Southeastern has selected assistant Alan Trayler to be the next head coach of the school’s storied baseball program, replacing Zach Crabtree who stepped down last month to take a job with his alma mater Colbert Public Schools. Trayler has been a Savage Storm assistant for all seven years under Crabtree’s direction after beginning his coaching career also as a Crabtree assistant at Murray State College in 2013. He also has had assistant coaching stints at Stephen F. Austin and Panhandle State University.
“Over the last seven years, Coach Trayler has demonstrated a dedication to our student athletes and our program that gives us great confidence in the future of baseball at Southeastern,” said President Thomas Newsom. “We had an incredibly high level of interest from many who wanted to be our next head baseball coach, and I know that Keith Baxter and our committee have chosen the right person to lead our program to future success.”
While the Savage Storm have struggled with success the last few seasons, Trayler is well aware of the school’s massive tradition on the baseball diamond with the objective of regaining that level of excellence.
He is just the fourth head coach in the modern history of the program following Don Parham, Mike Metheny and Zach Crabtree.
“I am really excited about this opportunity,” he stated. “I’m happy to be able to stay in the Durant community. It’s a huge privilege for me to lead, guide and direct the Savage Storm program. It is a dream job for me because I know the tradition and success this program has had in the past.
“When we took over seven years ago we changed the logo and colors. Something that changed that should not was the attitude of the program. I want to bring back the Block S attitude. Where we get after it and play hard all the time. I’ve played against Southeastern when I was a player at West Texas A&M and Oklahoma Baptist and just know that attitude and moxy was pretty intimidating. I want to get back to excellence and championship caliber baseball that Southeastern is known for.”
One of Trayler’s main prerogatives is hiring a full-time pitching coach, something the program has not had the luxury of.
With that he hopes to build some stability in the pitching staff, which has struggled mightily in recent seasons. Southeastern was 10th in the Great American Conference in 2024 with a 7.83 earned run average as a team.
“In our seven years it’s been tough to solidify a pitching coach and I want to hire a full-time pitching coach that will set the standard for us as a pitching staff,” Trayler said. “It’s been tough to be consistent and stay consistent. I want to get someone that will be here for multiple years and invest in the program and community, which is important to me in building some stability. I want to invest in that as well as resources for our pitchers. We are working on getting some new technology to implement in our pitching staff. We’ve identified that and hopefully that will help things.”
On offense, you can expect much the same from Trayler, who has been the team’s third base coach over the last few years.
He plans to continue to recruit guys that can really swing the bat and take advantage of the confines of Mike Metheny Field, which has become one of the top hitting locales in the Great American Conference in recent years.
“We are looking for guys that are going to be able to hit and hit well,” he added. “We’ll bunt when we need to bunt in the right situations. The way our field plays though we have to be able to play for the big inning and play for multiple big innings.
“Three areas we are going to focus on recruiting wise is southeast Oklahoma. Keeping those types of players in the area is important to me. The North Texas area is important and we need to have a recruiting presence in that area. We’d like to find more young, high school arms to get them on campus and keep on campus. Also, we need to be able to recruit California and Arizona areas. We are much more affordably feasible for guys like that. We have to try to take advantage of getting those guys here.”
