Power outages delayed both the men’s and women’s basketball games last Tuesday night, nearly canceling the men’s game entirely. John Carroll, the public affairs manager at Central Maine Power, said that the outage, which began at 7:04 p.m., was triggered by an equipment failure on a transmission line in Standish and affected the USM campus in Gorham, as well as several nearby towns.
There were just under ten minutes left on the clock with 61-43 lit up in red on the scoreboard when half the lights in the Hill Gymnasium went out. Confused, but with enough light to keep playing, the women’s basketball game continued. Seconds later the scoreboard cut out. Without a shot-clock or game time running, the referees had no choice but to stop the game.
“Nobody knew what to do,” said visitor Rachelle Steinberg from the stands, “first the lights went out, then the scoreboard, then some of the lights came back on again, it was very confusing.”
“It was pretty embarrassing,” said senior player Shannon Kynoch, who was on the court when the power went out, “it felt like we were in middle school or something.”
While the officials tried to decide what to do, each team gathered on the sidelines.
“They thought it was the breaker,” said Chase Kuech, a USM graduate doing radio play-by-play for the game, “they went to try to fix that and found that there was still power in a part of the building.” He pointed toward an orange extension cord snaking all the way down the bleachers to a black plastic box on the scorekeeper’s table, “so they brought out this old-school scoring device and started keeping the time and the shot-clock from the sidelines.”
After being delayed for 30 minutes, the makeshift clock allowed the game to continue while university officials, including Vice President Craig Hutchinson, started making phone calls. “CMP says that there’s a partial outage affecting Gorham, Windham, Standish, and Buxton,” said Hutchinson in between phone calls, “They say they’ve dispatched crews, and that’s all I know.”
No one, it seemed, knew what was going on, except that much of the power on the Gorham campus was out.
With enough light still on in the gym, the women were able to finish the game, beating Rhode Island College 77-50. But according to Kuech, after the lights went out, “there was just a weird feel to the game.”
That weird feeling, caused by the low lighting and the uncertainty about what was happening, continued to haunt the gym as the men’s team took the court to warm up for their game, also against Rhode Island.
The beat of basketballs and the squeaks of sneakers against the floor replaced the hip-hop that would normally have been pulsing from the sound system. “No music, no music,” chanted the Rhode Island team as they marched onto the floor.
Partway through their 20 minute warm-up, the entire building went black. There was a collective groan throughout the gym, and each team huddled on the sidelines. One section of the stands, containing mostly students, was lit up by cell phones as fans held them like lighters above their heads.
As time went by, fans started trickling out the door. After about 20 minutes, when it seemed unlikely that the power would return, Ed Flaherty, the men’s baseball coach, announced that the game would be postponed. Teams went back to their unlit locker rooms and the crowd that had been congregating in the lobby-lit by emergency lights-headed out to their cars.
And then, just as mysteriously as they had gone out, all the lights on the USM campus turned on.
“I was on my way down the road when the lights came on,” said Roger Plant, who runs the shot clock, “I thought ah, maybe, they’re all here.” he trailed off. “So I turned around, and parked just out front now!”
The music started playing again and both teams returned to the court. A few confused fans took to the stands, and after an uneventful 20 minute warm-up, the game finally began at nearly 9 p.m.
John Carroll at CMP said the problem interrupted service to 4,660 customer accounts, which include businesses, municipalities, and homeowners. Service was restored in phases as crews isolated the damaged section of line and made repairs.
“The substation that serves the USM campus in Gorham was re-energized at about 8:25 p.m., bringing all of those customers back on line,” Carroll said. “The balance of the customers had their power back by 10:00 p.m.”
The equipment failure was traced to a conductor on a transmission line. CMP, Carroll said, was trying to analyze the reason for the failure, which may have been mechanical.
“Some of this equipment has survived our weather conditions for decades,” he said. “This doesn’t happen very often.”