NATCHITOCHES – Four Northwestern State seniors had career-best seasons on the field in 2024, accompanying their impeccable work in the classroom to earn Southland Conference All-Academic Team status.
 
Tristin Court, Maggie Darr, Kenzie Seely and Ashlyn Walker each earned a spot on the league's second-team squad announced on Monday afternoon. NSU had four players on the all-academic team for the third consecutive season, which also matches the most in a single season since 2017.
 
The honors are firsts for Court, Seely and Walker, while Darr joins the likes of former Demon greats Brittany Virgoe and Kellye Kincannon as the only NSU softball players to earn academic all-conference three times in their career.  
 
NSU's top offensive threat and run producer, Court won two of the three triple crown categories for the season with four home runs and 32 RBI. She established a new career high with 15 doubles, the 10th most in a single year in NSU history, and third most in the conference this year. 
 
She drove in 32 runs on the season, ranking eighth best in the Southland and the only player not from Southestern, McNeese or UIW in the top 10 in the category. Her team-best 22 extra-base hits led to the eighth best slugging mark in the league at .540. 
 
Court graduated magna cum laude with a 3.70 GPA in psychology and was named to NSU's President's List in her final semester with a 4.0 GPA this past spring.
 
The now three-time academic all-conference pitcher, Darr led the team with a 3.02 ERA in more than 120 innings pitched with 86 strikeouts, the seventh most in the league this year. She became the 10^th player in program history to reach 300 career punchouts, doing so in just three seasons.
 
In one of her best weekends of the season, Darr allowed just one earned run in 12.0 innings of work across three appearances at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, a 0.58 ERA and a .191 opponent batting average. 
 
She graduated magna cum laude with a 3.81 GPA in health and exercise science and was named to NSU's President's List in her final semester with a 4.0 GPA this past spring. She has already been accepted into physical therapy school at Texas State.
 
Darr's pitching counterpart for the season, Seely ranked fourth in the conference this past season with 114 strikeouts, surpassing the century mark in the category for the first time in her four-year career.
 
She also ranked in the top 10 in the conference with a .224 opponent batting average, the sixth best of any pitcher, allowing her to finish her career with the third lowest opponent average in program history at .238.
 
Seely locked in over her final four career appearances holding opponents to a 1.47 ERA over her final four outings and three starts with 16 strikeouts. In her final career game, she threw a complete game shutout against UIW, allowing just three hits. She had the third most complete games in the league this year with 12. 
 
Seely graduated magna cum laude with a 3.77 GPA in health and exercise science and was named to NSU's President's List in her final semester with a 4.0 GPA this past spring.
 
Darr and Seely's battery mate known for her defensive prowess, Walker led the Southland this year, and finished sixth in the NCAA, in runner's caught stealing with 15. It was the third most in a single season in school history.
 
She threw out a runner in five straight games during the conference season and is the only player in NSU history to rank in the top 10 in the career category to only play two seasons for the Demons. Walker caught 25 runner's stealing in two seasons as NSU's starting catcher.
 
At the plate she had a career-long 10-game hitting streak during conference play where she drove in six RBI during that stretch. 
 
Walker missed just three games behind the plate over the past two seasons at NSU while maintaining a perfect 4.0 GPA. She was named NSU's Academic Athlete of the Year this year and graduated summa cum laude in biology and was a member of NSU's President's List with a 4.0 in each of her semesters at NSU.