Eileen Ellis won’t be returning to her post as the Mount View varsity girls basketball coach this winter.

Ellis, a former standout for the Mustangs of Thorndike, resigned last month over what she termed a difference in philosophy with the school’s administration. At issue was summer basketball and what the team would do to get ready for the 2005-06 winter season.

“It was a tough decision to make,” Ellis said of her resignation. “There’s a big difference in philosophy from the administration that hired me and the administration that’s here now. I was put in a position where it was made quite difficult for me to do my job effectively.”

Ellis, who spent three years coaching the Mustangs and is a 1982 Mount View graduate, said she decided last spring that her summer plans would center around an open gym with flexible hours for student-athletes who did other sports or held jobs.

For the summer of 2004, Ellis said, she proposed participating in a three-day team camp at Husson College in Bangor, but the girls on the team didn’t want to do it. Instead, she had open gym hours.

Open gym hours worked better for Ellis, too. It was hard for her to commit to coaching in a multi-week camp because of her own summer job working at the Northport Golf Club.

Meanwhile, Mount View athletic director Tom Lynch said, a group of girls on the basketball team approached him this past spring about playing in a longer summer basketball league. He encouraged them to look into some options, he said.

“It didn’t make a difference to me who was coaching them, whether it was Eileen or a parent or an assistant coach, as long as [the girls] had the opportunity to play,” Lynch said. “I certainly didn’t discourage them.”

The Mustangs signed up to play in a league in Waterville. But the games were played mostly Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, which are nights Ellis works at the golf course. About eight of the 10 league games fell on nights she had committed to Northport, she said.

Ellis said parents coached the team over the summer.

Feeling a lack of support from the administration, Ellis decided to resign.

“It was like I was coming home. I thought it was a great fit,” she said of being hired three years ago. “And I so enjoyed working with the girls. That was it, it was the kids. But the politics get in the way, and I wanted to take the high road. I didn’t want to be railroaded.”

Although Ellis’ resignation came as a surprise to him, Lynch said he understands the frustration coaches feel with working over the summer – especially those in Ellis’ situation as a full-time teacher who doesn’t get any extra money for summer coaching.

Ellis teaches sixth grade in Brooks.

“The expectations are so high now, I often wonder why people stay in coaching sometimes,” he said. “I am totally sympathetic. I understand where Eileen was coming from.”

Coaches at Mount View do not get any additional salary or stipend for coaching over the summer.

“I think it should be there, I really do,” Lynch said.

Ellis coached the Mustangs to a 16-38 regular-season record in the competitive Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference of Eastern Maine Class B. The past two Eastern Maine Class B champions have been KVAC teams.

Lynch stressed he enjoyed working with Ellis.

“I think she’s a wonderful person,” Lynch added. “I think her basketball knowledge and relationship with the girls was outstanding.”

Ellis said she plans to take a break from coaching, which she has done at some level for the past 20 years. But she didn’t rule out a return to coaching.

And it may be hard to stay away from the high school gym where she was a standout 5-foot-11 forward.

“I have a vested interest in that group of seniors,” Ellis said of the current crop of Mustangs. “I may go and just sit in a corner somewhere.

Lynch said the school has advertised for a new coach.