Even after Augusta Lynx ownership surrendered its league membership to the ECHL on Tuesday, the team still could have been saved. But a unanimous decision by the ECHL Board of Governors sealed the team's fate.

In a 5 p.m. meeting of the Board of Governors, Lynx co-owner Dan Troutman appealed to allow the league to take over operations and at least let the team finish out the 2008-09 season. The board, which is made up of the owners from the 22 remaining teams in the league, took a vote and decided against keeping the team afloat.

ECHL Commissioner Brian McKenna said the vote was unanimous.

"The board, weighing all the information and considering the length of the season left, they voted no," McKenna said. "It was unanimous. One team was not present."

The Lynx folded only 18 games into the 72-game, regular-season schedule, and McKenna said that fact may have hurt the team's chances to stay alive.

"There simply did not appear to be a solution," McKenna said. "The thing that worked against (the Lynx) was that we were in the early portion of the season. If a month or two were left in the season, it might have been different."

Twenty-five of those remaining Lynx games were on the road, which meant the league would have been required to pay for those expenses, in addition to payroll and game-day operations cost for the remaining 29 home games.

"We're just not set up to do that," McKenna said. "The money would have to come from the teams themselves, or all the teams would have had a (league) dues increase.

"That's certainly not a good precedent to set."

McKenna said important precedent was at stake at the Tuesday evening meeting. Though several teams have gone under in the ECHL, no team in the 21-year history of the league had ever folded in the middle of a season.

"I think several factors went into it, including the long season," Troutman said. "But I think they were mainly concerned about setting a precedent."

Reach Billy Byler at (706) 823-3216 or billy.byler@augustachronicle.com.