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Anastasia Pappas has an interesting take on being the only senior on St. Charles North’s softball team that seems logical when considering she’s only played three high school seasons.
“I still feel like I’m a junior as a player,” Pappas said. “I know I’m a senior, I just graduated this week, they definitely look up to me which is good. Personally, I feel like yeah, I’m a senior, but a lot of other girls have stepped up. We don’t put a label on it.”
Age or label, Pappas is most certainly the leader of a young North Stars’ team.
The four-year varsity player who was a key part of a St. Charles North supersectional team as a freshman in 2018 now serves as mentor to her younger teammates. Pappas gets them organized on a daily basis with pregame and pre-practice routines.
“She checks off every box as being a captain and helping them out,” North Stars coach Tom Poulin said. “She helps them with little tips here and there defensively, approach at the plate, situations – her experience and her willingness to share with younger kids and their willingness to listen. Sometimes with strong leaders kids put up that wall. Nobody is doing that with Anastasia. She is able to lead them without losing that friendship.”
Pappas enjoyed a memorable Senior Night of one on Tuesday.
First St. Charles North held a ceremony with Pappas’ teammates making a bat tunnel for her to walk out to. They took pictures, and presented her with a basket full of gifts.
Then Pappas went out and threw a one-hit shutout of Batavia, striking out three in her best start of the season.
“She went right at them, was around the plate and we did a nice job behind her defensively,” Poulin said. “That was her hitting spots, changing speeds, showing batters something different. I was happy for her. She deserved a day like that. To perform well in that situation was awesome.”
Pappas, for her part, deflected credit for her performance.
“I kind of just trusted my defense that game,” said Pappas, who improved to 5-4 on the season with a 3.03 ERA and 47 strikeouts in 57.2 innings and is also batting .333 with six doubles, 10 RBIs and 16 runs scored. “I didn’t have my best stuff but that’s when you are supposed to lean on other players. I really rely on them. For how young they are, they are really talented.”
Pappas, who was recruited as a pitcher by West Virginia Wesleyan and could also play middle infield and utility, has always pitched. She’s thrown in the basement since she was 5 years old with pitching coach Jillien Waldron, who Pappas calls “my role model, kind of like a second mom to me.”
“We mostly work on spins. I can throw 59-61, I’ve been working out on strength training which has helped, but as a pitcher and a hitter, the most effective thing is spin,” Pappas said. “If they can’t touch it with the good part of the bat it’s not going anywhere.”
Pappas perhaps isn’t quite so imposing with her height, 5-foot-1 or 5-2, but she said her and Waldron have never talked about what she might lack in size.
“It was funny, when I was younger, four or five, running down the line with these kids, I had my game face on,” she said. “When I get on the mound I have to look like a competitor, have to have a little bit of cockiness.”
Pappas carries that confidence over to the team.
The North Stars hold a modest 8-7 record in a schedule limited by a two-week quarantine, and take a No. 5 sectional seed into the playoffs. But Pappas and Poulin both believe they have the stuff for a deep playoff run.
She hasn’t forgotten her freshman year, when St. Charles North made it to the supersectionals, losing to York at Rosemont.
“That’s one thing that has stuck with me since freshman year,” Pappas said. “Grace, one of the seniors, we were standing on the Rosemont field after that game and she said ‘Don’t be sad, you’ll be here soon enough, I know you’ll be back.’ That drives me, that she had that confidence in me as a freshman.”
St. Charles East clinches DuKane Conference
St. Charles East clinched the DuKane Conference title with a win over Batavia on Thursday. Cici Wilson slugged two homers and Katie Arrambide and Kati Gheorghe also went deep for the Saints.
Geneva’s familiar playoff opponent
Geneva received a No. 16 sectional seed, and with it a first-round playoff matchup with No. 1 seed Yorkville.
That sounds daunting, but these two schools have an interesting recent playoff history. In 2019, 14th-seeded Geneva knocked off No. 1-seeded Yorkville 2-1 in a regional semifinal, a springboard to the Vikings’ Cinderella run to a sectional championship. Geneva also beat Yorkville in a regional semifinal in 2018, but in 2017 ninth-seeded Yorkville knocked off No. 1 seed Geneva in a regional final, at the time snapping the Vikings’ 29-game winning streak.