The East Hampton School Board at its meeting Tuesday night rehired Bill McKee to coach the high school’s varsity boys basketball team and hired Matthew Shimkus to coach the varsity girls tennis team.
McKee, 67, a longtime assistant of the late Ed Petrie who became the head coach in 2010 and retired from that job in 2016 — after that year’s team played for the county Class A championship — said Wednesday morning that he very much wants to revive the program, from the ground up.
“We’re going to start open gyms soon for as many nights a week as we can,” he said, “and we’re going to revive the Biddy program at John Marshall. My goal is to put consistently competitive teams on the court, and to do that you need kids to play as much as they can to be competitive.”
After East Hampton’s former coach, Dan White, recently resigned so that he could coach at Pierson (Sag Harbor) High School again, Kathy Masterson, the district’s athletic director, asked McKee to come back, he said, adding that “if Kathy asks you, you can’t say no.” His wife, Lisa, had also said he should do it. And he couldn’t say no to her either, McKee said with a laugh.
McKee’s salary is to be $10,027. The job, he said when he retired from it in the spring of 2016, is a year-round, seven-day-a-week one. McKee retired as a high school physical education teacher several years after retiring from coaching. His wife continues to teach at the John M. Marshall Elementary School here.
As for an assistant, “I think there are plenty of people who would be good . . . Kathy and I will be discussing that. . . . I think we can get the program to where it will be consistently competitive.”
Shimkus, a special education teacher at the high school, was hired by the board on Tuesday at a salary of $8,356 to replace Kevin McConville as the varsity girls tennis coach. He could not immediately be reached.
McConville, a popular teaching pro, had success with the varsity girls and boys programs — the boys were one of the county’s top three teams in the spring. But he said he was told recently by Masterson and the assistant high school principal, Ralph Naglieri, that they wanted the program to go in a different direction.
The school board on Tuesday also hired Rob Rivera as a junior varsity football assistant at a salary of $5,095.
