daily News

Bangor Daily News
Maine news, sports, politics, election results, and obituaries
For Steve Vanidestine, memories from the late 1980s of high school championship football games and track meets at Cameron Stadium still linger.
In 1986, the facility hosted the Class A outdoor track state championships, with the host Rams sweeping both the boys’ and girls’ team titles.
A year later, Stearns High School of Millinocket defeated Wells 21-6 at the venue to capture the Class B football state crown. Since then such championship events have come rarely, if at all, to Bangor, said Vanidestine, a Bangor High School alumnus and athletic administrator at his alma mater since 1984.
Now, as Bangor prepares to unveil an upgraded Cameron Stadium this fall, there’s hope in the Queen City that the area can return to prominence on the Maine sports scene.
The revival of local sports venues in Greater Bangor means more than just having the potential to once again host championship games: It could be a sizable economic boost for the area, as evidenced by events such as the annual basketball tournament.
In addition to Bangor, fields and tracks in Brewer, Orono and Hermon are all in the process of receiving critical upgrades, while a multipurpose field at Hampden Academy had new artificial turf installed in 2019 and already is a regular host of regional and state championship contests.
Cameron Stadium will feature a new artificial-turf playing surface surrounded by an eight-lane track. It replaces a dated six-lane circuit, which Vanidestine said became obsolete with the installation of the larger tracks around the state.
New lighting has been installed on several athletic fields at Brewer High School while efforts to raise money for artificial turf continue.
Orono High School is replacing its track and natural-grass competition field, and Hermon voters approved a $2.4 million plan to build a new track and refurbish the high school’s Pottle Field.
Bangor’s Cameron Stadium became a centerpiece of the state’s sports scene after its original grandstand was built in 1944, even hosting a National Football League preseason game between the Green Bay Packers and New York Giants in 1959.
More recently, the city’s Mansfield Stadium hosted the Senior League World Series from 2002 to 2016 and just completed its 30th year as a baseball hub for local and regional events throughout the spring and summer.
The high school basketball tournament at the Cross Insurance Center highlights how important sporting events can be to the local economy, as the annual event attracts 40,000 people to Bangor each February.
When the tournament was canceled in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Timber Kitchen and Bar said it would lose $40,000 in business that week. The Cross Insurance Center estimated it would lose more than $100,000 in net revenue.
In Aroostook County, the addition of an artificial-turf facility has already become a draw for championship events in northern Maine.
Presque Isle Middle School’s Gehrig T. Johnson Athletic Complex has had an artificial surface since 2006, with new turf installed in 2019. The site has become a center for interscholastic sports in The County, particularly later in the fall when conditions deteriorate on the natural grass fields at surrounding schools.
Presque Isle is in the rotation for hosting MPA regional and state championship soccer matches, first in 2015 and now again this fall with the Class C and D state finals and Northern Maine Class D title games scheduled there in early November.
“We had a couple of teams stay overnight [in 2015] and other teams made a day trip of it, ate in the restaurants and got gas. … A lot of people came into town that day and I imagine most of them spent money,” Presque Isle athletic administrator Mark White said.
“It’s certainly been good for my program and it’s shown the community in a real positive light.”
In 2002, a November snowstorm blanketed the original football playoff sites with snow, forcing the Class B and C state championship contests to be moved on short notice to Fitzpatrick Stadium in Portland, joining the Class A matchup already scheduled there that year.
That move to artificial turf proved so popular that three football state finals have been played at Fitzpatrick Stadium annually since, with one additional title game held on turf at the University of Maine in Orono.
From then on, the Maine Principals’ Association began scheduling other championship events at artificial turf facilities.
Before this year’s addition in Bangor and ongoing work at Augusta’s Cony High School, the only high school or middle school-based artificial-turf facilities north of the capital city were in Presque Isle, Hampden and Messalonskee High School in Oakland.
That compared with 17 turf facilities at high schools south of Augusta, according to an MPA listing.
