mail merge not importing column correctly

[hobey19]

i have an excel document with 3 colums - the team the player is on (10-1, 12-2, 18-1, etc), the first name and the last name

some of the teams have weird names like 12Blue3. in the excel document, i have that column formatted as text, and the teams all look proper, however, when i merge it in word, all of the teams either come through with 101 instead of 10-1 or a 0 where 12Blue3 would be. i am not sure how to go about fixing this. any help would be greatly appreciated

craig