Bangor High School is searching for two varsity basketball coaches after girls coach Jay Kemble and boys coach Aaron Pinckney both stepped down, according to Bangor High athletic director Steve Vanidestine.
Kemble is also the girls varsity soccer coach and will stay in that role. Vanidestine said Kemble left to focus on soccer and Pinckney departed for personal reasons.
“There are young pieces who are ready to step in for bigger roles,” Pinckney said about the boys basketball team, which will lose just two seniors from this year’s squad. There were nine players who were either freshmen or sophomores on the varsity roster.
Kemble said he thought this was the right time to step away from the girls basketball team, both to give someone else a chance to lead the group and to give the players who play both soccer and basketball a chance to have a different coach with different ideas.
“It was just a good time to let someone new come in and take the reins,” said Kemble, who called the girls basketball players “just awesome kids” and noted that he’ll still have most of them in soccer.
Kemble coached the Rams in basketball for a total of six years and compiled a record of 68-32 including Class AA North tournament play. That tally does not include their 15-1 record during the COVID season when they just played other teams in the area.
Four of his teams went 12-6 during the regular season and his 22-23 team went 15-3.
His Rams won all five of their AA quarterfinal games but lost in the semifinals, three times to Oxford Hills of South Paris.
Pinckney just concluded his first season at the helm. His Rams went 1-17 during the regular season and then lost to Windham in their Class AA quarterfinal.
They won their season-opener against Portland.
Bangor’s boys had gone 9-47 in their previous three seasons under Brad Libby, who had taken over as the coach beginning in the 2018-19 campaign and led them to a state title in his first season.
In his two seasons as the Rams soccer coach, Kemble has led them to back-to-back Class A North titles and they won the state title this past fall.
Prior to that, he had spent one season as the field hockey coach.
Vanidestine said he was happy with the jobs Kemble and Pinckney did with the basketball teams and he considers them both friends.
“Jay loves his kids, but it’s tough to coach two teams,” said Vanidestine. “And it’s tough for the kids to have the same coach for six or seven months.”
Most of the girls basketball players are also on the girls soccer team.
Kemble said that, between the two sports and including the summer, he would have those players for nine months out of the year.
“I want to be more fair to them, to have people who have different ideas,” Kemble added about the new perspective that would come with a new girls basketball coach.
Kemble is a teacher at the school.
Vanidestine said Pinckney, like Kemble, cared deeply about his players. Pinckney met with each of those players to explain his situation and his reason for leaving, according to Vanidestine.
The athletic director said he and Bangor High Principal Paul Butler are collecting applications and hope to start the interviews later this month so they can have two new coaches on board in May.
“We want them to be ready for summer basketball,” Vanidestine said.
He noted that several of their student athletes play multiple sports, so it is important to coordinate the summer practices among all of the coaches so they don’t “overwhelm” the players.