Colby College (Maine) Retires After 40 Years, 637 Wins

WATERVILLE -- Colby College men’s  basketball coach Dick Whitmore, who has 637 career wins, has announced his retirement.

Whitmore spent his entire 40-year college career at Colby, compiling a record of 637-341. He is seventh all-time in career wins among NCAA Division III men’s basketball coaches and began the 2010-2011 season ranked 46th in all NCAA divisions for career wins, according to a press release from Colby.

“Dick Whitmore is Colby men’s basketball and he is Colby athletics,” Colby athletic director Marcella Zalot said in a press release. “There is no way to quantify the impact that Whit has had on so many students over his forty years, or the impact he has had on the members of our coaching staff at Colby, the local community, and basketball in the state of Maine.

Whitmore finishes his career with 31 winning seasons and his Colby teams reached the postseason 27 times. He was inducted into the Maine Sports Hall of Fame in 1998 and was in the inaugural class of the New England Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002.

Whitmore is a 1965 graduate of Bowdoin College, where he scored more than 1,000 points. He came to Colby in 1970 after five years of teaching and coaching at high schools in Hallowell and Bath.