Prep softball: 5 things that defined the 2024 season

Dominant pitchers, big boppers, postseason runs and an area-wide youth movement.

With the 2024 softball season coming to an end in DeKalb County, we look back at five things that defined the season.

Sycamore, Kaneland pitchers dominate

The Spartans and the Knights had the longest postseason runs of any local team, and unsurprisingly each had a shutdown ace.

For Sycamore, junior Addison Dierschow handled the brunt of the pitching this year. Her ERA briefly dropped below two after a 10-1 win against Kaneland, but she finished the year with a 22-2 record, striking out 158 and walking 25 in 136 innings.

Brynn Woods didn’t face Sycamore in that 10-1 loss, but she did beat them 3-0 earlier in the year, one of only two Class 3A teams to defeat the Spartans this year. She finished with 154 strikeouts, 18 walks and a 1.75 ERA.

Both were a big reason each team reached the Class 3A Sycamore Sectional, meeting in a semifinal with Sycamore winning 6-0. Although it was Bella Jacobs who pitched that game for Sycamore, showing off just how much pitching depth the Spartans had.

Offensive numbers were everywhere

Throw a dart at a list of area hitting statistics, and more than likely it will land on some gaudy number.

Indian Creek senior Emily Frazier had six home runs and an OPS of 1.313. Across the county in Kirkland, Hiawatha junior Nelly Delvalle hit .455. And the top of the Genoa-Kingston lineup was formidable with Emily Trzynka, Olivia Vasak and Kiki Mitchell starting it off, Elizabeth Davis cleaning up, and Faith Thompson in the fifth spot. Sydney Myles combined the best of both worlds for DeKalb with the speed of a slap hitter who could go deep, as well.

Then you have a team like Sycamore that had numbers all over the lineup, whether it was leadoff hitter Addie McLaughlin hitting .620 when leading off an inning or Brighton Snodgrass and Keera Trautvetter making up a tough bottom part of the lineup.

Genoa-Kingston crashes the postseason party

Other than Sycamore and Kaneland, no area team had won a regional since Indian Creek in 2017.

Joining the Spartans and Knights in the sectional round this year was Genoa-Kingston, which upset Stillman Valley 2-1 in the Class 2A Oregon Regional behind a two-run homer by Thompson. That avenged two losses to the Cardinals, one 13-7 early in the season and a 2-1 loss earlier in May.

State will have to wait another year

For the second straight year, Sycamore was in a supersectional, losing again to Antioch, which took second in the Class 3A state tournament last year and looks to be in the hunt for a title this year.

It’s the fourth straight season in which no local team will make the state tournament. Between 2015 and 2019, a team made state every year but one. Kaneland started the run with a third-place finish in 2015 in the 3A tournament, and DeKalb took fourth in 4A the next year. The Knights returned in 2018 to take third.

Sycamore wrapped up the run with a 3A title in 2019.

Plenty of talent returns next year

The good news for most teams is that there’s a lot of top-level players returning for the 2025 season. Woods and Dierschow will lock horns for one more year, and behind Dierschow Jacobs is a sophomore.

In fact, Trautvetter was the only senior on Sycamore’s roster. Kaneland will lose a couple of key pieces, such as first baseman Sammy Dunne and center fielder Isabelle Stombres.

For a lot of teams, it seems 2024 may have just been the opening act for 2025.