It’s hard enough to be selected for one hall of fame.
Well, Livonia Franklin baseball coach Matt Fournier will be inducted into two in 2026.
Now in his 20th season leading the Patriots, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame for the Michigan High School Baseball Coaches Association, an organization where he has been a longtime member of the executive board, most recently serving as treasurer. The organization educates up-and-coming coaches while also serving players, including selecting All-State teams and putting on the annual East-West All-Star Game, set for its 45th year at Comerica Park, home of the Detroit Tigers.
He was inducted Jan. 10 alongside Lake Orion’s Andy Schramack, Traverse City St. Francis’ Tom Passinault, Northville’s Bill Flohr, Remus Chippewa Hills’ Ben Wright and Vicksburg’s Brian Deal.
Shortly after, Fournier learned he would be part of the fourth class inducted into Franklin’s Athletics Hall of Fame during halftime of the varsity football team’s Sept. 18 game against rival Livonia Stevenson, joining four athletes, two administrators, former Hometown Life sports editor Brad Emons and the 1990 softball team (more on that squad in a minute).
“It definitely wasn’t expected, and it was never really a goal once we got started with this,” Fournier said before a 5-1 win over White Lake Lakeland on April 17. “We just wanted to find a way to make the program the best that we can and give as many kids the opportunity to play and move on to the next level. We just wanted to build this into a better all-around program.”
Fournier has certainly done that since moving to Livonia with his family in 1988.
He attended Emerson Middle School, where he has taught for the past two decades, before moving on to Franklin, where he starred on the baseball team before graduating in 1993. While he was never an all-state caliber recruit, he was good enough to walk on at Wayne State, where he played from 1994 to 1997 before graduating in 1998. While never pitching a single game for the Patriots, he became a reliable arm for the Warriors for four seasons.
After one year of student teaching, he earned a job with Livonia Public Schools as an elementary teacher but joined some of his college buddies at West Bloomfield coaching baseball, basketball and football. Eventually, those drives from south Livonia to the far reaches of the Oakland Activities Association, like Clarkston, Lake Orion and Oxford, during rush hour became too much and he joined Franklin’s baseball coaching staff.
“It was so hard to get all the way to Oxford from where I was teaching in Livonia,” Fournier said. “Sometimes I wouldn’t get there until just before the first pitch or the end of the first inning.”
Travel wasn’t an issue when he became an assistant under then-varsity coach Paul Newitt, who is now the Patriots’ softball coach. After one season with the varsity, Fournier was looking forward to a second, but JV coach David Susalla tragically died in a car accident a few months before the 2003 season.
Newitt asked Fournier to step in for Susalla, a position Fournier held for four years before being promoted to head coach after the 2006 season.
“Dave and I were really close,” Fournier said. “His passing has never been lost on me. If Dave were still around, I might still be Dave’s assistant or the JV coach here right now.”
Susalla’s death meant so much that when the JV played its first game without him, Fournier stayed in the dugout and left the third-base coach’s box empty in his honor.
Ever since, Fournier has valued his opportunity to lead the Patriots. Losing Susalla shaped Fournier’s approach to coaching the team and building the program, especially because of how loved Susalla was in the Franklin community.
“That first full year was dedicated to him, and I’ve never lost sight of that,” Fournier said. “We lost a good one there, not only as a coach but just as a person and a teacher. For him to pass, and for me to carry some of that with me, I’ve always had that in the back of my mind of how Dave would have handled things had he been in my position today.”
And how Fournier has handled things is by making the most of what he has.
In his second season as Franklin’s varsity coach, the Patriots won a district championship, snapping an over-20-year drought in the playoffs. They’ve since won three additional district titles over the past 18 years. As of this writing, Fournier has 363 career wins and expects to eclipse the 400 milestone sometime in the next season or two.
Which is saying something because Franklin doesn’t necessarily have future MLB prospects coming through its doors like it once did 40-50 years ago. Fournier has found his niche taking multi-sport athletes and turning them into All-Kensington Lake Activities Association stars — and sometimes even all-state college players.
