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Team Australia invites 36 baseball players to Under 18 Selection Camp in Melbourne
By Eric Balnar

Team Australia has finalised the invitations to the U18 Selection Camp at the end of September in Melbourne.

36 players from across the country will work out in Melbourne from September 20-25, with the objective of making the final 20-man roster for the U18 Oceania Championships which also act as the U18 World Cup Qualifiers later in the year.

You can view the roster below:

The selection camp will feature six days on-field structured into individual positional workouts in the morning and games in the afternoon. All of this will take place at Melbourne Ballpark and is open to the public.

Team Australia players will be in attendance to help run the program, including six with recent World Baseball Classic experience.

“This is part of the pathway to the 2027 U18 World Cup in China,” said Baseball Australia’s Player Development Manager Andrew Riddell. “But the journey started earlier this year. This group was selected from the Australian Youth Championships in January and across Driveline evaluations in each state during April.”

20 players will be named to the U18 Qualifiers roster out of selection camp. Details and schedule of the tournament have yet to be confirmed. However, we do know the event will take place in Blacktown from December 9-13, 2026.

The Qualifying Tournament has existed in a few different iterations over the years. In 2024, Australia won a best-of-five series against New Zealand. In 2022, Australia won a three-team series with Guam and New Zealand.

Final teams and tournament format will be finalised later, but WBSC Oceania features 20 members and has a spot in WBSC World Cup events.

The tournament counts for valuable World Ranking Points.

If Australia qualifies for the 2027 U18 World Cup, players across the country will be closely evaluated during the 2027 U18 Australian Youth Championships in January. From there, a squad will be picked for an August 2027 Selection Camp, where a roster for the World Cup will be selected.

“This selection camp allows us to see identified players 12 months out from an U18 World Cup as we head towards the qualifiers and then a huge 2027 for this age group,” said Riddell. “We are really looking forward to seeing all of the players compete against each other. There’s a nice mix of second-year U16 players, first-year U18 players and other standouts from the 2026 AYC.”

He credits the AYC and also evaluations run by Team Australia staff and Driveline in April as a key driver of squad selection.

“We were also able to go around to each state in April with the guys from Driveline and run evaluations and assessments of each player. The results and feedback have then shaped the winter program, and we couldn’t be more excited to now see them again in September to see the progression they have all made from January and April,” he says.

They will be guided by a number of current and former Team Australia players, including Aaron Whitefield, Chris Burke, Jarryd Dale, Sam Holland, Tim Kennelly and Josh Tols.
Riddell says this is a key cultural piece of the puzzle.

“It’s important for the younger players to be around these guys and learn from them both in a coaching aspect but also off the field and what it means to play for Team Australia,” he says. “It also shows them what a future could look like that isn’t unattainable. Learning the foundations of the Team Australia culture will just bring us closer as a community.”

The selection camp is part of a busy stretch for Team Australia. The U15 squad departs for Mexico for the U15 World Cup later in the month. The U23 World Cup is playing in Nicaragua in November. Australia also confirmed participation in the 2026 Asia Professional Baseball Championships (APBC) in November in Tokyo.

All events are worth valuable World Ranking Points.

IN SUMMARY
– 36 players have been invited to an Under-18 Qualifier Selection Camp in Melbourne;

– A 20-man roster will be named for the 2026 Under-18 Oceania Championships in Sydney in December, serving as a qualifying event for the World Cup;

– Players will continue to be evaluated in 2027 at events like the Australian Youth Championships, further Driveline programs and an August selection camp;

– Current and former Team Australia players will help administer the camp;