Coal Ridge baseball coach retires one year after first title run in program history

Almost one year to the day after Dan Larsen led the Coal Ridge Titans varsity baseball team to their first state title in program history, he announced he would pass over the lineup card and hang up his New Balance shoes. 

The longtime head coach announced his retirement in May to spend more time with his family. 

“It was just time,” Larsen explained. “My whole plan and goal was to just give this area and this community a baseball program that could be what it could be. There’s a lot of great athletes in this area, and I just wanted to build up a program for the kids in the community.”

Larsen initially fell in love with the game because of his older brother. As the ballboy for his older brother’s teams, he felt the dugout culture and saw the failure-driven sport from up close at a young age — something that he chased for the rest of his life. 

“I think (baseball) is the greatest game there is,” Larsen said. “Everything you need to be successful in life is wrapped up in the game; it’s very failure-driven, and to play the game you have to be able to deal with that.”

Larsen’s love for the game is infectious, so much so that even his wife is watching over 100 Colorado Rockies games per year. 

“I will never stop loving it,” he continued. “I watch baseball every night, and I think my wife now even watches 100 Rockies games per year and probably knows more than a lot of people around here. I’ve always wanted to share that love of the game with the community. I’ve never been a person that wants to go coach somewhere else; I was just driven to help these kids in the community that I live in.”

He said he was lucky enough to have coaches that inspired that lasting love for the game in him at a young age. So when his wife showed him the opportunity to coach, and he saw the program up close, he could not turn it down. 

“I played with some great coaches who taught me the game, how to play it and what it means, and it came to a point where my wife, who teaches here in the school district, was bugging me about the job opportunity to coach Coal Ridge baseball,” Larsen said. 

“So I went over to watch them play, and I felt a calling to share the knowledge that I have with the community here,” he continued. “That is how I got started, and then suddenly 15 years went by.”

During Larsen’s time at the helm, he said he was told countless times that Coal Ridge could not compete with the Front Range programs that had hundreds of players to choose from. 

Larsen and the Titans silenced all the noise in 2025, when they claimed the program’s first baseball state title. 

The group began its run back in Little League, when it nearly reached Williamsport, Pennsylvania for the Little League World Series. They continued to grow and finally climbed to the top of the mountain following three straight years of dominating the competition.

From 2023-2025, the Titans won the 3A Western Slope League twice, and lost just four regular season games. In 2023, Larsen was named the 3A Western Slope Coach of the Year, and following the 2025 title run, he was named the 3A Coach of the Year. 

He called the title one of the highlights of his athletic career. 

“It still hasn’t fully settled in,” Larsen said about the state championship. “I always use the phrase with the kids, ‘When you’re 25, and you look back on this, that’s when it will really kick in, and you’ll realize what you guys accomplished.’

“We are a small town that gets their kids from Riverside Middle School, and we’re competing with the Eatons and the Universities, and these programs that have 60 to 70 kids coming out for baseball every year, while we had 23 this year. It’s definitely still setting in. It’s one of the highlights of my athletic career, and being able to share that and all the accolades with the kids feels pretty special.”

Larsen will always hold the state title experience close to his heart, but even closer will be his grandson, one of the main reasons he decided to hang up his cleats. Luckily for the baseball community, his grandson won’t let him off the coaching hook. 

“The tipping point to me was my grandson being born. I’m not going to miss anything of his,” Larsen said. “He’s been coming to my games, so we got him a little tee, and now every time I come over, he grabs the tee, and he wants to play baseball. 

“So that’s what it ended up coming down to,” he continued. “I want to spend more time with my family, more time with my grandson. I think the program’s in a good spot, and there are a lot of good coaches that can take over and make it even better. Whoever is coaching the kids next year can put me on speed dial, and if they need me to come back for a day and work on something, I’ll be happy to do so.”

Original reporting from postindependent.com