“We’ve been a little behind up here compared [with] southern Maine, which had more fields at first,” Vanidestine said. “It’s come this way because I think people see the value in it. They often make choices in where they go to school and where they live based on education, and a large part of it for many are things where their children can have access to things like athletics.”
Bangor voters last November approved a $2.73 million bond issue to fund the final phase of the decade-long, $5 million rehabilitation of Cameron Stadium. Vanidestine hopes the facility will join Hampden Academy as a regular stop on the MPA’s championship schedule for soccer, field hockey, lacrosse, track and perhaps even football.
“I think this is going to allow us to be a regional facility for huge events again,” he said.
MPA interscholastic executive director Mike Burnham said his organization typically has had to reach out to high schools and colleges each year to find hosts for championship events beyond traditional venues such as the major arenas in Bangor, Portland and Augusta for basketball, The Colisee in Lewiston for ice hockey and Fitzpatrick Stadium for football.
But as more sites with eight-lane tracks and artificial turf have been built or upgraded, Burnham says there are more championship-quality sites available today and schools interested in hosting championship events may now apply.
That application form includes a listing of site requirements, among them adequate seating, parking, concessions, restrooms and facility workers.
“Every year more and more facilities become available and turf has expanded the opportunity in  other parts of the state, including Bangor,” Burnham said. “Certainly with turf going into the central part of the state with Lewiston and Messalonskee and now Cony and Gardiner and their willingness to host some of these championships, that brings more people into central Maine, too, and maybe it becomes a three-region rotation as compared to a north-south rotation.”
One longer-term prospect for stimulating the local economy could come from developing  weekend travel soccer, field hockey or lacrosse tournaments involving local teams and visiting clubs from around New England.
The youth sports market in the U.S. was worth an estimated $19.2 billion in 2019, according to Wintergreen Research Inc.
“There’s great demand in the youth sports community for weekend tournaments, weekend play, traveling to access activity and good facilities and high-quality competition,” Brewer School Department athletic administrator Dave Utterback said.
“Right now the Bangor area is underserviced and all of our families that access these programs have to go to Portland, Saco, New Hampshire or Massachusetts for opportunities to compete in some of these tournaments.”
Wayne Harvey, president of Bangor-area River City Athletics, sees the addition of artificial surfaces in Bangor and potentially Brewer to the current turf fields in Hampden and at Husson University providing sufficient infrastructure to attract youth teams from around New England to the area for tournament competition.
“Having turf is enormous,” said Harvey, whose teams frequent youth soccer tournaments around New England. “Everybody wants their high-level teams to play on turf because it doesn’t get beaten up badly and is always going to play the same.”
One visit to a tournament site may lead to return trips with both sports and tourism in mind, Harvey suggests, as evidenced by the reaction of some River City Athletics soccer parents to a recent tournament they attended in Burlington, Vermont.
“Parents were already talking about going back next year and staying an extra couple of days because they wanted to go to this restaurant or they wanted to see this or do that,” he said.
“If you have something similar in greater Bangor, maybe the first year they don’t stay as long but for the second year they might decide they want to go to Camden for a couple of days before or after or they want to go to Bar Harbor or Moosehead. They want to do something else while they’re here so now they stay for a week instead of a weekend.”
Utterback anticipates having an artificial-turf complex with several available fields at Brewer High School located just off Interstate 395, a convenient spot for tournament-goers from any direction.
“We envision — with the exception of the snow-cover months — to have some sort of activity on our complex every weekend of the year,” he said.
Some events could be staged collaboratively among multiple area venues.
“People aren’t packing their own lunches and dinners when they go to these tournaments, they’re coming in, spending the day and going to local businesses,” Hampden Academy athletic administrator Fred Lower said.
“When you include not just Hampden but Greater Bangor and Brewer, there’s a lot of places you can go and a lot of money you can spend at businesses and restaurants.”

Ernie Clark is a veteran sportswriter who has worked with the Bangor Daily News for more than a decade. A four-time Maine Sportswriter of the Year as selected by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters… More by Ernie Clark

source