Posted: May 09, 2025

Baseball Heads to Kentucky for NAIA Opening Round

KANSAS CITY, MO - The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) has announced the 46-team field and groupings for the 2025 NAIA Baseball National Championship Opening Round. Ten sites will host four or five-team double-elimination pods that will begin play May 12 concluding with the Opening Round Championship on May 15. The winner of each site's tournament will advance to the 2025 Avista NAIA Baseball World Series in Lewiston, Idaho on May 23-31. This season's field consists of 30 automatic qualifiers, awarded to conference regular season and tournament champions or conference tournament runners-up, as well 15 at-large selections and one host bid.

Northwestern Ohio earned an automatic bid as the Wolverine-Hoosier Athletic Conference (WHAC) Regular Season Champions with a 26-2 record, the program's best since 2017. The Racers will head to the Williamsburg Bracket, hosted by the University of the Cumberlands, as the four-seed. The top seed will be No. 16 Missouri Baptist while host team No. 8 Cumberlands will play as the two-seed and (RV) MidAmerica Nazarene as the three-seed.

Cumberlands and MNU will start off the first day of the tournament at 1:00 PM EST on Monday, May 12 followed by MBU and UNOH in game two at 4:30 PM EST. The loser of each game will square off in an elimination game at 1:00 PM Tuesday with the two winners matching up in game two of the day at 4:30 PM.

All opening round games at Cumberlands can be watched live here.

Team Resumes

#16 Missouri Baptist Spartans (40-9)