2025 Times Softball Player of the Year: Seneca’s Tessa Krull

It’s not uncommon for athletes to have rituals and superstitions as a means of finding comfort and boosting their play.

Seneca dual-threat Tessa Krull would fit that mold – and then some – and her junior year performance seems to prove the pregame schedule works.

“My dad makes me chocolate pancakes before every single game day,” Krull said. “My mom does my hair in two French bubble braids, I save every elastic tie, and I wear the same ribbon in my hair I wore in my very first game ever. My catcher, Lexie Buis, does hearts on my face with eye(green, not eyeblack) with added glitter. I put my socks on my right foot first, then left every time.”

It works.

The Fighting Irish finished 34-2 overall, won a second straight Class 2A regional title and posted an unbeaten Tri-County Conference campaign.

The 2025 Times Softball Player of the Year, Krull went 23-1 in the pitching circle with a program single-season ERA record of 0.97. In 151 innings, she allowed just 75 hits and 27 walks while striking out 251.

At the plate, she hit .373 with 13 doubles, three home runs and 36 RBIs.

“When Tessa is in the circle, the collective confidence of the team rises to a very high level,” Seneca coach Brian Holman said. “She’s gotten better every single season, and that doesn’t always happen when girls come into the high school level already being a dominant pitcher at the grade school level. This past offseason she’s worked on her changeup and being more reliable in the strike zone, and it showed.

“She was lights-out for us all season. Even in the loss to (eventual state champion) Beecher (in the sectional final), she only allowed one hard-hit ball the entire game and gave it everything she had.”

Krull was named to the Illinois Coaches Association All-State first-team and for the third year in a row the TCC Pitcher of the Year.

“I feel like until this season I was always worrying about living up to my own expectations, worrying about if other players were better than me,” Krull said. “This year I was more mentally strong and just worried about me and what I could do to help Seneca softball win. While I continued to work on my pitching and hitting in the offseason, it was the mental part of the game that I worked on the most.

“I also had to keep reminding myself how good a defense I had behind me. Our defense was really good and played unbelievable all season.”

Krull really shined in the postseason, pitching all 25 innings in Seneca’s four games, allowing just 10 hits, one earned run and striking out 34.

She tossed a five-inning perfect game to open regional play against Watseka, then fired seven-inning shutouts against Lexington/Ridgeview and Coal City before scattering four hits and striking out four against Beecher.

“You have to pitch with confidence, no matter what. I’ve had to learn that there are going to be times when the batter gets a hit or hits the ball hard, and you just have to say to yourself, ‘Let’s get the next one.’ You have to have a very short memory,” Krull said.

The Irish right-hander says her love for softball developed from watching her older sister, Anne, play. She also said she has an offseason plan to come back for her senior season even better.

“My older sister played softball all the way through college, so I was always at softball fields when I was younger. Watching her play made me want to play, and my parents were always willing to take me to practices or camps to help me get better.

“That is still the goal, to get better, and that’s what I’m going to keep working on. I have things I know I’ll be working on heading into my senior season, and hopefully I can help the team go further than we did this season.”