Daily Chronicle 2025 Softball Player of the Year: Sycamore’s Bella Jacobs

Something about close games brought out the best in Sycamore starter Bella Jacobs.

The junior righty missed most of last year with biceps and elbow tendinitis after sparing use as a freshman. But she made a huge statement in her first start of this year, striking out 16 Harlem batters as the Spartans prevailed 1-0.

It didn’t stop there. She struck out 10 in a 2-1 win against Woodstock North. She had 20 strikeouts in eight innings in a 4-3 win against St. Charles East. She struck out 16 in nine innings in a 4-3 win against Yorkville, then two days later struck out 13 in a 1-0 win against Ottawa.

“Sometimes when I’ve hit in the past, it always hasn’t worked out the best for me,” said Jacobs, the Daily Chronicle 2025 Softball Player of the Year. “I know how challenging hitting can be. Some of my teammates got frustrated with how they were performing, so I just wanted to show them it was OK.”

Jacobs went 16-2 on the year with a 1.91 ERA. She struck out 225 batters and walked 32 in 128⅓ innings.

The Spartans went 29-7-1 this year and won a regional for the third straight year and fifth time since 2019.

Sycamore coach Jill Carpenter said after the Harlem game, Jacobs kept getting better and better as games got bigger and bigger.

“It was like, OK, she has the ability to carry us if the offense is not there,” Carpenter said. “She did that multiple times when we played some extremely tough competition, and she rose to the level of the opponent, so to speak.”

Since she doesn’t usually hit, she said she knows she has to up her game in the circle to help her teammates out.

“If they’re not having their best day, I’m going to work my best to make sure the outcome is going to be the best outcome we can possibly get,” Jacobs said. “I’m not in the lineup, so I have to really focus on showing my team I always have their backs. If someone strikes out twice in a row, I want them to know it’s OK. The other team is not hitting, we’re not hitting, but once we start hitting it will come together as it should.”

Usually, the Sycamore bats would come around. That wasn’t the case in the Class 3A Sycamore Sectional semifinal against Crystal Lake Central, a 2-0 season-ending loss for the Spartans and the first time they had been shut out since April 22, 2024.

Jacobs struck out 10 and allowed two earned runs in the loss. Sycamore had reached the supersectional round the prior two years.

“I think it was really hard for all of us, because I think from the very beginning we all knew it was one of our years to really get far, get further than we got the past two years,” Jacobs said. “I think maybe we let up a little bit and we weren’t us in some ways in the game against Crystal Lake.”

Jacobs said she was proud of not only her performance on the year but how the season went for the team.

“I think having just one bad day at a bad time cost us making it as far as we wanted to,” Jacobs said. “But I think we all still knew that we had a good season and got to play with each other for this long. We’ve still hung out after that, so I think we are all a family, and softball isn’t the only thing that keeps us all together. So we weren’t too heartbroken.”

Jacobs was projected to start the year sharing time with senior Addison Dierschow, the Co-Player of the Year in the Interstate 8 in 2024.

But as the year went on, Jacobs kept getting stronger and stronger, especially in big-game situations.

“More than anything, she was like, ‘Please give me a shot,’ ” Carpenter said. “While it wasn’t perfect, she took advantage of a lot of the opportunities she was given.”

Both Dierschow and Jacobs pitched their way into the record books for the Spartans. Dierschow didn’t hit a batter and Jacobs hit one, only the 10th and 11th times in program history a pitcher has hit one batter or fewer in a season.

Only once before this year had a Sycamore pitcher struck out more than 200 batters in a year, with Jacobs becoming the second to do so this year after Jackie Brunworth struck out 238 in 1998.

Jacobs said she was motivated coming off her injury, and the presence of Dierschow helped a lot.

“Last year I really didn’t get to show people who I was,” Jacobs said. “I knew coming in what an extremely talented pitcher Addison was. I was comfortable, because if I was having a bad day, I’d have her, and if she was having a bad day, she’d have me. So that lifted a weight off my shoulders a little bit, because I have someone extremely talented here with me.”