“We have blue-collar, hard-nosed work ethic kinds of kids,” Fournier said. “We don’t get a lot of 8s, 9s and 10s who walk through the doors. But we get a lot of 4s and 5s with hearts, who end up being 6s, 7s and 8s. When you put all of those guys together, that’s what makes this program so great.”
Emphasizing homegrown talent is what put Fournier in Franklin’s Athletics Hall of Fame now instead of when he retires in a couple of years.
Like the softball team with Newitt, who has coached dozens of teams for LPS for 32 years, and football coach Chris Kelbert, the longest-tenured and winningest coach in Patriots history, who just wrapped up his 25th season, Fournier is a Franklin lifer.
He recognizes that wins and losses don’t mean as much as what baseball does for the Livonia community. While he takes care of his players, he also takes care of those near Middlebelt, Joy and Merriman roads. It’s not uncommon for a baseball player to show up at an elderly person’s home to shovel their driveway after a scary snowstorm.
“Just like putting Kelbert in the Hall of Fame last year, Fournier going in is super personal to me and just an absolute no-brainer for our selection committee,” Franklin athletic director Dusty Hall told Hometown Life on April 21. “Not only has he been doing it for a long time, but he’s a Franklin guy through and through. He has the longevity and success with the amount of time he’s put into this program and the school itself, but he also just cares about this place. You see him at every football game and just about every basketball game. He lives and breathes this place, and he’s able to produce good ballplayers and good teams because he makes this place a community with a family feel.”
You can put an emphasis on that “family feel.”
Not only did Fournier play and graduate from Franklin, but so did his three children, Katie (2018), Cal (2019) and Caden (2022). After playing at nearby Madonna, Cal joined Fournier’s staff as an assistant in 2025. Fournier expects Caden to do the same when he’s done playing at Madonna next year.
But what about mom? Tammy (Schaffer) Fournier is also going into Franklin’s Athletics Hall of Fame this fall, as she was a freshman pinch runner on the 1990 state runner-up softball team that lost 3-0 to Jenison in the Class A state championship, capping off a five-year run that saw the Patriots play for three state titles, including winning the 1986 state championship over Waterford Kettering under coach Joe Epstein.
Coach Fournier said he learned about Tammy being picked by the selection committee first, celebrating that his wife got in more than when he eventually got the notification that he would be joining her for this fall’s Hall of Fame celebration weekend.
But if you know him, that’s just the way he operates.
Yeah, he’s going into two Hall of Fames in one calendar year. But you won’t see him brag about it. He deflects, pointing out that success is owed to those who helped him get there. From longtime assistant Jason Johnson, who has spent 25 years by his side, to all of the multi-sport athletes who have taken Franklin from a blue-collar program to one capable of reaching the regional championship in any given season.
“All of this is about the kids and the coaches around me,” Coach Fournier said. “That’s not me. In the 20 years I’ve done this, I haven’t thrown a pitch, I haven’t hit a ball. So, it always starts with the kids. They’ve bought in, and all we’ve continued to do is teach them to do things the right way.”
Livonia Franklin Athletics Hall of Fame Induction
What: The Patriots are inducting their fourth class into their Athletics Hall of Fame.
When: Halftime of the varsity football game against rival Livonia Stevenson on Sept. 18.
Who: Mike Jinnett (football, track and field, 1971), Gar Frantz (baseball, 1973), Ken Scarpace (baseball, basketball, football, 1977), Matt Fournier (baseball, 1993), Josh Billian (wrestling, 2007), Emily Quint (gymnastics, track, 2010), athletic director Ron Hammye, administrator Dan Willenborg, sportswriter Brad Emons (1973) and the 1990 softball team.
Brandon Folsom covers high school sports in metro Detroit for Hometown Life. Follow him on his new X.com account at @folsomwrites.
This article originally appeared on Hometownlife.com: Livonia Franklin’s Matt Fournier entering 2 Hall of Fames in 2026
Reporting by Brandon Folsom, Hometownlife.com / Hometownlife.com
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
