Over a year after he was effectively fired from his position as the Calais boys basketball coach, and with a grievance against the Calais school board still waiting to be arbitrated, Arnold Clark has found another coaching job.

Clark, who skippered the Calais boys for 14 years, was named as the new Woodland High School girls basketball coach at a Baileyville School Board meeting Monday night.

The vote was 4-0 to give Clark the job, based on a recommendation by acting superintendent Omar Norton. Clark replaces Don Roffey, who resigned for personal reasons at the end of the winter season.

“It was hard to sit,” Clark said of his season away from coaching. “I spent a lot of time in the stands. I missed teaching the game and I’m looking forward to getting back to it.”

Clark continues to teach fifth-grade math and English at Calais Elementary School, where he has taught for 27 years, despite the conflict he has had with the Calais School Board.

Clark has said he received a letter in June 1998 from Calais Superintendent Peter Harvey stating that Clark would not be nominated for the coaching position. Clark said he believes that decision arose after an undisclosed incident that allegedly occurred between Clark and the father of a boy in the Calais school system.

Clark has maintained that the incident was related to his position as the chairman of the Calais Education Association’s negotiating and grievance committee and had nothing to do with his coaching.

In the past, Calais School Committee members have declined to comment on the decision not to rehire Clark because they claimed to do so would violate Clark’s right to confidentiality.

In his grievance, Clark claims the school administrators wrongfully failed to rehire him as the boys coach. The case is supposed to be heard sometime this summer.

Clark said whatever the outcome of the arbitration – even if the arbitrator agrees with his claim – he is committed to coaching the Woodland girls.

“We’re going into this as a fresh start,” he said. “I think I have a lot to offer and I think I can do a good job. That’s where I’m going to be until they want a new candidate, whether it’s one year or 10 years.”

Woodland athletic director Keith Moody said Norton did look into Clark’s conflict with the Calais school board when Clark’s name was one of two winnowed down from five applicants. But in the end, Moody said, it came down to Clark’s experience and background rather than the alleged incident in the Calais system.

“[Experience] was the big thing,” Moody said. “He’s been a teacher for 27 years. He handled himself very well in the interview that we had with him.”

Clark started coaching the Blue Devils in 1984 and racked up a 165-96 record in his 14 seasons. Calais won Eastern Maine titles in 1987 and 1991, earned four regional runner-up titles and made the tournament seven times in a nine-year stretch.

A Milltown resident, Clark will have about a 10-mile commute to Woodland.

The Dragons team Clark will take on this winter was one of the big surprises of last year’s Eastern Maine Class C tournament. With a few skilled seniors and up-and-coming freshmen, No. 7 Woodland got to the regional final, where they lost to eventual state champion Calais.

Clark said he knows there are a lot of expectations for the squad, which is moving to Class D this winter.

“We’re just going to take one step at a time, and those are going to be baby steps,” he said. “We just want to build up the program, put them in a position where we are going to be competitive.”