Western Brown High School senior third baseman Kyla Conley recently was named Ohio High School Fastpitch Softball Coaches Association Division I all-state honorable mention. Photo: Brown County Press files
Senior third baseman lone area all-stater, earning honorable mention
Entering the 2023 high school softball season, Western Brown High School coach Blaine Wallace listed a few Lady Broncos to watch during the ’23 season.
Kyla Conley was one of those players, and yes, she certainly proved worthy of watching.
Conley, a senior third baseman, was recently named to the Ohio High School Fastpitch Softball Coaches Association all-state Division I honorable mention team. She was the only area Brown County player named to any of the all-state teams.
Conley, an all-Southern Buckeye Athletic and Academic Conference first-team selection for a third consecutive year, was third in batting average (.558) and tied for fourth in home runs (six), leading the Lady Broncos to a tie for first place in the SBAAC American Division at 9-1. The Lady Broncos would go on to win their first Division I playoff game before being eliminated in the second round.
Also a second-team Division I all-Southwest District selection, Conley had 11 doubles as well as 26 runs batted in and 39 runs scored in just 21 games, with an on-base percentage of .602 and a slugging percentage of .987, and struck out just three times in 77 at-bats. For her career, she easily shattered the exclusive 100-hit mark, finishing with 118 hits, and fell just short of scoring 100 runs (91).
She was also the Brown County girls Athlete of the Week in early May when she went 2-for-3 with a home run, two runs scored and four RBI in the Lady Broncos’ 9-1 playoff-opening victory over Anderson High School. Western Brown would lose its next game, 7-1, to Mason High School, in the second round of the playoffs. Conley knocked in the team’s only run of the game and also had two of the team’s four total hits, including a double.
From her No. 2 spot in the batting order, Conley had a lot of other Athlete-of-the-Week-worthy performances. In a 19-4 Lady Broncos’ win over Clinton Massie High School in mid-April, she was 5-for-5 with a double, two RBI and three runs scored. Then, in the very next game, she went 4-for-4 with a homer, two doubles, two RBI and three runs scored in a 10-1 win over Goshen High School.
Yes, in 2023, Kyla Conley was definitely a player to watch.
