Baseball: Sand Sharks to serve as hosts in Savannah

The USC Beaufort Sand Sharks will bring baseball back to Historic Grayson Stadium in Savannah a few weeks earlier than expected.

The fifth-ranked Sand Sharks will host one of nine NAIA Baseball National Championship Opening Round brackets from May 17-20, before the Savannah Bananas college wood-bat team begins its inaugural season. USCB and four other teams will compete in the double-elimination Savannah Bracket, with the winner advancing to the Avista-NAIA Baseball World Series in Lewiston, Idaho.

The complete list of qualifiers and brackets will be released May 13.

It will mark the second time the Sand Shark baseball team has hosted the event. USCB hosted at Richard Gray Sports Complex in Hardeeville in 2012 and won its bracket to advance to the Avista-NAIA World Series.

Since the move to the Opening Round format, hosts have won 30 of the 63 brackets.

“We’re thrilled for the opportunity to host the Opening Round and are committed to putting on a first-class event,” USCB Director of Athletics Quin Monahan said. “Historic Grayson Stadium will be a fantastic venue, and we look forward to four days of great baseball.”

The Opening Round site selection process takes into account geography, facilities, student-athlete experience and host qualification. In the event that a selected bid is tied directly to an institution, that school is guaranteed at least an at-large host berth. The application deadline for bids was April 1.

The nine Opening Round champions and World Series host Lewis-Clark State (Idaho) will make up the field at the 2016 Avista-NAIA Baseball World Series. The event, which is taking place at Harris Field for the 17th consecutive season and 25th time overall, is scheduled to run from May 27-June 3.

This story was originally published April 22, 2016 at 5:56 PM with the headline "Baseball: Sand Sharks to serve as hosts in Savannah."