The coordinator of the Big West’s best statistical pitching staff is leaving the University of Hawaii baseball team.

In an emotional decision, pitching coach Mathew Troupe and his wife Rachel are returning to Southern California to start a family.

“That’s our next step for us now,” Troupe said. “Now it’s time to head back home. Both of our families live in Southern California. I’m ready to be a dad and have a little Trouper.”

Despite being listed as a volunteer coach for budget considerations, Troupe began serving as the Rainbow Warriors’ pitching coach soon after Rich Hill was hired as head coach in June 2021. This season — the second in a row UH had a winning record in Big West play — the ’Bows led the conference with a 4.23 ERA. Their 237 strikeouts were the most since 2006.

Last year, starting pitchers Cade Halemanu and Blaze Koali‘i Pontes were selected in the Major League Baseball Draft for first-year players. In Big West play this season, Harry Gustin was fifth with a 2.62 ERA. Freshman left-hander Harrison Bodendorf was 4-1 with five saves and a 3.32 ERA as a starter-reliever against Big West opponents.

In the summer of 2018, Troupe wrote an email to Hill, who was the University of San Diego’s head coach at the time. “I wrote: Coach Hill, we never met in person, but my name is Mathew Troupe and blah, blah blah,” Troupe recalled. “He called me, I’m not kidding, a minute later and said, ‘Troupe, I remember you. I recruited you out of high school for a hot second.’”

Hill hired Troupe as USD’s director of baseball operations.

“I’ve been with him five years running,” Troupe said. “He’s a father figure to me. He’s unbelievable. True relationship, true friendship.”

Troupe said he has no immediate plans. “But if you put me in travel ball, I’m going to kick ass in travel ball,” he said. “I’m going to be around baseball. I’m a lifer now. I mean that in the most positive way.”

He added: “This place has meant the absolute world to me.”