One run.

That's all that separated the Sycamore High School girls softball team from their first-ever trip to state. The Lady Spartans (23-16) lost to Marengo, 5-4, in eight innings in the DeKalb Super-Sectional June 6.

"We were behind 2-0 and down to our last strike when we scored four runs," SHS coach Jill Carpenter said. "I was down in the coach's box going, 'Is this for real?' ...You just had to close the deal. You don't know how hard it is to get three outs until you have to do it."

Born in Tinley Park, Carpenter played shortstop and third base for the softball team of Andrew High School before moving to Northern Illinois University, winning more than 150 games and back-to-back Mid-American Conference titles.

After graduating, Carpenter was an assistant coach for two years at NIU and one year at Indiana University before she decided to return to the high school level. While earning her teaching degree at NIU, Carpenter was the sophomore softball  coach for SHS. When Matt Anderson retired, Carpenter said he helped her to get the head coach position.

She also teaches physical education in the Kaneland School District.

On the day she would have gone to Peoria for the state tourney, Carpenter went on the record with MidWeek reporter Doug Oleson instead.

MidWeek: When you took over the SHS program, wasn't it on the down side?
Jill Carpenter: It was in a little bit of a rebuilding phase. I think that happens at a lot of schools. You go through a few successful seasons. You know, this isn't the pros or college, where you get to choose your players; you are given what you are given. So there were a couple of down years there. The first year, we were 10-24. Coach Vern Hjelmberg and me were trying to lay the foundation of how we wanted things to go and the way we expected things to be run, and that takes time. We really took our lumps that first year, but we really started to improve that second year.

MW: Are there big changes that a new coach makes?
JC: I would say a lot of coaching is also about your personality. Matt and I are the same in some ways, but we're different in other ways. The obvious is that I'm a female, and I think that does make a difference when you're coaching a girls' sport. I also played the game at a high level, and I think that gives you some instant credibility with the kids. They tend to trust you more and really buy into what you're trying to push to them.

There can be different philosophies. I'm a very defense-oriented person. I think that defense and pitching is where this game starts. I'll use the Geneseo game as an example: we had four hits and won the game. We had excellent defense.

We also instilled some things that weren't going on in the program before, like a weight training program. I think you have to. The kids are just bigger, stronger, faster. If you're not doing those things in the off-season, then you're not getting the most out of their abilities.

MW: So what makes for a successful program?
JC: It really is the hard work of the players. Coaches will always have a hand in what the team accomplishes, but ultimately it comes down to the commitment to success that these players exhibit each and every day. We seem to have players every year that set such a good example for our new players that the process just keeps repeating itself each year. That is the key to keeping a program consistently successful.

MW: Was it extra challenging to go from the Big Ten to high school?
JC: It's different in the sense that you're not recruiting the best of the best, so to speak. But I don't miss the recruiting aspect. High school kids are much more wiling to learn. They are little sponges. The kids we have are wiling to soak up whatever information we teach them. They're willing to use that to their advantage. In higher-level college, you sometimes run into kids who think that they already know it all and are very set in their ways, and they're not willing to try new things.

In that regard, it's a lot more rewarding to work with a high school kid, because you can see so much more growth from the beginning of the season to the end of the season, and specifically from when they were freshmen to the time they're seniors. And they are a whole lot more fun. There is not a day that goes by that we're not laughing at something ridiculous that happened or was said at practice.

MW: Is it awkward when your team plays Kaneland?
JC: It's not an ideal situation, obviously, but I was a coach at Sycamore for two years before being offered a teaching position at Kaneland. The Kaneland games are tough because I know most of the kids on the opposing team, and I do otherwise root for them all season, minus the games we match up with them, of course. I wish we didn't always end up in the same regional either, because it would be fun, and good for our conference, to get both teams farther in the post-season.
 
MW: So what happened this season? You were .500 around mid-season and then just got hot at the right moment.
JC: We were up and down. I think our longest winning streak was seven games and our longest losing streak was four games. A lot of that can be due to a couple of things. The weather; we had eight-day layoffs without games and a couple of five-day layoffs, and when that happens, I think you struggle. And we were sometimes the tail of two teams.

(Sophomore pitcher) Abby Foulk was still getting over a rib injury from the season before. For a pitcher, it can be hard to get over. And it took her a while to get her form back. As long as it took, it was worth the wait, in our opinion, in terms of where she got by the end of the season. But we took our lumps. We had a couple of other injuries. We had five freshmen; I attribute a lot of that up and down to a lack of experience. But by the end of the year, those kids really figured it out, and we got hot at the right time. Those kids performed well under pressure, which is what the post-season is all about, and you just ride that out as long as you can.

MW: Is it exciting when you see the younger kids get it?
JC: We wish we would have videotaped them at the beginning of the year, to just see them running around sometimes not knowing what's going on, to just their ability at the end of the year. Their understanding of the game specifically. They are all very naturally athletic kids – they wouldn't be on the varsity if they weren't – but to understand the game and why things happen the way they do, that is something that is often overlooked at this point. But you have to understand the little things when you are playing against really good competition day in and day out.

MW: Playing for their first shot at state, how much of a factor does that play for the kids?
JC: The kids are young, but they've never really been put in that situation before where you win or go home. The only thing I can equate that to is the last tournament they play in summer ball ... compared to, the season's over, we've got to say goodbye to the seniors, I'll never play with those kids again. Those are added pressures, but for the most part I think the kids handled it very well.

MW: Is it bittersweet to get that far, but lose like that?
JC: It's hard, but I think it's also going to fuel the fires of our returning players to try to take it one more step next year. Last year, we made the sectional finals and we lost to Geneseo. And this year, we closed the deal in the finals and we advanced past the Sweet Sixteen to the Elite Eight. It was one of our team goals to do it this year. And we achieved that this year, and I think they're really going to set the bar high for next year. (After the loss to Marengo)  I literally went from here to my house, which is about two minutes away, and Brittany Huber, one of our sophomores, had already sent me a text: "I'm already ready for next year, Coach". When you hear things like that, you feel you must have done something right in terms of the experience that the kids have had. I think it's going to take awhile to get over this one because you are so close and there no guarantees.

MW: Any final thoughts?
JC:   You know, as hard as it is not being on a bus going to Peoria, I wouldn't trade (this season) for anything.