All-American Flashback: Whitney Larsen (2008-11)
2/8/2016 12:00:00 AM | Softball
In honor of Alabama softball's 20th anniversary, rolltide.com will be catching up with our 20 former All-Americans in a series of feature interviews. Our 16th feature is with Whitney Larsen (2008-11), who capped her four-year career with an All-American senior season in 2011.
2011 All-American Whitney Larsen didn't have to look very far for her top college choice. A native of Vestavia Hills just outside of Birmingham, Larsen idolized the Crimson Tide softball team growing up like many young girls in the area. Her heart bled crimson during softball season despite taking on a different shade during the rest of the year.
"I actually grew up an Auburn fan, but I was absolutely obsessed with Alabama softball since eighth grade," Larsen said. "I met Coach [Pat] Murphy when I was eight years old at a little travel ball tournament and he signed a little white softball for me. I went to camps every possible season that I could. Alabama softball would have been the only reason I would have attended Alabama because I was an Auburn fan."
That path to Tuscaloosa opened relatively late in Larsen's prep career, as a recruiting Iron Bowl played out starting around her junior year at Vestavia Hills High School.
"I was being recruited by Auburn and hadn't heard a lot from Alabama to that point," Larsen said. "My high school coaching staff were good friends with the Auburn coaching staff so all signs were pointing towards them at the time, but then Alabama came in. Murph could have just offered me a t-shirt and I would have said yes.
"Alabama was the only official visit I took and I said yes right away. It was truly surreal. I would go to camps and meet all the players. In my eyes, they were so famous. Now, I was on a visit and sitting down and talking with them. The program itself is just so well-renowned and then on top of that you find out that the players and coaches are so down-to-earth, kind and caring. You already feel like you're part of the family. I had this vision for what the team was like in my head and they were even better than that."
Arriving in Tuscaloosa for the 2008 season, the team was coming off a disappointing loss in the 2007 Super Regional round to Washington. The tone was set immediately by the upperclassmen.
"The message was that we're going to work and we're working towards something greater than just individual accolades," Larsen said. "Out of all of the teams that I played with at Alabama, there was such a strong core of leadership with that 2008 team, especially with the seniors like Kelley Montalvo, Brittany Rogers and Ashley Holcombe. They were so good about helping us understand the big picture and what it would take to get there. They were all incredible players and they really led by example. They were taking extra reps after practice and it set a standard. It was a greater level of accountability than I had ever been a part of. It was a little bit of a wakeup call as a freshman."
Coincidentally, Larsen found herself in a similar position as a senior in 2011. Alabama entered the 2010 postseason as the No. 1 national seed and was riding a 27-game winning streak heading into the Super Regional round against 16th-ranked Hawai'i. The Tide shut out the Rainbow Wahine, 8-0, in game one but Hawai'I tied the series with an 8-7 win in game two and won game three, 5-4, on a walk-off home run. Larsen and fellow senior Kelsi Dunne had to channel the disappointment from 2010 into the 2011 season with a very young team.
"In 2011, there were only two seniors: myself and Kelsi Dunne," Larsen said. "There were similar parallels to 2008 in that you learn to manage a team a certain way. You treat everyone fair but you have to treat them differently. Different people will respond to your leadership in different ways. That's what the 2008 senior class did a really good job of. If someone could handle a get-in-your-face moment, then they would do that. Other people needed a little bit of a pat on the back, so that's what they would do with them. In 2011, we had a very young group and we were extremely talented, so it was just about getting the young players, especially the starters, to understand that you have to take it a game at a time. In 2010 there were certain moments where we probably looked ahead. We had an amazing team and we assumed we should have made it to the championship. In 2011, we realized we needed to just take it one game at a time and get better every game."
The young players needed to look no further than Larsen for a perfect example. Every season, Larsen steadily improved her offensive numbers, ultimately culminating in an All-American senior season where she hit .354 along with 65 RBIs, which was the fourth-highest RBI total in program history at the time. With 196 career RBIs, Larsen ranks third all-time at Alabama.
"Every single year, you take a little bit from the seniors and everyone else you play with," Larsen said. "I attribute the growth mostly to mental maturity. There were times as a freshman where if I struck out, it felt like the end of the world. By the time I was as senior, I understood that I wasn't going to 3-3 every single game. I really bought into the fact that this was a game of failure. I chose to play this sport and it can be cruel at times but that's just the way softball goes. It's going to hurt but that makes it one of the most rewarding feelings when you do get a single or a home run. You have to learn to take the smaller victories and build off of those.
"You learn how to work as a team and how everyone supplements each other and how they work together. You learn to play with people around you instead of just focusing on yourself. Kendall Dawson and I would talk all the time about how one of the best feelings was when she and I would catch people stealing with her at catcher and me at shortstop. Little things like that help you become more familiar and comfortable."
Year-in and year-out, the series against Georgia was one of the standout SEC rivalries for Larsen. The series was relatively one-sided during her four years, seeing Alabama win 10 of the 13 matchups, but the stakes were always very high.
"One particular series that stands out was against Georgia my senior year," Larsen said. "I had my senior night that weekend, ESPN was there and it was one of the most surreal moments. The crowd gave me a curtain call! That doesn't happen in softball. Without the intensity and competition level, moments like that don't exist."
Larsen's hit her senior-day home run in game two of the series. After a three-run homer by Courtney Conley earlier in the second inning, Larsen followed with one of her own to stretch the Tide's lead to 6-0. Alabama would eventually win the game, 6-5, and secure the series victory.
"These rivalries are created and it becomes so big that they're being broadcast on national television," Larsen said. "That's why playing in the SEC was so special and unique. The environments were so difficult to play in because the fans were so passionate. You felt like whoever came out with a win in those series was going to win the SEC. You learn to understand that these games will be difficult but they will be extremely fun because the atmosphere is so incredible."
Larsen remembers plenty of key moments on the field, but the most treasured memories for her are the ones that were made away from the field.
"You miss the sport of softball every single day and the feelings you get making certain plays or getting certain hits, but the time spent with teammates is what you genuinely and whole-heartedly want back," Larsen said. "I took the game of softball very seriously but I liked to have fun and stay loose off the field. I loved playing jokes. One bus trip my senior year, I crawled into the overhead compartment and we got Ryan Iamurri to open it. I scared her to the point where she was crying because that's what she did when she got scared as a freshman. Murphy allowed us to have fun and it wasn't a business structure, it was a family structure.
"The bus rides to games were absolutely incredible. There's this calming silence on the bus but the minute that Murph or Aly stands up, you get this feeling in your stomach because you know you're about to go play. You get butterflies in the best way possible. It's indescribable. The bus rides were definitely my favorite."
After earning her master's in sport management at Alabama, Larsen began her current career working as a performance and brand specialist with Nike. Now living across the country in Portland, the lessons learned at Alabama are never far from her mind.
"Every single day, there are lessons that I apply to my job or relationships with friends and family that I learned from softball," Larsen said. "It's something that I will never take for granted. I look back and I attribute all of my success even now to Coach Murphy, Aly and my teammates. The saying everyone leaves with is that 'the sooner you learn it's not all about you, the better off you'll be'. If you buy into that, it makes you a better person. It makes you more empathetic and it just makes you a better human being. You learn to not judge so quickly. You learn to accept peoples' differences. Putting 17 different girls around each other for an entire year seems like a recipe for disaster. Our coaches taught us that it wasn't about us. We had to get over our own personal differences and learn to love one another. That alone has made me a better person."
