March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Palombo a finalist for UM women’s basketball post

When Joanne Palombo-McCallie heard the University of Maine was looking for a new women’s basketball coach, the lure of returning to her native state motivated the fifth-year Auburn University assistant coach to send out her resume.

Palombo-McCallie, a former star guard at Brunswick High and the Big Ten’s Northwestern University, may get her chance to return to her home state as she is one of three finalists for the vacant UMaine head coaching post.

In a telephone interview from her Auburn office on Friday, Palombo-McCallie confirmed she was one of the finalists for the position which was vacated when fourth-year head coach Trish Roberts took the head coaching job at the University of Michigan.

“It’s a great opportunity,” said Palombo-McCallie. “I’ve been very fortunate that my career has moved quite rapidly in the coaching ranks. This is a tremendous chance for me to build a long-term thing. I understand the respect Maine gets on a nation-wide level and they’ve done a tremendous job. It’s a great place and a great state.”

Anne McCoy, head of the search committee, would neither confirm or deny Palombo-McCallie being a finalist, but she did say, “she is somebody we’d be interested in.

“We have a pretty good sense of the people we want to look at,” McCoy continued. “Who knows, though. We may have some other applications come through before Monday that may knock our socks off.”

The closing date for applications is June 8 with Maine officials hoping to have the new coach named before July 1.

After graduating from Brunswick High as a Bangor Daily News All-Maine first-team selection in 1983, Palombo took a scholarship offer from Northwestern in Chicago and became an All-Big Ten guard by her senior year.

Upon graduation, she worked for a year in the public sector while volunteering as an assistant coach for the Wildcats. Five years ago, she was hired as an assistant at Auburn, a Final Four participant in three of the last five women’s basketball seasons.


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