LYNN — Lynn Classical announced over the weekend that it has hired Peabody resident and former Pelham, N.H. baseball coach Joe Morin as its new head softball coach.
Morin takes over for Erica Richard, who stepped down over the winter break after seven seasons at the helm.
“I’m excited to join the family at Lynn Classical and become a part of a program that has been very successful over the years,” said Morin, who teaches at an elementary school in Lawrence. “I initially wasn’t looking to leave my job at Pelham, but I’m expecting a baby in April and I was looking into working closer to home and this job came up. It’s a great opportunity.”
The head baseball coach at Pelham for the past six seasons, Morin took over a program that was one of the worst in New Hampshire’s Division 3. After moving up to Division 2 and building the program up, the Pythons have made the state tournament in each of the past three seasons.
But it’s not only baseball that Morin is familiar with. He’s also been a coach with the highly-successful New England Storm AAU program for the past nine years, and he even knows one of the players he’ll be coaching at Classical in Mekayla Poisson.
“It’s an exciting thing to not really know anyone and get to meet them all for the first time, but it’s also a little comforting knowing that I know at least one girl on the team,” said Morin.
As was the case with his teams at Pelham and with the Storm, Morin is planning to employ an aggressive style of play — particularly on the basepaths.
“Teams that I’ve coached have always been aggressive in terms of stealing bases, but obviously that’s a little different in baseball so we’ll have to adjust a bit,” said Morin. “But we’ll always try to take the extra base and force the defense to try to make a play.”
But for now, the plan is to get to know all of his new players and start to communicate with the team about offseason plans. As the rules are different in New Hampshire in regards to offseason workouts, Morin is familiarizing himself with the MIAA rules before jumping into action.
“For Pelham, we’ve been having offseason workouts since January,” said Morin. “So obviously I have to familiarize myself with the MIAA rules to make sure we’re doing everything right, but the idea is to do as much as we can, as early as we can. Whether it’s captains’ practices or whatever they’ll allow, we want to get to work as soon as possible.”
Full team practices for the spring season are set to begin in late March.
