As soon as the Blaze announced the full schedule for their inaugural 2025 season, Baylee Klingler started counting down the days to July 11.
Klingler did not grow up in Seattle, nor did she start her college career there. But few players in the storied history of the Washington softball program have left a bigger mark in the purple and gold. This weekend, Klingler will return to Husky Softball Stadium as a professional as the Blaze play a three-game series against the Volts.
“The emotions will hit whenever I step on the field and see all the fans. I feel like I’m for sure going to cry,” Klingler said. “I’m super excited just to be back on the field that has given so much to me. I didn’t think (when I was) graduating that I would ever be back to play on the field. It wasn’t on my bingo card to get this opportunity, so I’m super grateful.”
Klingler’s roots and her athletic genes can be traced to her hometown of Houston. Her father, Jimmy, played quarterback at the University of Houston in the early 1990s, following in the footsteps of his brother David, another former Cougars quarterback who went on to a six-year career in the NFL. Baylee’s sister Courtney played softball at Houston, and her brother Cory played football at nearby Rice.
Baylee, too, remained in her home state to begin her college softball journey at Texas A&M. But after her freshman season in Aggieland, she transferred to Washington to play for Head Coach Heather Tarr, quickly establishing herself as the latest in a long line of Huskies sluggers. Klingler was the 2022 Pac-12 Player of the Year and a three-time NFCA All-American, leading Washington to the Women’s College World Series as a fifth-year senior in 2023.
“Coach Tarr does a great job of just being such a great leader,” Klingler said. “She just has this maternal instinct with us. She’s such a fierce leader and she creates an environment where you can really thrive. I’m just forever indebted to this program.”
The Texas Smoke of the Women’s Pro Fastpitch League selected Klingler second overall in the 2023 WPF Draft, and Klingler batted .303 as a rookie for the Smoke that summer. She joined Athletes Unlimited last year, finishing tied for seventh on the individual leaderboard in the Championship Season (now known as the All-Star Cup), then got off to a scorching-hot start with the Blaze this summer.
Klingler hit safely in her first eight games and had a .500 batting average, 11 runs batted in and a 1.310 OPS before sustaining a head injury against the Bandits on June 21. She returned to the lineup on Wednesday, July 9, ahead of the Seattle series.
“That’s pretty much all she’s talked about since it got announced that we were going there,” Blaze Head Coach Alisa Goler said. “She’s incredibly proud to be a Washington Husky alum. I just hope she’s able to really soak in what that moment is when she’s there, to be where her feet are. It is really cool to have the opportunity to go play at your alma mater. Not many players in this league will have that.”
Husky Softball Stadium is broadly considered one of the most beautiful venues in the country, nestled between Washington’s football stadium and Union Bay, an inlet of Lake Washington. The weather during the college season in the spring can be unpredictable, but summers in Seattle are typically warm and sunny, and Tarr is hopeful that the AUSL games can give her program and its home field some more positive exposure.
“To have softball be played in the summer on our stadium is like a utopia, from a weather standpoint to a community following standpoint,” Tarr said. “A 75-degree weather day and the perfect setting, that’s just epic. Softball in our stadium, it’s probably the best setting you can have. It’s not thunderstorms and lightning and rain delays in the mid-afternoon in a hot, humid climate.”
Five former Huskies are on active AUSL rosters, including Volts’ infielder Sis Bates, who played with Klingler at Washington in 2020 and 2021. Klingler and Bates are sure to have several former teammates in attendance all weekend, and Klingler said her family will be coming up from Houston to watch her play.
“(There is) a lot of excitement on their behalf and our fans’ behalf to be able to see them again in person,” Tarr said. “(The AUSL is) on the cutting edge of something special, and for those two specifically to be able to be showcased in Seattle right now, they’re the perfect people to show what this league is and can be.”
Benjamin Rosenberg is the Blaze beat reporter for the AUSL this season. He has more than seven years of experience covering college, professional and high school softball, and graduated with a degree in journalism from Northwestern University in 2021.
