Craig Jipson took a long look at how much time he spent with his family this winter and decided it wasn’t enough.
So Jipson told his Oxford Hills girls’ basketball team Wednesday that he was resigning as the Vikings coach after six seasons.
“I just wanted to get closer to home,” said Jipson. “It was too much time on the road, considering my kids’ ages.
“I have no complaints about anybody. The administration up there is awesome. The kids are beyond belief. The facilities, the boosters, everybody’s great. I just wanted to find something that’s closer to home.”
Jipson will remain a coach with the track team and football team at Oxford Hills. Those sports have afternoon practices and allow Jipson, who lives in Lewiston, to be home more frequently. Basketball was a different story. Between evening games and night practices, he logged plenty of miles and late nights.
“When I have the late practice, it’s three hours a day on the road because I’m going back and forth,” he said. “There were several weeks where I spent three waking hours with my kids.”
Jipson has three young active children. Though he had wondered how long he could keep up the pace when he first took the job at Oxford Hills, he first thought about leaving while recuperating from an automobile accident last fall. He decided then that he would return for one more year.
“I just thought about what’s important,” said Jipson. “My kids are just getting to the age where I want to be involved in their lives.”
It was a difficult decision and announcement to make to the team.
“It was terrible,” he said. “It was very hard to tell them. They’re awesome kids. It was gut-wrenching.”
In six years, the Vikings went 68-40 during the regular season. That included two 15-win seasons – the best in the program’s history – and four quarterfinal appearances. The Vikings graduate four seniors from this year’s squad that went 13-5 and lost in the Eastern A quarterfinal.
“The team is going to be great next year,” said Jipson. “There’s a lot of talent coming back.
“We won 73 games in six years, which was unheard of for the school. So the success has been great. So I’ve got no complaints.”
Jipson had coached at Gray-New Gloucester and been an assistant with the Lewiston girls and the Edward Little boys. He expects to coach basketball again somewhere, but hopes to find an opportunity with less travel commitments.
“I definitely want to be a varsity coach somewhere,” he said. “It’s just a question of getting a little closer to home.”
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