It has been a common sight over the years – two small children romping behind the bench or being passed back and forth among friends and family during Rockland girls basketball games.

Karen Bickmore’s young son and daughter have been around nearly as long as Bickmore has been the Tigers’ coach.

But now that her children are growing up, Bickmore has decided she needs more balance in her life. That means giving up her position at Rockland, a decision she announced earlier this month after taking some time to think about it at the end of the season.

It’s a situation in which many women who coach find themselves – finding time to balance coaching and family.

“It just basically came to the point where you look at Thanksgiving vacation, Christmas vacation, eight weeks of summer vacation, and everything is taken up by basketball,” she said. “It’s a matter of finding some balance.”

Bickmore said she was able to handle both when Mackenzie, who will be 7 next Friday, and 4-year-old Jake weren’t of school age. Bickmore took the youngsters to practices and games where they’d be watched over by family.

Bickmore’s husband, Andy, kept statistics during the games.

Things have gotten more complicated in the last two years, however.

“They’ve been around basketball all their lives, at practices and at games and it was really easy when they weren’t in school,” Karen Bickmore said. “But last year Kenzie went to kindergarten and it got hard working out all the schedules.”

A former standout athlete at Central High of Corinth, Bickmore took over the Rockland girls for the 1999-2000 season.

The Tigers went 3-33 in her first two years but improved steadily ever since, to the point where Rockland is a regular in the Eastern Maine Class B tournament. This year the Tigers went 6-13 and didn’t make it to the Bangor Auditorium, but in 2005 Rockland had the No. 8 seed and beat No. 1 Presque Isle 47-44 in the quarterfinals.

“[The program’s improvement is] something that I really feel good about,” she said. “I worked with a lot of different people over the years to make it what it is.”

Rockland will graduate seniors Erika Felt, Dana Clark and Aly Nolan this year but will likely have junior guard Baillie Boggs back after she suffered a knee injury early this past season. Bickmore said Boggs is doing very well with her physical therapy.

Although she didn’t completely rule out a return to coaching, at this point Bickmore would rather watch both Boggs and her children from the sidelines.

“I think I’m always going to be around a field, around a court,” she said. “But this is definitely a matter of stepping back.”

Lee has two SAMMY semifinalists

Aarika Ritchie and Amanda Gifford have been named semifinalists for the 2008 National Scholar Athlete Milk Mustache of the Year (SAMMY) Awards.

The two seniors were both members of the Pandas’ Class C state championship basketball team and Eastern Maine Class C champion soccer team.

The criteria for the SAMMY Awards is based on athletic excellence (35 percent), academic achievement (35 percent), leadership (15 percent), and citizenship/community service (15 percent).

There are 20 semifinalists selected per region. Twenty-five student-athletes are selected as national winners and receive a $7,500 scholarship, a trip to Florida and an appearance in an issue of USA Today Weekend.

Caribou’s Caleb Swanberg was a national winner last year.

In December they were also named to the 2007 High School Girls Scholar All-America Team by the National Soccer Coaches Association of America.

Ritchie, a Miss Maine Basketball finalist and the BDN Eastern Maine Class C tourney MVP, will play basketball at Colby College in Waterville next year. Gifford, a member of the EM Class C all-tourney team, will play at Bates College in Lewiston.

jbloch@bangordailynews.net

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