Deering High School has a new head boys basketball coach: Rich Henry, who has been the head coach at Waynflete for the past 21 seasons. Henry has extensive head coaching experience, compiling a 263-132 record at Waynflete, and led the Flyers to two state championship games, winning the Class C South championships in 2014 and 2016. With Henry at the helm, Waynflete’s teams qualified for the state tournament in 20 of the past 21 years.

“We are thrilled and honored to announce that Rich Henry will be the next head boys’ basketball coach at Deering High School,” said Michael Daly, Deering High’s athletics and co-curricular director. “Rich immediately connected with and impressed our hiring committee and basketball student-athletes during his interviews, and emerged as the ideal fit to be the new leader of Deering Boys Basketball. We are very confident that Coach Henry will take our program to new heights, re-energize and re-establish Deering Boys Basketball as an elite program in the state, while building on our program’s storied tradition in the city and state.”

Henry played collegiately at North Dakota State and at the University of Maine, where he was a 1,000 point scorer and was co-captain his senior year. He holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from the University of Maine. Beyond his impressive success as a high school coach and program builder, Henry previously was a highly successful business leader as well, holding senior executive roles at both Unum and Lincoln Financial Group. Henry currently resides in Cape Elizabeth.

“I’m very appreciative of my time at Waynflete. I wouldn’t leave except for an extraordinary opportunity and I think there is one at Deering, and I hope I’m up for the challenge.” Henry said he is excited about the move from Waynflete to Deering and coaching and connecting with the student-athletes in PPS, in part because Deering is a high school with a football program on the rise under coach Brendan Scully.

Henry played both basketball and football at John Marshall High in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a large inner-city public school much like Deering. “I had often thought about what it would be like coaching at a school with a larger population, and in particular, having played high school football myself, I thought it would be great with the cross-over athlete that you would find,” Henry said.

Daly added that Coach Henry’s teams have always played fundamentally sound team basketball and Henry will bring that approach to Deering to build the new team culture for and with the Rams.

Henry said, “We’ll talk about commitment and how every successful team I’ve had, it’s been the players driving the value system and the culture and holding each other accountable. Coaches set the stage for that, but if the players are able to drive the way we’re going to play, and stay true to it, and then have the commitment piece, that’s when we are able to kick into a different gear.”

The Portland Public Schools is Maine’s largest school district, with nearly 6,500 students, and it’s also the most diverse. About one-third of the district’s students come from homes where languages other than English are spoken—a total of 59 languages. Approximately 47 percent of the district’s students are white and 53 percent are students of color. More than half of all PPS students are economically disadvantaged.