Daily Chronicle 2020-21 Female Athlete of the Year: Sycamore’s Ella Shipley

When soccer season came around, Sycamore junior Ella Shipley found herself playing striker for the first time after playing defense as a freshman.

And Shipley and coach Kevin Bickley said that what drove her to success at the position – 28 goals during a shortened season – is what drove her to success as the Interstate 8′s MVP during the basketball season. Shipley is a fierce competitor, so much so that she said Bickley has even joked with her about it.

“He says ‘I wouldn’t want to play any board games with you,’ ” Shipley said. “I’ve always been a competitor, and that’s what sets me apart. I play with a lot of talented athletes, basketball and soccer, that skill-wise are great players. Playing two sports, I don’t really have time to hone in on those skills to make me better at one or the other sports. But I’m aggressive, and I love to win and I love to play. So, putting me in that striker position, even though I was hesitant on it, was a very smart idea just because I want to score, I’m hungry and I want to compete.”

Shipley’s standout season’s on the basketball court and soccer field have earned her the Daily Chronicle 2020-21 Female Athlete of the Year award.

Shipley said she had her doubts about playing up top on the soccer field this year. Aside from never playing there before, she said she didn’t feel she had the speed traditionally associated with the position.

“That’s clearly not my strong suit,” Shipley said with a chuckle. “I was hesitant I could keep up with that position. I gave it a try, and I’m very competitive, so learning that new position for me was huge.”

Bickley said what he sees from Shipley on the basketball court is similar to how she played the forward position.

“Watching her drive to the basket, that was kind of I saw as a striker,” Bickley said. “She sees the goal and goes for it. I knew that would work for us up top.”

When asked to describe Shipley, the first word Sycamore basketball coach Adam Wickness used was competitive. But the coach said her competitive nature goes farther than the average competitive drive an athlete has.

“When we were struggling at Sandwich, it was a very frustrating game,” Wickness said. “There were a lot of things that were against us and not working well. We were playing poorly, and the referees were like – it was just a bad situation. You could see a change in her persona where she gathered everyone and said listen, here’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to finish this game. It was an on-the-floor timeout and she huddled everyone together and she said we got this. When she goes into super-competitive mode you can see it in the way she plays, but also her body language. It’s a flip that kind of switches on her hyper-competitive drive.”

On the court Shipley averaged 7.9 points, 3.1 rebounds and 1.4 steals a game. After the season ended it was on to the new challenge of a new soccer position.

“I’m not going to lie. I was very doubtful at the beginning of the season,” Shipley said. “We had a lot of girls that could play the striker position. We kind of were lacking fluidity in our lineup. Can we have girls playing in each place? I wanted to go into the season playing midfield, but we had three or four other girls that could play that position, but we kind of lacked that striker position.”

She said that after the team struggled to score in the first couple matches she finally made the move up front. In her first game in that new position she scored a goal.

“That was big for me,” Shipley said. “It showed me I can compete in this position. But throughout the season, I mean we talk about the defense that gets shutouts or the strikers that score all the goals, but our midfield did all that work to get me the ball. And where speed wasn’t my strong suit, they worked really hard. Like Grace Parks, Abby Bourdage and Karli Kruizenga, they owned that midfield, getting me the ball and working with the strengths we had.”

And the seasons she played in both sports were very much up in the air for most of the school year after the 2020 soccer season was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. The IHSA announced there would be a basketball season about two weeks before the first games were played, leading to a lot of questions before the Spartans took the court for the first time.

“We were constantly up in the air,” Shipley said. “Were we going to have to wear masks? Are we going to have practice? Are we going to have kids contact traced? We won conference, we played and competed in our nonconference games, and I think we ... are having a lot of returning girls [next year], so that’s exciting.”

Shipley said she was just glad that the season was played after the spring 2020 season was canceled.

“It was definitely a challenge because we went into the year not knowing if we were going to get a season or what it was going to look like,” Shipley said. “For the most part my coaches used as many contact days as we could to get on the field. It was honestly rough because I’d argue athletics is a big part of my identity, and not having that, it was pretty rough.”