Bowdoin’s first star on the hardcourt, Dick Whitmore made his
mark on the Bowdoin record books as a player and then became one of
the greatest coaches in collegiate basketball history—at a
certain school to the north.
Established in the early 1940s, Bowdoin’s basketball program
mired through losing seasons in 26 of its first 27 campaigns. It
wasn’t until the arrival of head coach Ray Bicknell, and a
high-scoring forward from Archbishop Williams in Braintree,
Massachusetts, in 1962, that the team vaulted into legitimacy.
Whitmore did it all, leading the team in scoring and rebounding all
three seasons he played on the varsity squad. He graduated
first in career rebounds (622) and second in career points (1,028),
marks that still rank among the finest in school history. In 1963,
he helped lead the Polar Bears to their first-ever Maine State
Championship and lay the groundwork for some of the program’s
finest teams in the late 1960s.
After five years of teaching and coaching at high schools in
Hallowell and Bath,Whitmore became the head coach at Colby in 1970
and over the next 40 years accumulated 637 victories. His career
wins total ranks seventh all-time in Division III history and 46th
across all divisions of the NCAA. He also served as Colby’s
director of athletics from 1987 to 2002 and served 40,000 young
athletes as co-director of the Pine Tree Basketball Clinic from
1974 to 2011.
Whitmore was an inaugural inductee into the New England Basketball
Hall of Fame in 2002 and has also been honored by theMaine Sports
Hall of Fame, where he currently serves as president.
