A familiar face will be guiding the Laurel Locomotives during their inaugural high school baseball season in the spring.
Matt Kimmet, who coached the Laurel Dodgers to three-straight State A American Legion baseball championships from 2009-11 and then coached the Class AA Billings Royals to second-place state finishes in 2015 and 2014, was hired to lead the Locomotives at a school board meeting Monday night.
“We are super excited. He brings a lot of baseball knowledge to the kids in baseball and overall baseball knowledge,” said Laurel activities director Andrew Torgerson. “How he is with the kids, interacting with them. He is a teacher at the high school. Just that relationship he’ll have with the kids starting off this program will be huge.”
Kimmet was 216-108-2 with the Dodgers in six seasons as their manager. His last three seasons included a record of 163-41 as the Dodgers won three-straight state crowns.
As the Royals coach, Kimmet led his team to a 97-29 record in two years.
Kimmet is a Class of 2000 Laurel High School graduate and he graduated from Rocky Mountain College in 2005. He was a quarterback at Rocky.
Kimmet currently teaches at Laurel High School and is an assistant coach on the football team.
It appears the Locomotives will play close to home as Torgerson said the Laurel school system “is working on a contract with the Laurel Dodgers to be able to use their field right across the street (at Thomson Park).”
The Locomotives baseball team will be self-funded for at least two years “and then we’ll rope it into our athletics and activities funds,” Torgerson said.
Torgerson said that “enthusiasm is really high” in the community for Laurel baseball and so far “supporters of Laurel baseball” have raised enough money for the first year and are continuing fundraising.
“We’ll have enough money to sustain baseball,” Torgerson said.
“We are excited for baseball to get started at the high school level,” Torgerson said. “It is Laurel High School baseball, but I constantly call it ‘Laurel baseball.’ It will improve the baseball going into the summer and the kids are excited about it.”
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