Holland leaves coaching position Football job open at Old Town High

OLD TOWN – Old Town High School is looking for its third varsity football coach in as many years.

Keith Holland, who coached the Indians last fall, and his family are leaving the area next week as he has accepted a high school teaching and coaching position in Columbia, S.C.

“My wife and I decided it would be better educationally and athletically to take the offer in Columbia,” said Holland. “The moving vans are coming next Friday.”

Old Town went winless in nine games last fall.

“It was just a matter of us being a very young team,” Holland said. “We were starting a freshman at quarterback, and you don’t do that in this league. It was a transition year.”

Holland has been part of the Maine high school coaching scene off and on for nearly two decades. He was head football coach at Rockland District High School from 1987 to 1989. After serving as an assistant coach at Astronaut High School in Titusville, Fla., for three years, he returned to Maine and taught and coached track and wrestling at Medomak Valley High School in Waldoboro.

He then came to Old Town, where he coached the school’s wrestling team for three years before spending the 2001-2002 year at Bonny Eagle High School in Standish, where he was an assistant football coach.

Holland returned to Old Town last year, teaching social studies and coaching varsity football and wrestling. In football, he succeeded Ian Braun, who had been the Indians’ head coach for seven years.

In South Carolina, Holland said he will teach history and serve as junior varsity line coach for a high school with a total enrollment of approximately 2,500, including 300 in grades 9-12 who play football.

Old Town will be seeking its first football playoff berth since 1998 this fall, but will be competing as a member of the new Pine Tree Conference Class B. Other schools in that league are Mount Desert Island, Hampden, Belfast, Winslow, Morse of Bath, Leavitt of Turner Center and Oak Hill of Wales.

Old Town athletic director Matt Haney said he expects the position to be filled within the next few weeks.