In Their Own Words: The path un-travelled

Will Langford, Fourth Year, Queen's Gaels Baseball

If someone had told me as a grade 11 student, that seven years later, I’d be sitting down to write about my experience as an OUA baseball player, I would have told them that they must have the wrong guy.

My road to the OUA was unlike that of the other athletes I competed with and against. During my four seasons as a starting pitcher for the Queen’s Gaels, I would often have conversations with opposing coaches, or parents of my teammates after a strong performance, which would often include a question like, “Where did you play elite ball before Queen’s?”, to which I would respond, “I didn’t really play much baseball before I came to Queen’s”. This would almost always spark a conversation involving a short version of the following.

During high school, I spent my summers rigorously practicing and competing to play collegiate golf, leaving no time for baseball. My goal from a young age was to play a sport at college, so I set out to earn a scholarship and compete in the NCAA. It seemed from a young age that golf provided me my best opportunity to do this. I loved golf and I was good enough at it that as I approached high school, people around me began to tell me that this was the sport I should pursue at the next level.

At this point, the NCAA dream was alive and well, and was heavily influenced by the experiences of two of the people I was closest to in my life; both of whom were going through the NCAA D1 recruiting process around that time. My older sister, who had just competed at the Olympic Trials in swimming and was signing at Division 1 UMBC in Maryland. I marveled at her drive, focus, and unbelievable work ethic to achieve her goal. Second was my best friend, who competed for the Canadian Junior National Baseball Team as a pitcher, and was in the process of deciding where he wanted to play Division 1 baseball as the offers began to flood in. He would eventually select Stanford; a school he had dreamt of attending since we were young.

“I had never really considered any other options…”

To me then, it was the NCAA or bust. I had never really considered any other options. I worked hard, was a ‘scratch’ golfer, and had some success in Junior golf throughout high school, finishing in the top 10 at OFSAA and the Ontario Junior Boys’ Match and Stroke Play events the summer of my grade 11 year. Outside of the five games I played for my high school team every year, I wasn’t playing any baseball, and certainly wasn’t being told by anyone other than my dad that I could play baseball at the collegiate level.

I received serious interest from a couple of D1 schools for golf, one of which I didn’t think would challenge me academically, while the other ended up going with another athlete on the last day of signing period. So, I decided eventually on a DIII school in Georgia, which was ranked high academically, and whose golf team perennially challenged for the DIII national title. A lot about this school seemed right for me, and at the time, although disappointed about not going D1, I was optimistic about the opportunity and the potential for a transfer to a D1 in my upper years, which was not uncommon.

About 10 months later, and a short time into my first semester in Georgia, I had lost about 20 lbs (the opposite of most people’s freshman experience), was struggling with my golf game, and felt a deep emptiness that most people, I think, would associate with homesickness. For me, I wasn’t necessarily associating it with a specific place, though I did miss home and the people there. I was realizing how much my character and who I was as a person was the result of the culture in which I grew up, and the culture that was being challenged to the extreme at my new school in North-West Georgia.

“I was excited for the chance at a fresh start in a new sport.”

I came home, and I applied to Queen’s. I had always been somewhat drawn to Queen’s since my dad had been inducted to the football hall of fame here for his accomplishments as a student-athlete in the 80’s. He had always spoken very highly of his five years as a Gael, four of which were as captain. That summer, I played some Senior A baseball at home, and contacted the coach at Queen’s to see if he’d be interested in having me tryout. I was completely disinterested in playing golf, which was sad because it had been such a big part of my life. I was invited to training camp by Coach Skelhorne-Gross at Queen’s, based off of a phone call to one of my high school coaches. I thought he had talked me up out of my weight class at the time, but I was excited for the chance at a fresh start in a new sport.

Coach Skelly called me over at the end of the first practice of training camp, and he asked me how I felt it went. I was nervous, and he jokes about this with me still, but I replied with just the word “good”. He then told me something that changed the outlook of the next four years of my life and continues to do so as I pursue baseball beyond the college level. He said, “We don’t get guys like you very often here, and we’re excited to have you.” I was shocked by this. My golf coach in Georgia didn’t really even talk to his new players, let alone give them a sense that they were going to do something special in their time there. This was the first experience of hundreds over my years at Queen’s where I realized, along with my teammates, how lucky we were to play for this program and particularly how lucky we were to have Coach Skelly at the helm.

“Our team had created a culture of family, dedication to each other, and winning…”

It’s difficult to express the value of a coach like this, not only in the way that he developed our ability as players, but in his innate sense of what it means to be a member of a team and getting his athletes to buy in to that. Over my four years, our team had created a culture of family, dedication to each other, and winning, the latter of which I didn’t think I would see after we went 5-13 in my freshman season. Although the seniors and I have received a lot of praise for creating and establishing this culture ourselves and turning the program into a medal-winning team in three years, this is Coach Skelly’s doing, and for this, he and his staff will never receive adequate credit.

Whether it was through endless hours of card games on long bus rides or quick chats on overturned ball buckets between innings, talks about baseball with Coach Skelly are something special and something I’ll miss considerably. They leave his players thinking about the game at a higher level and with a desire to be better. When I consider the sacrifices he and the entire coaching staff make to be away from their families and their jobs to coach OUA baseball,I am grateful that I had the opportunity to play for them and to play in this league. Unlike my coach in Georgia, and unlike many other programs, there is no hidden agenda with Coach Skelly and his staff. They coach in the OUA because they love baseball and they love making a difference in their athletes’ lives. They aren’t just producing good baseball players here at Queen’s, they are developing better people.

“I couldn’t have been luckier to have things turn out the way they did for me.”

When I look back at my journey and my time here, I have few, if any, regrets. I couldn’t have been luckier to have things turn out the way they did for me, to spend 4 years on this team with these coaches and the family of teammates I celebrated and cried with. An OUA medal, a no-hitter, an all-star nod, and Queen’s records, all of which may have never happened if I hadn’t pursued a different path first.