Peter Murray has never seen anything like it. Three varsity boys basketball coaches in Maine resigned in a span of six days, barely a week into the 2025-26 season.

“It’s unprecedented. This has never happened before,” said Murray, the president of the Maine Association of Basketball Coaches.

The high school regular season started Dec. 5. Four days later, both Brewer coach Carl Parker and John Bapst coach Chris Bryant resigned. Parker’s resignation, announced by the school, was for unspecified “personal reasons.” Bryant said he felt compelled to resign after being suspended from coaching the first two games because of parents complaining about two separate practice situations.

Then on Monday, Oceanside’s Larry Reed, who directed the Mariners to back-to-back Class B South championships in 2023 and 2024, announced he was resigning because of ongoing parental concerns.

Murray coached basketball for 40 seasons at Dexter High, retiring after the 2023-24 season. He said the “most troubling aspect” is that the resignations have come so early in the season.

“It’s one thing for coaches to finish out the season and decide, ‘No, I don’t want to do this.’ But to be elevated to such a level that they feel the need to leave right now, I have a problem with that.”

The resignations prompted Camden Hills athletic director Jeff Hart to post a letter to the school’s athletic Facebook page urging his school community to remember that coaching at the high school level is “demanding,” and is not improved “by public or private criticism from the sidelines, social media, or informal conversations.”

Hart won 502 games over 37 seasons as the boys basketball coach at Camden-Rockport and Camden Hills before taking the athletic director’s job in 2019. He said he’s never seen such early-season resignations.

Hart said even though Camden Hills has not experienced similar issues, “It was kind of shocking to me and I wanted to remind my community of what the expectation was, that we need to try to be good to people and good to people who are really working hard at their craft.”

Murray said coaches receiving criticism is nothing new. What’s different now is that the complaints tend to be more personal and more immediate. Hart noted they also are easily amplified across social media platforms.

“I don’t think second-guessing basketball coaches is anything new, but in the old days, it would be at the coffee shop the day after the game,” said Murray, who is 66. “Now parents are a little more willing to be confrontational.”

Murray added, “If I’m going to be contacted after every practice, spoken to after every game, questioned constantly. … Those are the straws that break the camel’s back. Basketball is a long season. Do you want four months of this?”

The turnover rate for basketball coaches in Maine is already high. This season there are 18 new girls coaches and 24 new boys coaches, said George Conant, the MABC’s executive director. That’s a 13.8% turnover for girls and 18.5% for boys. In 2024-25 there were a total of 54 new coaches. And coaching vacancies are increasingly hard to fill.

“One of my questions is always, if we get rid of this coach, who do you think is going to replace him?” Hart said.

The growth of pay-to-play club sports also changes the dynamic. Parents can invest large amounts of time and money into a sport before their son or daughter ever reaches high school.

“There are a lot of outstanding parents who do get it,” Hart said. “But I also think there are many who think it’s an extension of club sports and they’re going to have a say in who the coach will be, and if there’s a problem they’re going to fix it for their kid.”

Hart said he works to establish a protocol for player-coach and parent-coach interactions. Coaches should have an open-door policy for their players, and student-athletes should learn to self-advocate. If a parent has a concern, Hart wants the parent to come to him as the athletic director first. If Hart believes the parent concern warrants action, then the coach is informed. Occasionally, Hart will mediate a coach-parent meeting.

“I know some (parents) don’t like it. Some would like to have the opportunity to walk in and talk to the coach whenever they want, but that’s not fair. Coaches can be in charge of dozens of kids,” Hart said.

Bryant, 42, has coached basketball for over 20 years, including a seven-year stint as a college assistant at Husson. He said he would have welcomed talking directly to the “vocal minority” of John Bapst parents unsatisfied with his coaching style.

Bryant said he purposely kicked a ball against the gym wall during a water break because he hoped to snap his team out of a lackluster effort in the final practice before the season opener at Fort Kent. The result, Bryant said, was he got called into Bapst athletic director Dan O’Connell’s office and told parents had complained about his “aggressive” coaching style.

Bryant said he was surprised to be told he would not be coaching in the season opener but “we moved on, and I was still optimistic about our season.

“Then we had our best practice of the year and the AD came in the gym and I said, ‘Dan, this practice is so good, I hope you get two calls tomorrow telling you how good it is.'”

Instead, O’Connell received complaints claiming Bryant had disparaged a player for being on the third team. Bryant was told he wouldn’t coach in the second game at Waterville, either.

“I did nothing wrong with that practice, and they still made up issues,” Bryant said, adding he knew then he did not have administrative support and needed to resign.

At Oceanside, Reed was four games into his seventh season as the varsity coach after 15 years as an assistant in the program known for its fast-paced, high-scoring style.

Reed told the Midcoast Villager that he had been criticized by parents at the end of last season, and issues got worse after Saturday’s loss to Leavitt when a group of parents criticized Reed’s decisions about who played and how much they played.

Reed, who did not respond to the Press Herald’s interview request, told the Midcoast Villager he always felt supported by Oceanside administrators, including current athletic director Troy Smith and principal Jesse Bartke.

“The kids are never, ever the problem. The kids are great,” Reed was quoted as saying. “The kids understand (their roles). … Parents never get that. They want kids to be superstars in their freshman and sophomore years.”