As the school year comes to an end, many seniors will hang up their cleats, put their bats away and remember the fun memories they made playing college softball. However for one senior, Brooke Langeloh, this won’t be how her career ends.
After her graduation ceremony on May 21, she is heading straight for Sweden to play softball and coach some young up-and-coming players.
When the opportunity presented itself to Langeloh, there was no question whether she wanted to go.
“My old pitching coach moved over there to coach and then contacted the Chico State coach asking if any of the players wanted this opportunity,” Langeloh said. “Because I knew the coach in Sweden I thought, why not?”
Getting to be in Sweden for five months isn’t the only perk that this job has. It also includes flight and living cost along with payment for being a coach. Langeloh will specifically be working with girls around 14 years old, although the league has a wide range of ages from 12 to 30-year-old women.
Langeloh has always wanted to travel so she knows that this is her chance. With practices on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, it allows her some free time to explore Sweden and the surrounding countries.
“The schedule is already set so I can kind of plan around it. The only problem is the calendar is in Swedish so I don’t understand it,” Langeloh said. “I do know that there will be a tournament in Italy. They qualified for it last year so they hopefully will again, so that is really exciting.”
Moving to another country can be challenging enough if you speak the language, but for Langeloh it will be a little more challenging because she doesn’t speak very much Swedish.
“In high school we had a foreign exchange student from Sweden that I have stayed in contact with. When I decided to go, I started talking to her more about the language and anything I really should know, because many of them do speak English,” Langeloh said.
Of course moving across the world for five months when you have never been out of the country could be extremely scary, but she isn’t too worried mainly because her sister is traveling with her.
“My only real worry is flying to be honest. I really don’t enjoy it,” she said. “My other worry is just being careful over in Europe. With everything else that has been going on it is a little scary to be living in the middle of it. My mom told me just to be super careful and make wise decisions.”
Even with the fear of flying she is more excited than anything else. Langeloh said she loves meeting new people and experiencing new places, so she is going to make this trip the best she’s ever been on.
Esther Briggs can be contacted at [email protected] or @EstherBriggs191 on Twitter.
