Three Razorbacks make select USA Collegiate team heading overseas

Fifty-six players were invited to the Collegiate National Team Training Camp earlier this week, including Cam Kozeal, which featured six intrasquad scrimmages in North Carolina to determine the final team.

Players for USA Baseball Stats

Kozeal played at three different positions throughout the training camp, third base, second base and center field in an attempt to crack the team.

The Razorbacks are the only team with three players on the roster and are one of eight schools with multiple players joining Georgia Tech, Louisville, Mississippi State, NC State, Oregon State, UCLA, North Carolina, and Virginia with two.

Gaeckle becomes one of 10 players on the roster to make the team for the second time and the second player in school history to make the team in consecutive years, joining Ryne Stanek, who made the team in 2011 and 2012.

There have now been 26 Razorback selections to the team all-time, including some of the best players in school history including Jeff King (1985), Nick Schmidt (2006), Logan Forsythe (2007) and Heston Kjerstad (2019), among others.

Team USA will be managed by USC head coach Andy Stankiewicz.

It's the eighth time in the past 10 seasons that at least one Razorback has made the team (COVID canceled 2020), including each of the past three teams with Hagen Smith making it in 2023.

The trio of players who made the 2025 team is the most in a single year since four players made it in 2011 (DJ Baxendale, Dominic Ficociello, Matt Reynolds and Stanek).

Team USA leads the all-time series against Japan 135-110-2 and has won 24 of the 44 series between the two teams. It will be the first time since 2019 that the team will be able to travel to Japan.

The 30 players who were invited to the training camp but did not make the final team, Kozeal among them, will stay in the United States and play in a one-game showcase against the Appalachian League Select Team. First pitch is scheduled for 5:35 p.m July 4 inside Atrium Health Ballpark in Kannapolis, North Carolina. Streaming is available on the USA Baseball YouTube channel.

First pitch for the All-Star series is scheduled for 3 a.m. July 8 (6 p.m. local) from Es Con Field in Hokkaido, Japan. The teams will play a five-game series in three locations across six days.

After two games in Hokkaido, the series moves to Niigata for two games before the series finale is played in Tokyo. Streaming for those games is available in the GameChanger App.

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