Longtime area basketball coach and Eastern Maine hoops watcher Ron Brown has been named to replace Arnold Clark as the Calais varsity boys basketball coach.

Brown’s nomination was confirmed at a Calais school board meeting Monday evening, superintendent of schools Peter Harvey said.

“He has an excellent reputation for coaching and sportsmanship and as someone who is good with the kids,” Harvey said after the meeting.

Harvey also said the school board named new science teacher Larry Casey to the vacant wrestling post.

Brown, who guided the Machias boys basketball team to an Eastern Maine Class D title in 1992, will take over for Clark, who coached the Blue Devils for 14 seasons.

“I’m excited about it,” Brown said. “I have a lot of things to do to keep in the varsity state of mind. I’m anxious to get started.”

Despite Brown’s hiring, Clark is still pursuing a claim against the Calais school board that it fired him without just cause.

Harvey confirmed that the school board will have a special meeting on Thursday to discuss Clark’s situation.

“I think Ron is certainly a qualified coach,” Clark said. “I just don’t understand how they can give me a fair and impartial hearing about my grievance if they’ve already hired someone to fill my position.”

In addition to his four years with the Bulldogs, Brown has coached in a variety of situations, including the Searsport varsity girls and the Bangor Christian, John Bapst of Bangor, Hampden Academy, Central of East Corinth and Piscataquis Community of Guilford boys teams en route to a 185-116 career record.

He also coached the former Maine Lumberjacks of the Continental Basketball Association, a professional league, in the early 1980s.

Brown left the Machias post after the 1992-93 season, then citing the long commute from Bangor.

Brown has spent the past two years coaching the freshman boys basketball team at Brewer High School and also coached a team of 10-year-old girls at the Piscataquis YMCA. Those experiences, plus a summer dealing with health problems, led him to think about coaching at the varsity level again.

“[I was] laid up with abdominal surgery and it gave me a chance to think about how I felt about it,” Brown said. “You either miss it or you make the decision not to do it.”

Brown has battled and beaten health problems in the past. His kidneys failed in 1984 and he was eventually left totally incapaciated by kidney disease in 1988.

In 1990, he received what proved to be a successful transplant.

As the president of the Maine Association of Basketball Coaches and the publisher of Maine RoundBALL Magazine, Brown’s connection with Eastern Maine basketball runs deeper than coaching.

He has also served as a television commentator at the Eastern Maine basketball tournament for Maine Public Television and was the sports information director at Husson College in Bangor.

At Calais, Clark compiled a 169-108 record in 14 seasons as the boys basketball coach. He coached the Blue Devils to two Eastern Maine championships and two more EM finals appearances. Calais went 4-12 last year.

Clark has taught fifth grade at Calais Elementary School for 27 years but said he had to take some time off this fall because of the stress of his pending grievance.

Harvey did not recommend that Clark’s contract be renewed this fall after an undisclosed incident between Clark and the father of a boy in the Calais school system. Clark said the incident had nothing to do with his coaching but instead relates to his position as the chairman of the Calais Education Association’s negotiating and grievance committee.