Kane County Chronicle 2024-25 Female Athlete of the Year: St. Charles East senior Addison Wolf

Addison Wolf always has liked to play sports competitively at St. Charles East.

Whether it involves getting dirty making a catch on the softball field or taking a girl down on the wrestling mat, she’ll do anything she can to make sure she comes out on top.

For one simple reason – she just doesn’t like to lose.

“Winning for me is always so big because I’m just the type of person who hates to lose,” Wolf said. “I’ll think about a loss for like the next week. I just am a very competitive person, and I like to be loud out there to show teams that I’m there to play and win, which is what it’s mainly about.”

Throughout her senior season, that competitiveness translated into success across both her sports.

Wolf, a Maryville softball commit, batted .480 on the season with 59 hits, including 13 doubles, three triples and nine home runs, and recorded 44 RBIs and 40 runs to help the Saints win their first sectional title since 2019.

She went 23-8 on the wrestling mat in her senior season, ending the year as the Saints’ all-time leader in wins, takedowns and pins.

Considering her athletic resume, Wolf has been named the 2024-25 Kane County Chronicle Female Athlete of the Year.

“She’s just tough as nails and she’s a heck of a competitor,” Saints softball coach Jarod Gutesha said. “It doesn’t matter what she’s doing, whether it’s as a wrestler or a softball player, she is a competitor and is tough. There’s some kids that don’t want to get down and dirty, but she’s the first one that’s going to be rolling around in it.”

Wolf took a dramatic jump on offense compared with her junior season. Her .480 batting average was the highest recorded by a Saints player since joining the DuKane Conference in 2019. She also found herself in the top 10 in Saints history across seven single-season records, including the fourth-most hits in a single season (59).

Not bad for someone who initially tried out for the team with a bad back.

“She was comfortable with who she was as a player, which then in turn gave her that confidence and she was able to then relax,” Gutesha said. “She was not trying to prove anything. She just accepted the role as a leader, and being able to be relaxed and then confident in what you know that you are able to do led to that success.”

While softball definitely was her main sport, Wolf’s competitiveness ended up branching out into new sports, both literally and figuratively.

In her junior season, she was one of only three girls to join the newly created girls wrestling program at St. Charles East as a means to help with her conditioning for the spring season.

As a senior, she led a team of 16 girls wrestlers in the Saints’ first season with a full roster. She had a 23-8 record and earned All-DuKane Conference honors.

“I saw wrestling as a second sport, but it really built me up and got me ready for softball season,” Wolf said. “I gained an insane amount of muscle and endurance and I felt like I was 100 times stronger just because of wrestling going into the season. And wrestling’s really difficult. It actually makes me appreciate softball a lot more.”

Wolf finished her wrestling career with a 51-16 record and school records for wins, takedowns and pins.

And although she knows her records won’t stand for too long, she’s happy she’s the first Saints wrestler to hold those honors.

“Everyone has to start somewhere and just to be that type of person and just throw myself out there is kind of cool,” Wolf said. “Some people were like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe you did that,’ and I just knew it would be fun. But there’s a bigger purpose of it. It’s really to get your body ready for something and endurance and things like that.”

Wrestling wasn’t the only sport she helped jump-start at St. Charles East. Wolf helped found the “Turkey Bowl” as a way to introduce flag football to the school with some encouragement from her father, Tim Wolf, who’s a defensive coordinator at Geneva. The Saints announced the 2025 fall season will be their first with a full flag football team.

“Other schools were doing it and I was like ‘That’s not fair, I really want to do that,’ ” Wolf said. “I’ve been around football for all of my life and so I found some of the people that worked at my school and asked if we could do this. We couldn’t get a full team, but then we created an event that will introduce the girls to the sport and I think the team will have a good amount of success next season.”

With Wolf heading to Maryville University to play softball next season, Gutesha said it’ll be tough to replace her both on and off the field.

“On the field, we’re never going to be able to replace what she bought to the table,” Gutesha said. “But off the field, she genuinely cared about the sport and everyone as a person. She’s a hard worker at whatever she did and I just enjoyed her personality and who she was as a person.”