OTTAWA – COPABE, the governing body for the Americas region of the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC), has announced that they are awarding the four representative quotas available to compete at the WBSC U-18 Baseball World Cup in Bradenton and Sarasota, Florida to Canada, Cuba, Mexico and Panama.

The event is scheduled from September 10^th to 19^th, 2021.

COPABE had planned to hold a qualification event for the U-18 Baseball World Cup but concerns over the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic caused officials to cancel the tournament and assign the four quotas allocated to the region.

“We’re pleased to receive this news and are excited that our Junior National Team program can resume with a world championship event to look forward to,” said Junior National Team Head Coach and Director of National Teams Greg Hamilton. “Given that we haven’t been able to run a program for the last 15 months there is a lot of work ahead of us in getting a team ready to compete at the world championship level.

“We’re looking forward to the challenge that lies in front of us and putting a quality team on the field come September.”

The Junior National Team program has not held any in-person events since March 2020 when the pandemic brought the professional and amateur sporting world to a halt.

Canada, Cuba, Mexico and Panama join a U-18 Baseball World Cup field that already includes defending champions Chinese Taipei (2019) along with Japan and Korea representing Asia while the United States will participate as the host nation.

Baseball Canada will announce selection camp details and player invitees at a later date.