ROCKLAND – Matt Breen was a youngster himself the last time Rockland District High School achieved the ultimate schoolboy basketball glory – the Class B state championship the Tigers won in 1992.

It was a title run rooted in the continuity throughout the program from peewees to the varsity, a form of continuity Breen wants to restore at his alma mater.

“I’d like to get the kids committed to basketball again,” said Breen, a 1997 RDHS graduate whose nomination to become the Tigers’ boys varsity coach was approved by the SAD 5 board of directors Thursday evening.

“The commitment hasn’t really been there recently, and I can’t say I blame them because we’ve had some ups and downs the last few years.”

Rockland finished 5-13 last winter and hasn’t had a winning season since 2000, in part due to instability within the coaching ranks.

Breen will become Rockland’s fourth boys varsity coach in less than two years. He replaces Casey Morrill, who took the job on an interim basis last year after Karl Henrikson resigned before coaching a single game at Rockland to become the men’s basketball coach at the University of Southern Maine.

Henrikson had replaced Donald “Buddy” Wood, who wasn’t rehired after three years with the Tigers.

Breen split time between the varsity and subvarsity as a freshman at Rockland, then played three more years at the varsity level and scored more than 1,000 career points under coaches Don Guilford and Larry Terrio.

He went on to a successful basketball career at Bangor-based Husson College, from where he graduated in 2001. He was a two-year starter at power forward who helped coach Warren Caruso’s Braves earn three straight trips to the NAIA Division II Men’s National Basketball Tournament. Breen also earned Academic All-American status while at Husson.

Breen broke into the coaching ranks last winter, serving as Rockland’s boys junior varsity coach.

“I learned there are a lot of challenges, and that it’s a lot easier coaching from the stands than it is from the bench,” Breen said.

Now as the leader of the Rockland program, Breen wants to create linkages from the high school varsity to the youth ranks, including having varsity players serve as assistant coaches in the local pee wee program.

Breen also hopes to build up participation in basketball at the high school level. He estimated that between 20 and 25 players filled out the freshman, junior varsity and varsity squads last winter, meaning that several junior varsity players also played on the varsity and several freshman also played at the junior varsity level.

Breen has organized a local summer basketball program that currently meets twice a week to enable the players to become familiar with his basketball plans, and he hopes to schedule some scrimmages with other teams during the summer.

“We want to be pretty disciplined,” he said. “We’re small and fast, but we’re probably not going to run as much as people may expect.”