Caribou assistant gets post> Carter named coach for boys basketball

Jim Carter, who coached the Caribou girls cross country team to a state championship in 1990 and a former assistant boys basketball coach for 12 years, has been named the head coach of Caribou’s boys basketball team.

“This is something I’ve always wanted to do,” Carter said. “When I knew there was a chance at it happening, I knew I had to apply.”

Carter, 52, was an assistant to both former Caribou coaches Jeff Holmes and Gerry Duffy. He took off last season and did some scouting for Holmes, who left the position in September to coach at Exeter High School in Exeter, N.H.

“He’s been in our system for a number of years,” Caribou athletic director Dwight Hunter said. “He’s certainly paid his dues in coaching.”

Carter is a graduate of Presque Isle High School, where he played two years of varsity basketball and baseball. He went on to graduate from Husson College in Bangor and had coached basketball and baseball on the middle-school level and was an assistant for Caribou’s varsity baseball team.

Under Carter, Caribou’s girls cross country team also earned three Eastern Maine titles from 1988-90 and six Aroostook County championships.

So will the boys basketball team be any faster with cross country-minded Carter at the helm?

“That’s what I’m looking at for this year,” he said. “We’re not going to be that big, but we’ll be pretty quick.”