New Hampshire Institute of Technology is often a stepping stone for students to become something new. A plumber. A nurse. An X-ray technician or a history teacher.
For Kieth Matte, however, the two-year college in Concord is a place to return to what he was before — a basketball coach.
During 24 years at Lebanon High, he won three state titles as the boys hoops boss while also serving as a physics teacher and assistant principal. Matte departed in 2023.
He said a separation agreement prevents him from detailing why and Lebanon School District officials would only say that the move was in the parties’ “respective best interests.”
Matte served two years as principal at Groveton High in northern New Hampshire, leaving at the end of the 2024-25 school year to join NHTI. Lynx athletic director Annie Mattarazzo said his was one of more than 50 applications.
“I wasn’t really looking, but I missed coaching a lot more than I thought I would,” Matte said. “If NHTI hadn’t opened up, I’d still be (at Groveton) today. I was surprised I got the job because they usually give these opportunities to the young, beautiful people. But I think they wanted someone with organizational leadership and ties to the state.”
Matte worked the phones and internet feverishly throughout the summer to assemble a 15-man roster that includes seven Granite State natives, including 2025 Newport High graduate Christian Forsythe. There are also players from Connecticut, California and New York.
Instructing them as an assistant coach is Matte’s son, K.J., who starred for his father at Lebanon before playing at Maine’s Bowdoin College. He now works as a multi-language learning teacher at a Manchester elementary school.
Kieth Matte, 56, began receiving his educator’s pension upon retirement. He’s also kept his house in the New London area and moving back into it allows him to see more of K.J. and his 2-year old grandson, Kairo.
(Matte’s daughter, Alexa, played basketball at Sunapee’s Mount Royal Academy and attends Rutgers (N.J.) University law school.)
K.J. Matte, 28, is tasked with developing players’ individual skills and helping them learn his father’s sped-up version of the “Princeton offense,” which emphasizes constant player and ball motion, back-door cuts, picks on and off the ball and disciplined teamwork.
“Our players are doing their best to latch on to the system, but it takes some time,” K.J. Matte said. “It challenges them to think a step ahead but the spacing and timing and cutting should get you open threes and layups.”
If Lebanon students could grasp and implement the attack, why might it be tougher with college kids?
For one, every player at NHTI was previously a star somewhere else and all realize eye-catching individual statistics are the fastest way out of the junior-college ranks.
Second, even if teenage standouts are willing to embrace complementary roles, they’re having to perfect them in game situations.
“K.J. knows the system as well as anyone and the fact that he’s been a player in this system, he can step out on the floor and demonstrate,” Kieth Matte said of his son. “It’s a perfect fit.”
The season’s started rough for the Lynx, who dropped their first two games, both Yankee Small College Conference matchups.
The team’s best player flunked out of school before season began, not an unusual development at a level where many competitors land because of academic shortcomings.
The team’s second contest was a 100-76 beatdown by Central Maine, which fed NHTI more of the same from last winter, when it finished 2-14 in conference play.
Kieth Matte points out, however, that the program won national titles in 2005 and 2020 and was 21-5 just two seasons ago.
One of the current Lynx helping with a turnaround is Newport’s Forsythe, who was recruited by NHTI’s previous coaches.
The 6-foot-4, 175-pound forward found himself with few other offers despite averaging 20 points per NHIAA Division IV game and earning all-state honors at Newport last winter. He averaged 12 minutes and 2.0 points during his team’s first two games, starting once.
“I kept myself from reaching out to schools, out of stupidity,” said Forsythe, a business administration major who lives in an on-campus dormitory and is taking classes in accounting, communications and math. “I was definitely hesitant, because it’s a completely new setting and these guys are way better than the competition I was going up against. But I’ve realized I can hang with these guys.”
Kieth Matte said Forsythe quickly showed he’s wiling to corral loose balls and won’t slow down if there’s a collision involved. The coach expects the freshman to start regularly before the season ends.
“He’s a better than average athlete at this level, even though he’s only 18,” Matte said. “He does not back down. His one speed is 100 mph and he’s a joy to coach. He’s won the respect of older, city kids with tough backgrounds.”
Kieth Matte began his coaching career in the AAU ranks and became New England College’s hoops boss at age 25. He had signed up to be the program’s assistant shortly before the head coach suddenly resigned. The Pilgrims won a combined five games in his two seasons there but Matte called it a “formative experience” and said he’s never learned more than during those struggles.
“In the back of my mind, I wanted to try college coaching again but I never thought it would happen,” Matte said. “But life’s a funny thing.”
Tris Wykes can be reached at ctwykes@aol.com.