Baseball’s Next Level founder and owner Bryan Huie announced Monday that he has decided to end the operations of the popular and highly successful Southern Arizona baseball development program that has produced more than 270 players who advanced to college or professional baseball.
“I came to the decision it was time to cut back a little bit,” said Huie, who is in his ninth year as the principal at Mission Manor Elementary School and has served as a part-time scout for the New York Yankees over the last 10 years about when he started BNL.
“It was a good 10-year run,” he added. “I just felt it was time with having a family and being a principal factoring into it.”
Huie said he will continue to organize and operate in Sahuarita a fall high school tryout team, of which he has done since 2001. He will also continue working as a part-time scout with the Yankees.
“I’m not quitting baseball,” he said. “I’m just turning to a new chapter.”
BNL was one of the must successful club operations in Southern Arizona of any sport.
Three former BNL players played in the major-leagues this season — Baltimore Orioles left-handed pitcher Trevor Rogers of Carlsbad, N.M., Oakland Athletics infielder Darell Hernaiz of El Paso and Pittsburgh Pirates second baseman Nick Gonzales of Cienega High School.
Rogers and Gonzales are two of three MLB first-round draft picks who are BNL alums along with southpaw Cam Caminiti of Scottsdale Saguaro this year as the 24th pick overall by the Atlanta Braves.
Rogers was the 13th overall pick of the 2017 draft by the Miami Marlins and Gonzales was the seventh overall selection in the 2020 draft by the Pirates.
“It’s been great, and not just by helping kids play baseball,” Huie said. “Our motto was, ‘Opportunity with honesty.’ That’s something I pride myself in as being honest as a human being.
“It goes beyond the 270 kids who played baseball beyond high school. There’s still hundreds of kids that came through the program that are going off to college. I hope we made them better young men.”
Huie’s way of managing the players and his operation was not for everyone, especially in this day and age of increased sense of entitlement among young athletes.
“I told people it was a little military like,” Huie said of BNL. “Parents would call me, and I’d say, ‘Hey, you know, this program may not be for you. I just want you to understand it’s almost like military.’ It’s ‘Yes, sir,’ ‘No, sir,’ ‘Yes. ma’am,’ ‘No, ma’am,’ ‘Mr. Umpire,’ ‘Sir,’ and sprinting on and off the field in 10 seconds. All those things.
“Some kids can’t handle that. It took a special kid as well. We’ve got guys now in med school, in physical therapy school … We’ve had kids go to Harvard. We’ve had kids go to Cornell and USC. It’s just been a great 10 years. The community has been awesome. The coaches and families in Southern Arizona have done a lot servicing this kids. It’s been a tremendous run.”
Huie added that the coaches who have helped him operate BNL were the reason why it prospered.
“I can’t tell you how thankful I am to have hired great, great coaches for the last 10 years,” he said. “They’re all educators. They’ve all played college or professional baseball, There is no way I would have done this without them. Their knowledge and the support of the community has been tremendous.”
BNL started 10 years ago when Huie transitioned from being a part-time area scout with the Chicago White Sox to the Yankees.
At that time, he was already running the fall high school scout team.
He will continue with that program with the team comprised mostly of high school seniors who play from June to October in weekend games against junior college teams from Arizona and also in various scouting events involving pro scouts and college coaches.
Huey will have more time to spend with his family — wife Lizette, son Nathan and daughter Alyssa. Lizette is the chief financial officer of the Sahuarita School District, Nathan is a freshman baseball player at Cochise College in Douglas and Alyssa is a sophomore volleyball player at Walden Grove.
Players who were part of the BNL program and their parents became extended family to Huie.
Huie reflected on two of his former players — Cody Treatch and Jacob Didinger — who lost their lives tragically and how that impacted the BNL family. Treatch passed away in late August after becoming ill during Rural Metro firefighting academy training in Tucson. Didinger, an EMT in Tucson, died in the summer of 2021 after he was fatally shot while responding to a fire that turned into a shooting spree.
“We’ve had some heartache that have brought the BNL family more together,” Huie said. “Even though it’s been a big program, it seemed like it was a small, great little family.
“We’ve had 120 kids every summer who would play with us, and we would have 75 who would play with us in the fall. If anybody needs help putting a club team together, they can definitely reach out to me. If I can do anything for the kids from a baseball standpoint or a life standpoint, I’m all for it.”
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ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He is a former Arizona Daily Star beat reporter for the Arizona basketball team, including when the Wildcats won the 1996-97 NCAA title. He has also written articles for CollegeAD.com, Bleacher Report, Lindy’s Sports, TucsonCitizen.com, The Arizona Republic, Sporting News and Baseball America, among many other publications. He has also authored the book “The Highest Form of Living”, which is available at Amazon. He became an educator in 2016 and is presently a special education teacher at Sunnyside High School in the Sunnyside Unified School District.
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