Coach Trent Mongero, a former baseball player and founder of Dirt Bro Baseball and author of two books, Winning Baseball for Beginner to Intermediate Play and Winning Baseball for Intermediate to College Level, has spent decades crafting a notable path in the sport. With multiple Coach of the Year titles under his belt, Mongero's name has become synonymous with authentic player development, an authority he believes is built on his determination to prove what works.
Raised in a small upstate New York town, Mongero's journey began far from the baseball hotbeds. He highlights growing up in the shadow of his uncle, a college basketball star and longtime educator whose 42-year teaching career shaped the family's ethos. "He was my core inspiration," Mongero says. "I learned how to teach and break down skills from watching him." His father reinforced that same work ethic. "It really became three generations of instructors," he adds. By the time Mongero graduated from high school, he notes he was undersized, without any scholarships to guide him. In the face of that hurdle, he had developed an unwavering determination to create his own path.
That path, as he tells it, started with a willingness to walk into the unknown. "I walked on to not one, but three college programs, first two in Florida, including a junior college, and ultimately at the University of North Carolina Wilmington," he says, emphasizing the beginning of his collegiate baseball career. By the time of his junior-college fall season, he had been voted team captain by his teammates and awarded a full academic scholarship. In 1989, Mongero also earned the Conference Player of the Year award and then later a stint as an infielder in the Atlanta Braves' organization.
Yet his true calling, as he says, revealed itself the day he left his pro-career. "I had made a promise to myself when I graduated high school that when my playing career ends, I would become a coach, not in college or professional baseball, but at a high school," he recalls. "I went straight back and enrolled the next day," he says.
Over the next three decades, he remained committed to building a portfolio that echoed his passion for the sport. He was named in the ABCA/Diamond National High School Coach of the Year, achieved more than 500 wins, and two hall-of-fame inductions. He also became a main stage ABCA speaker, presenting to several thousand coaches in one session.
But the throughline of his story is teaching. His Dirt Bro Baseball academy, including top-level Infield schools, has been built on methods that he insists transfer directly into real-game performance. "I know what works," he says. "I'm almost 60 years old, I've been coaching 35 years, and I've applied all of this every single day with my own teams. It's not a theory. It's real."
It is that grounded philosophy, on-field tested, athlete-first, built on repetition and instinct, that he believes drives players and coaches to seek him out. "People contact me," he says. "The majority of these camps bring me back year after year."
The generational thread, running through his father and uncle, continues through his son, Taber. Following his father's journey, he became Georgia Player of the Year, then followed his father to UNC Wilmington, also as a shortstop. Today, he serves as Director of Player Development for the same Division I program.
That blend of lineage and development is now embedded in Dirt Bro Baseball, an expanding brand that includes infield academies, digital training, glove, and trainer lines. For Mongero, it all leads back to teaching kids how to play the game with precision and a love for the work.
"This is the culmination of everything I've ever done," he says. "The camps, the books, the coaching, it's all built on decades of experience. And I'm still doing it because I want to help players truly get better."
