When Richard Barron became the women’s basketball coach at the University of Maine in 2011, the Black Bears’ home court was placed on top of the hockey ice sheet at Alfond Arena.
Three years later, that scene shifted to the Cross Insurance Center, 12 miles away in Bangor. It served as the team’s home base until this winter when the handful of home games were shifted to Memorial Gymnasium on campus due to mass-gathering limits resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When I got here we were borrowing hockey’s facilities for games and you’d sit there and it was kind of cold as you’re waiting for them to put the floor down so you could get out there for pregame warmups,” Barron said.
“Then we were traveling down to Bangor, and I’m not criticizing that decision. From a financial standpoint we were able to rent a [$65] million facility when it was built, and we couldn’t afford to put that on campus at that time.”
With Wednesday’s announcement that a 3,000-seat campus basketball facility, the UMaine Multipurpose Center, is among the signature projects of UMaine’s $110 million athletic facilities plan — funded largely by a $90 million gift from the Harold Alfond Foundation — there’s a growing sense of homecoming within the school’s basketball community.
“It’s been a while since we’ve had a real, legit basketball facility so we’re excited about that,” UMaine women’s basketball coach Amy Vachon said.
“We don’t win recruits because of facilities right now, that’s not why kids choose to come here. I’m not saying that’s why they’ll choose to come here in the future but it will put us on a much more even playing field, for sure,” she said.
UMaine entered its current contract with the Cross Insurance Center in October 2018 and it runs until March 2023, according to Tyson McHatten, UMaine senior associate athletic director/external operations.
McHatten said during the 2019-20 season the university spent $199,770 to play home games at the Cross Center, not including bus transportation costs to and from campus.
Barron, the third-year UMaine men’s coach, said the Black Bears will finally have a home.
“We’re all eager to get going on it, knowing it’s not something that will be built tomorrow, but the vision for the program and for the facility and the impact of this entire project on our department but equally on the university and our community is really encouraging and inspiring,” he said.
Construction is not expected to begin until at least the summer of 2022, but when finished the facility will include new locker rooms and basketball office suites as well as dedicated areas for strength and conditioning and sports medicine for all UMaine teams.
“We want to be the best and have the best facilities around for the state of Maine and also for our student-athletes,” Vachon said. “They deserve it. They give their heart and soul, their blood and tears every day. They deserve this and it’s wonderful to see this coming to fruition.”
The multipurpose facility’s proximity to the hockey arena, field house, football stadium and other sports facilities will physically place the basketball teams in the middle of the athletics complex.
“This plan is a huge, huge boost for everybody,” Barron said.
Former UMaine men’s basketball coach Skip Chappelle has been a longtime proponent of bringing basketball back on campus. His relationship with the university dates back to 1955, when as a high school sophomore he and his Old Town teammates played Bangor in an Eastern Maine Class L championship game at Memorial Gym, better known as “The Pit.”
Attracting championship-level high school events to campus is another reason the University of Maine Sports Hall of Famer is excited.
“These plans are absolutely terrific,” said Chappelle, who starred as a player with the Black Bears and then coached at his alma mater from 1971-1988.
“I know enrollment management is involved with getting high school students on campus, and those facilities are going to be terrific for doing that, especially basketball.”
Barron sees potential for developing a solid home-court atmosphere for the Black Bears.
“We want our fans to be connected to each other as much as they’re connected to us at the game, and I think the intimacy of that with the proximity to the court and the feeling of the building being full is also very important,” he said.
The UMaine women’s basketball team regularly has ranked at or near the top of America East in attendance despite playing off campus. Vachon hopes the new arena will attract both the older fans that have consistently followed the team at the Cross Center and an increased student presence in order to create an environment similar to the energetic crowds she has seen at such mid-major venues over the years as James Madison and Toledo.
“It’s a 15- to 20-minute drive in the snow in the winter, where [on campus] they can just walk down the hill and come to a game,” Vachon said of potential UMaine student fans. “That might change their minds a little bit, and any opportunity for that is exciting.”
