Ritch Price Named Assistant Coach For US National Team

Dec. 7, 2007

LAWRENCE, Kan. –

Kansas baseball head coach Ritch Price has been named a USA Baseball National Team assistant coach for the summer 2008 tour, USA Baseball announced Friday. The veteran Jayhawk skipper is one of three collegiate head coaches to make up national head coach Rob Walton’s staff next summer.

Price, entering his sixth-season at Kansas, has amassed a 173-142-1 record (.550) at Kansas, which ranks him third in career wins and fifth in career winning percentage at KU. In 2006, he led the team to its first conference championship in over 50 years as the Jayhawks won the Big 12 Tournament in Oklahoma City. The sixth-year head coach has guided the team to postseason berths in three of his five years at KU. His overall Division I record is 390-360-2 (.520), which includes five seasons as a head coach at Kansas and eight at Cal Poly.

Price is joined by Old Dominion’s Jerry Meyers and the University of San Francisco’s Nino Giarratano.

“Rob Walton helped put together a great staff,” said Eric Campbell, USA Baseball General Manager of National Teams.

“The list of quality college coaches involved in the National Team program keeps growing, and I am very excited about getting this staff together and beginning the process of naming 32 players to our trials from a great pool of college athletes.”

The 2008 National Team will be named on June 24 and will begin a seven-game series vs. the Chinese Taipei National Team from June 25-July 1, including stops in Durham, N.C. and Cary, N.C. This will be the fifth installment of the international friendship series between the U.S. and Chinese Taipei.

The National Team will then head to Europe on July 2 and compete in the 2008 Dutch Honkbal Tournament and a two-game series versus the Czech Republic National Team. On July 18, the U.S. squad will begin the IV FISU World Collegiate Championship in Brno, Czech Republic. The USA is the defending gold medalist in the last two FISU championships.