After coaching the Foxcroft girls basketball team to its best-ever finish this season, David Carey is moving on to new challenges: helping his son Matt get ready for a varsity basketball career. And learning to be a spectator.

Carey, who coached the Ponies for four years and led them to an Eastern Maine Class B runner-up finish, resigned about two weeks ago in order to spend time watching his son play when the eighth-grader enters Penquis Valley High School of Milo next September. The Careys live in Milo.

“I had always promised him I’d either coach him or watch him,” said David Carey, on a break from spotting the 6-foot Matt Carey on weights in the cellar.

“I don’t want to miss watching him play,” he added. “I figure I can always miss four years of coaching. But I don’t want to look back and kick myself in the butt because I didn’t watch him play.”

Bob Hartford, one of Carey’s assistant coaches, will handle the summer basketball duties while the school looks for a coach, Foxcroft athletic director Dave Clement said.

Carey said he would consider a return to coaching when Matt wraps up his basketball career – or if the boys basketball post at Penquis were to open up (the boys position is currently held by Tony Hamlin, who is also the athletic director).

Under Carey Foxcroft went 12-6 in the regular season to earn the No. 7 berth in the tournament. The Ponies beat No. 2 Winslow and No. 3 Erskine of South China at the Bangor Auditorium before falling to Mount Desert Island, the eventual state champion, in the Eastern Maine title game.

The win over Winslow was FA’s first in a basketball quarterfinal since 1987, and the Ponies had never won a semifinal game nor had they been to a regional final.

Carey was named a 2001 Penobscot Valley Conference Class B Coach of the Year along with MDI’s Burt Barker. Two Foxcroft players were named to the PVC all-star team, and eight – the most of any PVC Class B team – made the all-academic team.

“We knew this was potentially going to happen,” Clement said of Carey’s decision. “He did a great job and we’d love to have him back.”

Eight Foxcroft players, including all five starters, will graduate this year. Carey said he can’t remember the Ponies being issued any technical fouls in his four years, which he attributed to his team’s personality.

“That was just a great group,” he said. “I had a lot of fun with them. … I’ve got nothing but praise for everyone at Foxcroft. They really supported me. And I feel like the program has been established and hopefully they can continue that.”

Jackins returns to FA

In other Foxcroft news, the man whom Carey replaced in 1997 is returning to a coaching position at the school.

Ashley Jackins, who coached the Foxcroft girls basketball team in the 1994-95 and ’95-96 seasons, will take over the girls soccer post, Dave Clement said.

Jackins is a physical education teacher at the elementary and middle school levels and has taught soccer at the middle school level for 13 years.

“There’s a lot of familiarity there for the girls,” Clement said.

Jackins will replace Dave Dean, who is retiring.