Sophomore pitcher Jackson Flora of the UC Santa Barbara baseball team has been invited to the USA Baseball Collegiate National Team Training Camp in Cary, N.C., this summer.
Flora is the fourth Gaucho pitcher in three years to receive an invitation from USA Baseball. He follows Matt Ager and Hudson Barrett in 2023 and Tyler Bremner last summer. Ager and Bremner were selected to the national team roster.
Flora’s invitation comes after the sophomore broke into the Gauchos’ weekend rotation this season and delivered a series of marquee moments. The hard-throwing right-hander from Pleasanton started his season with back-to-back six-strikeout, scoreless starts against Campbell and San Diego State. After a rough stretch in March, a long relief outing with eight strikeouts in six innings at Long Beach State got him back in the groove. He roared back in his next start, pitching seven innings against UC Davis without allowing an earned run. He went one better against Cal Poly on April 19. In the rubber match, Flora became the first Gaucho since 2011 to throw a one-hitter, striking out nine Mustangs in a complete game shutout, the first of his career.
He kept on strutting his stuff down the stretch, striking out a career-high 12 hitters in a crucial win over Cal State Fullerton, then punched out 11 batters to begin the Gauchos’ sweep of Cal State Bakersfield on the final weekend of the regular season. He wrapped up the year with 86 strikeouts to just 17 walks over 75 innings of work.
Flora will join 55 other non-draft-eligible college players at Collegiate National Team Training Camp for a five-game Stars vs. Stripes intrasquad series, June 29 through July 3. After the fifth game on July 3, USA Baseball will name the final Collegiate National Team, which will head to Japan for the 45tha USA vs. Japan Collegiate All-Star Championship Series, July 8-13. The remaining players from Training Camp will stay in North Carolina to play a Fourth of July game against the Appalachian League Select Team at Atrium Health Ballpark in Kannapolis.