LEBANON — Lebanon High baseball has found its next coach.
Raider athletic director Mike Stone announced on Wednesday that Travis Pelletier, the former Rivendell Academy and Kearsarge High coach who wrapped up his fourth Lebanon Post 22 junior American Legion campaign last summer, will be taking over. Pelletier fills the void left after longtime coach Doug Ashey died in October from cancer.
“He’s well-qualified and will do a good job,” Stone said in a phone interview. “He’s got a lot of varsity experience. He has a really strong baseball background. He’s familiar with what we want to accomplish here.”
Pelletier was a three-sport athlete at Lebanon High and graduated in 2003. He went on to play second base at Keene State College for three years and also spent five seasons competing for Post 22 under another former Raider, coach Dustin Broughton. After college, Pelletier returned home and guided his alma mater’s junior varsity baseball team for five years.
After that stint, Pelletier spent a season managing Rivendell, then moved to Kearsarge for seven years. He works at Silver Screen, LLC, a screen-printing company in White River Junction, and lives just outside Lebanon.
Pelletier’s last two years as a Raider player coincided with Ashey’s first two as varsity coach.
“I’m excited to take over but, at the same time, I’m saddened by the loss of Doug,” the 35-year-old Pelletier said in a phone interview on Wednesday afternoon. “Playing for him and coaching with him, he became a mentor to me, somebody I looked up to. You don’t fill the shoes of a guy like that. … I hope to continue in the right direction with what he’s done, but you certainly can’t replace somebody like that.”
Pelletier takes over a program that went 181-128 in Ashey’s 18 years at the helm. The Raiders reached the 2012 NHIAA Division II finals but lost in extra innings.
Lebanon was 10-8 last spring and fell to John Stark in the quarterfinals but only had two seniors.
“Anytime you lose someone like Doug, and the way it happened, it’s an unfortunate tragedy,” Stone said. “It makes it sad to think about (baseball). The program is in good hands, though.”
Pelletier said taking the Lebanon job will result in his giving up the Lebanon Post 22 role he’s held the past four summers.
“I think, in order to put a fuller effort into this, I wanted to be able to take the summer off and either watch kids playing on every team or starting to work farther down the youth program,” he said.
Pelletier said he’d talked with Ashey about succeeding him at some point when the two were both coaching in the Raiders’ system. It took some time to commit to applying after his mentor’s death, but Pelletier’s happy he did.
“We were all grieving, and it wasn’t appropriate to think about the job,” Pelletier remarked. “It’s something I’d discussed with him in the past, maybe follow in his footsteps when he retired. As time went on, I thought it was the right decision to really go for it.“
The Raiders open the season on April 13 at Manchester West.
Sports editor Greg Fennell contributed to this story.
Pete Nakos can be reached at pnakos@vnews.com.