Staff

The people in the dugout and behind the scenes

Four people run APEC Baseball. Between them they have taken athletes to the Olympics and into professional contracts — and all four are pointed at the same thing now.

Program director

Austin Sperry

A Star class sailing Olympian and world champion who went from elite competition into building and financing companies — and who now applies both to developing ballplayers.

Austin sailed for Team USA in the Star class at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games — the culmination of six years in the national program — and is a world champion. He attended Avon Old Farms. A financial and investment manager turned operational and growth specialist, he went on to co-found Maritime Partners, a leading domestic vessel leasing and construction financing company based in the Greater New Orleans region.

That combination is the reason APEC Baseball is structured the way it is. Austin has lived the long arc of athlete development from the inside — the years of unglamorous work behind one competition — and he builds programs the way he built businesses: measured, accountable, and judged on whether the athlete actually improved.

Coaching staff

Who runs the teams

MATT GAMBILL — DIRECTOR OF BASEBALL OPERATIONS, LOUISIANA

Matt Gambill has spent two decades developing hitters, and the record behind that is an unusually complete one. He coached varsity high school baseball for eighteen years, the last ten as hitting coach at John Curtis Christian, where his teams won back-to-back state championships in 2017 and 2018.

He spent six years as an Associate Area Scout for the Miami Marlins, identifying and evaluating talent across Louisiana and Mississippi — a scout’s eye he still brings to how a roster gets built. He founded and owns two of the New Orleans area’s most successful indoor training facilities, Elite Baseball Development in Gretna and Prime Performance Baseball Academy in Destrehan. Over an eight-year span he served in several capacities with the Louisiana Knights, helping build it into one of the region’s most respected organisations, and he built Luccini National into a nationally recognised program in its own right.

His reputation rests on high-level roster construction, genuinely competitive environments and winning cultures. His teams have competed and won on the national stage against the best programs in the country for years, and his long-standing relationships with college coaches nationwide are a large part of why his players get seen. In baseball circles he is known as a straight shooter — a coach other coaches and scouts trust.

What his players carry, though, is not the hitting. Gambill coaches how to compete, how to handle adversity, how to be a great teammate, and how to approach the game physically and mentally with discipline, focus and purpose. The relationships outlast the seasons.

An APEC therapist treating an athlete in the recovery room — In the treatment room

An APEC coach running an athlete through band arm care — Arm care protocol

Performance and operations

The people who make the work possible

DR. CHRIS HERRERA — DIRECTOR OF STRENGTH & CONDITIONING AND MEDICAL SERVICES

DPT, MDNC. A doctorate in physical therapy from the University of Miami and a bachelor’s in business management from Eastern Illinois, currently completing a doctorate in chiropractic at Parker University.

He spent fifteen years as founder, CEO and head physical therapist of Jaguar Therapeutics. With USA Sailing he served as head strength and conditioning coach and assistant physical therapist from 2009 to 2012, then as head physical therapist and Medical Director from 2012 to 2016, representing the United States at the 2012 London Olympics.

He has been a leader in transitioning over 550 college football players into the professional ranks and has directed and treated more than 300 professional NFL players through their off-seasons. Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), USA Weightlifting Club Coach, and Master Dry Needling certified.

He owns the arm-care protocol, the movement screening and the return-to-play decisions — which is why an eleven-year-old at APEC is loaded by someone who has spent a career keeping professionals healthy.

BRANDON STROUPE — OPERATIONS DIRECTOR

President of APEC’s Fort Worth location. Born in Tyler and raised in north Texas, Brandon played football at Pilot Point High School for the all-time winningest coach in Texas high school football history.

He graduated with honours from Texas A&M with a degree in Speech Communications and a minor in Interdisciplinary Business from Mays Business School. He worked as a speed coach at APEC through his college summers from 2008 to 2012, spent time in Fort Worth banking as a branch manager, and returned to APEC in 2017.

Since then he has run marketing, operations, graphic design, agent relations, pro player relations and management, and led the development of the APEC training app. If a schedule, a roster or an invoice works properly, that is him.

Coaching a team at APEC Baseball? Coaches are contracted per practice and per tournament. Get in touch →