The Coastal Plain League is excited to announce the 2019 CPL Select Team, set to take on the USA Collegiate National Team on Monday, July 1 at 4:00 p.m. ET at the USA Baseball Training Complex in Cary, N.C.

A committee comprised of league coaches, league officials and Major League scouts selected the team. The roster is broken down as follows: catchers (2), first basemen (2), second basemen (2), shortstops (2), third basemen (2), outfielders (6), designated hitters/utility (3) and pitchers (9).

Offensively the lineup with be bolstered by multiple category leaders, including: MJ Rookard of Macon (.413 batting avg.), Ian Walters of Edenton (six home runs), Garrett Blaylock of Forest City (eight doubles) and Jack Harris of Morehead City (three triples). Starters are notated with asterisk (*) on the roster below.

On the mound, the rotation is a mix of the league’s best arms including starters, mid-relief and closers. The starting pitcher and full rotation will be determined by the CPL Select coaches later in the week and announced accordingly. Players are listed on roster below in alphabetically order.

While the CPL has welcomed the USA Collegiate National Team into its ballparks since 2006, this will be the fifth year a CPL Select Team will have the chance to face off against the best collegiate players in the nation. Last season’s game ended with the USA CNT winning 2-1 over the CPL Select.

The CPL Select will be coached by High Point-Thomasville head coach Brian Rountree, who also coached the 2018 team. This is Rountree’s fifth season with the HiToms having joined the team in the fall of 2015 after finishing a 20 year stretch from 1994-2005 as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at Louisiana Tech. Rountree previously spent four years as an assistant at the University of South Carolina. A 1990 graduate of USC, Rountree pitched two years for the Gamecocks and led the team in starts and strikeouts both seasons. He served as captain of the 1989 squad, tallied 13 career wins, and recorded 125 strikeouts in the 1988 season.

“Blessed and honored to be chosen to lead this team,” said Rountree. “The league is really setting people up for success with this partnership. It’s a great opportunity for the players to play in front of over 100 scouts and USA Baseball. What a great way to open some MLB teams eyes, represent the CPL and represent their college programs.”

Before transferring to South Carolina, Rountree had a standout career at DeKalb Junior College in Georgia. While at DeKalb he earned All-America honors as a sophomore and was named Georgia Junior College Player of the Year, thanks to his 12-1 record and 0.78 ERA. The Detroit Tigers drafted Rountree in 1989 where he spent two years in the Tigers organization, including a stint with the South Atlantic League’s Fayetteville Generals.

Joining Rountree on the coaching staff as the assistant will be Holly Springs Salamanders head coach Kevin Soine. Hailing from Spicer, Minn., he played collegiately for two seasons at Century College before finishing his playing career at Grand View University where he helped lead the team to a conference title in 2013. Soine has had stints as an assistant coach at both the University of Dubuque and Murray State College before taking his current position as the head coach at Ridgewater College. His past three summers have been spent in the CPL, first as an assistant for the Martinsville Mustangs in 2017 before becoming their head coach last season and ultimately moving on to Holly Springs in 2019.

“It’s an honor that the league and coach Rountree would think to ask me to be apart of this,” said Soine. “When I got into coaching I said if I am going to do this, I am going to do it the right way and opportunities like this allow me the chance to do that. Really cool for players to play against USA and in front of the scouts, as well as participate in the PDP workouts. To be around the players as they get this opportunity is an honor.”

For the second straight year, the CPL has partnered with MLB Baseball and USA Baseball to bring Prospect Development Pipeline (PDP) events to players for the 2019 season.

The PDP was established as a collaborative program between MLB, and USA Baseball in an effort to establish an official identification process and player development pathway for amateur players. With events around the country each year, the PDP is able to uniformly track and create prospect watch lists in a much more efficient and accurate way than in the past. The exposure generated by these events brings scouts closer to athletes than ever before, allowing prospects to be input into the PDP database for future tracking ahead of the draft.

The PDP also delivers a unique development opportunity to all participating athletes by acting on its founding principle that players at all levels, from the amateur ranks to the big leagues, should aspire to reach their full potential. PDP events have been designed to provide the exposure and objective feedback required to enable players to be the best version of themselves.

Specific to the Coastal Plain League in 2019, the PDP will conduct activations prior to both the League’s CPL Select Team vs. USA Baseball Collegiate National Team game, as well as the CPL All-Star Showdown July 7-8 in Savannah, Ga.

While scouts have always attended these events, the addition of PDP adds an even more advanced avenue for CPL players to showcase their talents as they continue their journey to professional baseball.

The Collegiate National Team has yet to name a starting lineup for the game but their full roster, as well as more information on the team can be found at the website here.

The full 2019 CPL Select Team roster can be found below. Starters are denoted with an asterisk (*.) Pitching rotation will be at the discretion of the Select Team head coaches thus pitchers are listed in alphabetically order below.