CHICAGO — In its 27th year of honoring the nation’s best high school athletes, The Gatorade Company, in collaboration with ESPNHS, today announced Corey Seager of Northwest Cabarrus High School as its 2011-12 Gatorade North Carolina Baseball Player of the Year. Seager is the first Gatorade North Carolina Baseball Player of the Year to be chosen from Northwest Cabarrus High School.

The award, which recognizes not only outstanding athletic excellence, but also high standards of academic achievement and exemplary character demonstrated on and off the field, distinguishes Seager as North Carolina’s best high school baseball player. 

The 6-foot-4, 205-pound senior shortstop batted .519 with 10 home runs and 37 RBI this past season, leading the Trojans (23- 5) to the second round of the Class 3A state tournament. A returning All-American as named by Perfect Game USA, Louisville Slugger and Collegiate Baseball, Seager stole 13 bases while producing a 1.062 slugging percentage and .664 on-base percentage. In nine games for the 2010 USA Baseball 16-and-Under National Team, he batted .514 with a home run and 12 RBI, earning All-Tournament honors in leading his countrymen to a gold medal at the Pan-American Games.

Seager has maintained a 4.05 weighted GPA in the classroom. A member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Future Farmers of America, the National Beta Club and the Athletes Who Share Unselfish Moments (AWSUM) Club, he has donated his time locally as a youth baseball instructor, on behalf of the Muscular Dystrophy Association and as a motivational speaker at a children’s hospital.

“He’s one of the greatest players—if not the best—to ever come out of this county,” said Derek Shoe, head coach at rival Concord High. “With that title, he wasn’t pitched to very often, but he never showed any frustration. He’s just an all-around great kid and one that we all wish we had on our team. From the outside, it looked like he was not only their best player, but also their best person.”

Seager has signed a National Letter of Intent to play baseball on scholarship at the University of South Carolina this fall, but is projected as an early round selection in next month’s Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft.

The Gatorade Player of the Year program annually recognizes one winner in the District of Columbia and each of the 50 states that sanction high school football, girls volleyball, boys and girls cross country, boys and girls basketball, boys and girls soccer, baseball, softball, and boys and girls track & field, and awards one National Player of the Year in each sport. The selection process is administered by ESPNHS and the Gatorade high school sports leadership team, which work with top sport-specific experts and a media advisory board of accomplished, veteran prep sports journalists to determine the state winners in each sport.

Seager joins recent Gatorade North Carolina Baseball Players of the Year Dillon Maples (2010-11, Pinecrest High School), Matt Roberts (2009-10, Graham), Brian Goodwin (2008-09; Rocky Mount), Tyler Hanover (2007-08, North Davidson), and Madison Bumgarner (2006-07, South Caldwell), among the state’s list of former award winners.