The Southeast Collegiate League announces the 3rd summer season in 2022, providing a local Summer College Season for baseball players in the southeastern United States.
Two new divisions will be added next summer as the league expands into Alabama: Birmingham and Mobile/Panhandle. These additions expand the league from Mississippi, Memphis and Louisiana to include the Alabama and Florida Gulf Coast, and central Alabama in Birmingham.
The Birmingham Division will be led by a veteran baseball coach in Lee Gann. The head baseball coach at Mountain Brook High School for the last 20 seasons, Coach Gann played college baseball at Samford University, where he was voted the Most Valuable Player and Team Captain before graduating cum laude with a degree in Physical Education. Gann signed with the Seattle Mariners upon graduation, and played in the Atlantic Coast Independent League in Spartanburg SC.
Gann was the manager and head coach for three seasons for the Saint Joseph Saints Baseball Club in Missouri, a M.I.N.K. Collegiate League in the late ‘90s. With an overall record of 142-37, The Saints were National Baseball Congress USA Regional Champions all three seasons under his leadership, winning the M.I.N.K. League Championship twice. Coach Gann’s three teams all played in the NBC World Series in Wichita KS, with his 1996 team finishing 50-14 and 4th place nationally.
Coaching baseball for 28 years, Gann was an assistant at Samford before beginning his high school coaching career at Hoover High School. He joined Mountain Brook after spending three years at Bob Jones HS in Madison AL. Going 75-40 in 2001, his team was runner up in the 6A State Championship, earning Gann Coach of the Years honors from the Huntsville Times. An Over the Mountain and Birmingham News South Coach of the Year several times, Coach Gann served as the Board Chairman for the Alabama Baseball Coaches Association for 10 years. In 2017, his East Coast Sox 15U HS Summer team won the WWBA National Championship, ranked #3 in the final 15U polls. In January 2021 Gann was named by the Alabama Baseball Coaches Association the 7A Coach of the Year, also receiving the association's highest honor, the prestigious Sammy Dunn Memorial Award - presented to a coach representing Classes 1A - 7A for the AHSAA.
The Mobile Division will include the Florida Panhandle, led by Adam Heisler. A 2009 MLB draft pick by the St Louis Cardinals, Heisler was signed by the Chicago White Sox in 2011, playing 3 seasons in the White Sox organization. He played for Winnipeg Goldeyes for three seasons as well.
A native of Mobile, he played college baseball at the University of South Alabama, earning a degree in Exercise Science in 2010. In 2017 Heisler opened the Heisler Heat Baseball Academy in Mobile, where he develops and trains baseball players of all ages. He also served as the Hitting Consultant for the Baltimore Orioles for newly drafted players and is the Gulf Coast Director of Player Development for the Knights Knation in Mobile.
Gann and Heisler join former Major Leaguers Chris Snopek, Ed Easley and Jack Cressend as directors of the Southeast Collegiate League. Chris Snopek was an All American at Ole Miss and played MLB for the Chicago White Sox; Ed Easley was an All American at Mississippi State and first round pick by the Arizona Diamondbacks, playing MLB for the St Louis Cardinals; Jack Cressend played for Tulane, signed with the Boston Red Sox and played MLB for the Minnesota Twins and Cleveland Indians.
The SECL commissioner is Cory Hough, from Ohio where he played baseball for the University of Cincinnati. Visit our WEBSITE to learn more about the SECL.