Langley Softball Suffers Season-Ending Loss

Langley senior softball first baseman Courtney Conklin had tears in her eyes after her Saxons fell, 10-5, to South County in the opening game of the Northern Region tournament on Friday night.

Conklin looked back on the weather-delayed game and saw two bad innings that ended her team’s season.

“We started off with one error and it turned into multiple errors, and we had to pull ourselves out of that,” Conklin said. “It was just a domino effect.”

When both the dominoes and the rain drops stopped falling, the Saxons trailed the host Stallions 5-1. After a rally in the top of the fourth made it 5-4, South County came back with five more runs to ice the game.

The Saxons scored their fifth run on a double from Hope Albers that scored Emily Templin, but South County reliever Kyra Ketch was able to induce four fly balls in a row to close out the game.

As painful as it was to see the season end, Conklin was able to smile and laugh when asked about the game in her career at Langley that she will remember 20 years from now.

“We beat Marshall earlier this season by one run,” she said, smiling as she remembered the Saxons’ come-from-behind 11-10 win on April 11. “And it came down to the last out in the seventh inning and I laid down a suicide bunt and scored the winning run. It was the first time we beat Marshall in a while.”

Another thing the Saxons hadn’t done in a while was reach the regional tournament, which they did this year for the first time in three seasons.

With just two seniors graduating – Conklin and shortstop Amanda Moll – the Saxons look to have some depth coming back for 2012.

“We’ll miss them,” said coach Jessica Roche. “We lose two wonderful seniors, [but] every team loses players and we’ll just rebuild. We’ve got 10 kids coming back and [some good] kids coming up.”

The Saxons didn’t just clean out their dugout and get on the bus for the trip around the beltway back to campus, they presented a handful of awards to parents and family members who had supported the squad throughout the season.

Conklin said she thought Langley was poised to improve next year.

“I had a good four years here,” she said. “It’s a good program, a good coach. I could not have a better team to play for. Next year they’ll come back even stronger.”