DELAND — He never lacks energy, has plenty of enthusiasm, and preaches positivity.
But, believe it or not, Stetson second-year head coach Steve Trimper does have a mean streak to him. It’s just been dormant for nearly two decades.
“Well, I have broken my hand in the dugout,” he laughed. “That’s when I was coaching in Manhattan. I got so mad at a guy that I punched the dugout. I had to get surgery the next day. That was probably 2001 and that was the last time.”
To be fair, Trimper, 48, hasn’t had many reasons to punch anything this season.
Fresh off the first regional title in program history, the Hatters, who own the nation’s longest win streak at 18, are now just two wins away from a trip to the College World Series. It’s a far cry, to say the least, from where the team finished the 2017 season – 27-29, and was eliminated from the ASUN tournament after just one day.
“It was a tough situation for him,” said former coach Pete Dunn. “Coming in January of last year, meeting players for first time and saying hey, I’m your new head coach. They’d already gone through the entire fall with me, and didn’t even lay eyes on Steve until January. It was a challenging situation for him and the club.”
Dunn decided to step down after 37 years at the tail end of 2016, but was part of the committee tasked to find a new coach. The longtime skipper was familiar with Trimper after facing him at the University of Maine numerous times over the past decade, and admitted he was impressed whenever he was in town.
“I knew what kind of club they had, the personality and the discipline,” he remembered. “It was all the things I appreciated as a coach. As the (interview) process progressed, it was obvious that he was certainly a guy that could lead the program.”
The ability to teach, and lead, are skills Trimper said he acquired nearly three decades ago, during his first assistant coaching gig at Wentworth Institute of Technology, in Boston.
“I couldn’t pay the bills, so I took another job across the street with my Physical Education degree, at a place called the Manville School, which is inside Children’s Hospital,” said Trimper, who was an outfielder for Eastern Connecticut State before moving to Boston.
“It was an emotionally disturbed, non-residential school. Kids that got kicked out of Boston public schools went there, so I had ages 6-18, and they were some tough cookies. You had to teach, you had to mentor and you had to council. I was the dude that, when a kid wasn’t having a good day in class and was standing on the desk, I had to get him out. It made me learn, and made me appreciate how to teach.”
Trimper left Wentworth and took his first head coaching job at Manhattan College in 1999, where he led the Jaspers to the MAAC Tournament in each of his last three years, including a school-record 32 wins in 2002. In 2006, Trimper left to take the head coaching job at the University of Maine, where he would win 309 games over the next 11 years.
“(At Maine) I took over for the guy who originally took over for John Winkin,” Trimper said of Maine’s longtime skipper, who coached from 1975-96. “I think one of the biggest things I learned at a young age was not to try to emulate anybody else, just be you, and I like to be energetic and positive.”
Pitching coach Dave Therneau said that style relates well to “today’s player.”
“It’s old-school vs. new-school,” he added. “Trimp is a lot more new-school in how he handles players and handles the game itself.”
Junior outfielder Jacob Koos, who was a freshman during Dunn’s final season, said it took some getting used to when the team first got together during Trimper’s first season.
“Man, they’re two phenomenal coaches,” Koos said of Trimper and Dunn. “But they’re also two very different coaches. Pete is the older guy who's a little tougher on you. He wants you to succeed, but he goes at it a little different way than Trimper. He’s younger, relates to use a little more. They both coach in their own ways, and it’s been great seeing both sides of that spectrum.”
Senior catcher Austin Hale said the team has fed off of Trimper’s energy this season.
“When Coach Trimper came in, it was really just a different style,” he said. “The whole millennial age now, you have to adapt to it, and Coach Trimper does a great job with that. He’s high-energy, high-focus, all the time. But that’s kind of what you need.”
Trimper admitted his personality can sometimes “tick some people off,” but said he’s been this way since he was a player at Eastern Connecticut.
“I wasn’t the most gifted player,” he said. “I wasn’t a starter. We played on a national championship team, and I had to grind my way up. I was a defensive replacement guy until I earned a starting spot my junior year. I just always wanted to out-work the people around me, and I saw at a young age that, if you did that, it not only helped yourself out, but it also made the organization better.”