Portland's March Sadness

[March 14th, 2007] While Oregon's best high-school basketball players and their 40,000-plus fans poured into Eugene last week for one of the state's most anticipated tournaments ever, Portland's Memorial Coliseum was half-filled with 5,835 hockey fans Saturday night for a Winter Hawks game.

Things weren't always this way.

For the 37 years before the 2002-2003 season, those basketball fans and their cash came to the 12,500-seat Memorial Coliseum in Portland, a city whose leaders always talk about bridging the urban-rural divide.

Since then, urban and rural high-school sports fans have congregated in Eugene for the state basketball tournament, along with the state championships for track and field and football. The four-day basketball tourney this year pumped an estimated $1.6 million into Eugene's economy.

Thanks to a sweet five-year deal between the University of Oregon and the Oregon School Activities Association, the OSAA pays a flat fee of $10,000 to use UO's McArthur Court, Autzen Stadium and Hayward Field for the three events.

The contract initially provided for one day of football and three days for the class 4A basketball playoffs. The deal has since expanded to include two days of football championships (formerly played in Portland's PGE Park) and an extra day of basketball to accommodate the new six-level classification system.

In the last year before the new contract, the OSAA had to spend $35,000 securing facilities for its basketball, football and track championships.

Tom Welter, OSAA's executive director, recalls the negotiation with then-UO athletic director Bill Moos.

"I said, 'Make me an offer I can't refuse,'" Welter says. "He came to our meeting and made an offer that, at this point, no one else can match."

David Logsdon, Portland's spectator facilities manager, admits as much.

"UO is giving them a deal we can't afford," says Logsdon. He says the city held talks with the OSAA over a year ago but has had none recently.

Portlanders who didn't feel like hauling 105 miles down Interstate 5 last weekend missed witnessing several great hoops sagas unfold in the new 5A and 6A classifications.

On the 5A side, Roosevelt High School from St. Johns capped a dream season with a run to the championship game Saturday night, which it lost 38-28 to North Eugene. (See Murmurs, page 15, for an unpleasant side to Roosevelt's trip.)

The 6A championship gave the raucous, standing-room-only crowd of 9,087 its last glimpse at UCLA-bound Kevin Love of Lake Oswego and Duke-bound Kyle Singler of South Medford, two of the greatest high-school players in Oregon history. Love won the personal-stats battle with 37 points and 15 rebounds, but Singler's Panthers took home the title with a thrilling 58-54 victory.

As school bands blared and the arena bounced to the rhythm of jumping student sections, the only unhappy people were the hundreds turned away at the ticket booth after the championship session sold out.

Welter says he's open to returning to Portland. But he admits it would be tough to return to the multipurpose Memorial Coliseum, which needs serious upkeep, after McArthur Court.

The current contract expires after next year, and Welter is trying to set up a meeting with incoming Oregon athletic director Pat Kilkenny and Moos to discuss a new deal.

"It's a wonderful deal," Welter says. "Whether that deal will continue in the future remains to be seen."