New Southeastern baseball coach is a familiar face in this alum

Gabe Grinder knew what he had to do when the Southeastern University baseball coaching job became available.

After all, Grinder worked for current Southeastern athletic director Drew Watson over ten years ago at the school, and had played there, too.

Watson knew Grinder's value as a player from 2009-11 and a pitching coach in 2013 at the Lakeland school. He then left for an assortment of positions, including six total seasons as a head coach in Kansas and Texas.

And for that, the choice was easy.

“This is an unbelievable opportunity and I consider it a great privilege to be back,” Grinder said. “SEU is an institution that changed my life and I look forward to hopefully having the same (impact) on the young men that I will coach in the coming years.

“The program at Southeastern has soared to unprecedented heights. I look forward to continuing that culture and meeting the expectation of excellence.”

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Grinder said he believes the culture is already set in place by the players inside of the program, but he expects to continue to look for athletes with high skills and high character.

He had his family are currently on vacation and, afterward, will move back to Lakeland from Odessa, Texas. Grinder said he hopes to be back in Lakeland by the first of August.

After leaving Southeastern, he served as the pitching coach at Oklahoma Wesleyan from 2016-18, with the Eagles going to the NAIA World Series in 2017.

Grinder's first head coaching position then came at NAIA Ottawa (Kan.). His teams won 117 games over four seasons, highlighted by a Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference Tournament title in 2021 and a 43-win season and regular-season title in 2022. It finished with a No. 14 ranking in the NAIA coaches' poll at the end of the season.

He then took the head coaching position the last two seasons at NCAA Division II Texas-Permian Basin, including 35 wins and the program's first NCAA Tournament win in 2024.

Five players under his tutelage have become MLB Draft picks, while another 10 have signed professionally as free agents.

Grinder is third in SEU history with 72 appearances and is sixth in career batting average against (.214).

The Fire is five-time defending Sun Conference regular-season champions and has made six consecutive Avista NAIA World Series appearances.