WALES – Coaching is the only lifestyle Bruce Nicholas and his family have ever known. Seeing a husband across the dinner table or a dad enjoying the view from the fourth row of the grandstands was an occasional treat never taken for granted.

“I got married in 1987 and started coaching at Oak Hill High School in 1987,” Nicholas said. “I’ve sacrificed a lot of meals, a lot of games, even summer games because I had a game myself.”

That’s about to change, and according to Nicholas, only partially of his free will.

Nicholas said Tuesday that he has been dismissed as Oak Hill’s football coach, a post he held in two segments for a total of 16 years.

It hastened his decision, Nicholas said, to resign as boys’ basketball coach. Nicholas just completed his fourth season of a second tenure in that position.

“The reality of it is that I was relieved of my football duties, to put it mildly,” Nicholas said. “I was thinking of stepping away from basketball for a year or two to watch my son and daughter play at Edward Little. If I had any other thoughts before, they’ve been put to rest now.”

Nicholas said he was told by his athletic director, Bill Fairchild, that he could no longer coach two varsity sports. He said the school board asked Fairchild to choose which program was a better fit.

“Bill (apparently) decided that I’m a better basketball coach,” Nicholas said. “I wasn’t going to be fired from one thing at which I felt I was doing a good job and continue coaching at that school. That’s just not my nature.

“I always had good evaluations for football,” he added. “I think I’ve coached both sports with as much time, energy and commitment as anyone else devotes to one.”

Fairchild said that his school union’s policy prohibits him from commenting on the specifics of Nicholas’ claims.

“We don’t comment on personnel matters. I can’t help it,” he said. “There’s more to it. But there’s really no story. There’s nothing dirty.”

The Raiders actually enjoyed greater recent success on the gridiron than the hardwood.

Despite having only a recreational and splintered feeder system, Oak Hill has become a consistent qualifier for the crowded, eight-team Eastern Class B football playoff field. The Raiders threw a quarterfinal scare into top-seeded Leavitt last fall before bowing out, 21-18.

Oak Hill will return next season to Western Class C and the Campbell Conference, where Nicholas previously molded the program into a rising power before fluctuating enrollment numbers dictated a return to ‘B.’

“Things are naturally going to get easier in Class C,” said Nicholas, who teaches at Oak Hill. “It would have been nice to see how successful we could have been. When we left Class C the first time, we were on a six-game winning streak and hosting a playoff game against Winthrop.”

Nicholas led the boys’ basketball team to a preliminary-round appearance in 2008. It was the Raiders’ first trip to the tournament under an invitational format since the mid-1990s, when Nicholas also headed the program.

Oak Hill was 1-17 this winter, upsetting Medomak Valley for its lone victory.

With the notable exception of baseball, most Oak Hill programs have experienced sporadic success in the school’s 32-year history. In addition to being on the low end of the Class B enrollment cusp in most sports, teams draw from three separate, small feeder systems in Litchfield, Sabattus and Wales.

“I got sort of fired from a position where we don’t even have a junior high team,” Nicholas said. “We have a (recreational) team, a club team, but not a program like Leavitt or Winslow or Waterville has. My first teaching position was at Waterville Junior High School. I know what they have there.”

According to the coaching directory on Oak Hill’s Web site, Nicholas was the only coach leading more than one varsity program this year.

Nicholas said that he didn’t experience abnormal parental pressure.

“It hasn’t really changed here. Oak Hill is still a relatively new school,” Nicholas said. “There’s not a lot of (football) tradition with kids whose fathers or uncles played here. We’ll probably get there eventually.”

Nicholas has no immediate thoughts of when or where he will return to coaching. Considering his career path, it is unlikely that he will be a spectator long.

A native of Winslow, Nicholas also has served as boys’ basketball coach and football assistant at Jay High School and as the junior varsity boys’ coach at Edward Little during his three decades in the game.

Even as the coaching doors close, for now, Nicholas had an experience Monday evening that showed him the silver lining. He sat in the crowd at Cony High School watching his son, Cody, a 16-year-old EL sophomore.

“He just got called up to the varsity,” Nicholas said. “He scored a basket in the KVAC championship game.”

Nicholas’ daughter, Taylor, played for the Eddies’ junior varsity this winter and will be a senior in 2009-10.

“I don’t see myself retired and never coaching again,” he said. “My plan certainly was to continue coaching football here probably until the day I die.”