It appears as though Steve Trimper’s days of donning Under Armour and a winter jacket during baseball games is over.
College Baseball Daily and D1baseball.com reported on Friday that the veteran coach is leaving the University of Maine to become the head coach at Stetson University in Deland, Florida.
Trimper could not be reached for comment on Friday evening, and UMaine athletics director Karlton Creech said via text message that he would not respond to rumors.
Stetson University athletics announced on Friday that it would reveal its next head baseball coach in a 10 a.m. press conference on Monday.
Trimper reportedly was selected from among a group of five finalists that included Florida State associate head coach Mike Bell, former major league administrator and scout Todd Greene, Stetson associate head coach and recruiting coordinator Mark Leavitt and minor league manager Jeff Smith, a former Stetson star.
Trimper has spent the last 11-plus seasons at UMaine, directing the Black Bears to an overall record of 309-292-2. His teams won America East championships in 2006 and 2011, earning trips to the NCAA tournament.
Associate head coach Nick Derba, who is in his fourth season at UMaine, would appear to be a candidate to replace Trimper, at least on an interim basis.
UMaine finished sixth in the conference last spring and was eliminated from the America East tournament in two games. It was the third consecutive year the Black Bears failed to win a postseason game.
At Stetson, a Division I program that competes in the Atlantic Sun Conference, Trimper will replace Pete Dunn, who coached the Hatters for 37 years before announcing earlier this week that he would step down immediately. Dunn’s teams compiled a 1,312-888-3 record and 17 NCAA tournament appearances.
Stetson had won at least 26 games each of the last four seasons under the 68-year-old Dunn, who in 2014 was inducted into the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame, but has finished under .500 every year since going 35-23 in 2011-12.
Trimper in April had agreed to a three-year contract extension at UMaine that was to pay him $86,995 per year through June 30, 2019.
Trimper, who serves as the Northeast Chair of the American Baseball Coaches Association, was named the 2013 America East Coach of the Year after the Black Bears posted a 37-22 record, including a 20-9 league mark.
At UMaine, Trimper has helped produce 17 players who have been selected in the Major League Baseball amateur draft.
Trimper owns a career coaching record of 481-467-3, which includes a 172-175-1 mark at Manhattan College in New York, where he headed the Jaspers program from 1999-2005. He previously served as an assistant coach at the University of Vermont (1994-98) and was the associate head coach at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston 1992-94.
The New Jersey native is a 1992 graduate of Eastern Connecticut State University with a degree in physical education. He played three seasons for coach Bill Holowaty and competed on the Warriors’ 1990 NCAA Division III national championship team. He also played one year at Elon College.
Trimper, who earned a master’s in administration from Vermont, until recently lived in Bangor with his wife, Lisa, and twin daughters, Ally and Morgan, who attend the Taft School in Connecticut.