St. Clair's Joey Turner to play at USA Baseball 16U tournament in North Carolina
ST. CLAIR — Joey Turner is used to representing his hometown on the baseball diamond.
But for a few days this month, the high school junior will play for an area much larger than St. Clair.
Turner has been named to the USA Baseball 16U Midwest All-Region team, which is part of the organization's National Team Identification Series (NTIS).
As one of 36 players on the Midwest roster, he'll participate in the 16U NTIS Champions Cup from Aug. 9-13 at the USA Baseball National Training Complex in Cary, North Carolina.
"It was an honor to be invited to it," said Turner, whose primarily a pitcher. "I'm excited to just go down and compete with the best."
According to USA Baseball, the NTIS Champions Cup, "features 12 teams per age group and athletes will participate in workouts and a championship-style tournament while being evaluated by national team coaches and scouts."
After the event, 12 players from the 16U group will be invited to the 2024 17U National Team Development Program.
As a sophomore last season, Turner threw 39 strikeouts in 29 innings of work and finished with a 2.30 ERA. He gave up just 10 earned runs all year. On April 20, the righty verbally committed to play baseball at Bowling Green University.
Turner and his parents will head to North Carolina later this week. Also tagging along is his older brother, Jacob, who graduated from St. Clair in 2022 and currently plays for Bowling Green.
"For the days where I'm not pitching, we're just going to turn it into a little vacation," Joey Turner said. "And spend the time at the field and enjoy it."
While the young phenom is anticipating the whole experience, he considers it a business trip before anything else.
"I'm excited to prove myself," Joey Turner said. "I've had a really good summer so far pitching with my travel team. So I'm just excited to compete and see where it takes me."
Contact Brenden Welper at bwelper@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @BrendenWelper.
This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: St. Clair's Joey Turner invited to USA Baseball 16U tournament
