The final weekend of UConn Huskies fall baseball has arrived, with an alumni game closing out the four-game exhibition season on Sunday.

The regular season begins in February with a stretch of road games played in sun-soaked locales, and Conner Lane hopes to be with the team and contribute as a relief pitcher.

Lane, a junior, is a testament to perseverance and dedication. He came to UConn as a freshman in the high school Class of 2024, full of hope for his baseball career.

And here he is, two years later, still full of hope, despite injuries that would have led most other men to call it quits.

Connecticut-bred, Lane played at Old Saybrook High School and was named the 2024 Gatorade Connecticut High School Player of the Year to go with his two All-State selections. In his junior season, Lane hit .512 with seven doubles, a school-record nine home runs, 27 RBIs and 20 runs. He also pitched 15 innings in relief and struck out 32 batters.

As a UConn freshman in 2025, Lane – a catcher – appeared in 39 games (31 starts). He hit .280 with 11 doubles, one triple, 22 runs, six homers and 34 RBIs with a .528 slugging percentage. His best game that season came April 15, when he was 3-for-5 batting with a home run and five RBIs against Boston College.

The season ended prematurely when he underwent surgery for a blood clot that had lodged in his chest, near his right shoulder. The surgery reportedly required doctors to remove a rib and a half.

"It was scary. I didn't know what it was, but the doctors told me it was fairly common in swimmers and baseball players," Lane told WTNH Hartford in January of this year. "I recovered faster than I thought. The fall was definitely great to test the waters and see how things would go when I got back. I feel like the first week or two I got back in the swing of things and just felt like it was normal again."

This fall, Lane had to test those waters again.

Healthy once more, Lane started five games in the 2026 season before devastation struck. At the plate in a Feb. 21 game at Arizona, Lane fouled a ball off his right eye, which caused an injury that left him unable to see well enough to hit or catch.

“The center of my vision is almost gone completely, so it’s super blurry … even stuff that’s pretty close, it’s still hard to see,” Lane told NBC Connecticut in August. 

He is attempting his comeback as a pitcher – a position he had not played since high school, and even then, on a limited basis. His goal is to pitch for the Huskies in 2027, wearing protective glasses.

Toward that end, Lane pitched for the Mystic Schooners of the New England Collegiate Baseball League over the summer.

His record: 3-1 with three saves in 15 relief appearances. His ERA was on the high side at 5.68, perhaps raised by a lack of control – 14 walks, four wild pitches and a hit batter. His 24 strikeouts led to a strong 11.37 Ks per nine innings.

If it weren’t for a couple of tough outings, Lane would have put up an extremely respectable ERA. He pitched just one-third of an inning in each of two games – July 21 against the Danbury Westerners and July 27 against the North Shore Navigators – and gave up three and four runs, respectively.

Take those games off the list, and his ERA would have shrunk to 2.45.

In all, Lane had 10 shutout appearances for the Schooners, one with 1 run, two with 2 runs, one with 3 runs and one with 4 runs.

It’s tough not to admire Lane for fighting back – twice – to play baseball again. Head coach Jim Penders likely saw this fall a player with a different set of skills than he had in 2024.

Lane can’t step up to the plate and hit like he did before. Those base hits have been replaced by determination, heart and an emerging arsenal of pitches.

That just might be what inspires Penders’ Huskies toward a strong 2027 season.