Port Huron baseball hires familiar face in Kevin Goulding as its next coach
A new chapter for the Port Huron baseball team is about to be written by an old colleague.
The Big Reds have hired Kevin Goulding as their next coach. He takes over for Tony Moncrief, who led the program for the past two seasons. The school made the announcement on its Facebook page Thursday.
"I'm excited for the opportunity and honored to be chosen for it," Goulding said. "I'm looking forward to keeping the tradition of Port Huron baseball and getting it back to where it's been going again. It's an honor. I'm thrilled to be chosen."
"Kevin coaches multiple sports at (Port Huron) and he's been a part of the baseball program for seven years," Port Huron athletic director Randi Kaufmann said. "He knows the kids, he's invested in them and he's just a great fit. There are a lot of ties that made him the perfect candidate for that position."
Goulding was the junior varsity baseball coach for the past two years, after having served the previous five as an assistant.
But that represents just a fraction of the time he's spent at his alma mater. Goulding has been with the football program for over 25 years and is also the junior varsity coach for boys basketball.
"He has a lot of knowledge of the sport," Kaufmann said. "With all of his past experiences, his coaching and the relationships with students and athletes, I think he brings a lot with him."
Goulding has prior experience with upperclassmen currently on the baseball roster, coaching eight of them. Five of those players are juniors in Peyton Mullins, Isaiah Hernandez, Amauri Haller, Griffin Hansel and Gavin Troy.
"It's a great group of kids," Goulding said. "They're familiar with me and I'm familiar with them. They want to be successful. That's the biggest step right there is getting the kids to buy in."
The next step — offseason training — won't begin until November. But Goulding already has a foundation on which to build.
"It's always been a strong tradition," Goulding said of Port Huron baseball. "The biggest thing I'm going to preach is that we're going to play hard, we're going to be competitive and we're going to be aggressive. But we're going to play with class and make the high school proud."
Contact Brenden Welper at bwelper@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @BrendenWelper.
This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: Port Huron baseball hires Kevin Goulding as its next coach
