Ty Andracke throws out the first pitch before the Mahomet-Seymour baseball team hosted St. Bede last Saturday in Mahomet.
Nic DiFilippo pondered the topic for a moment.
After watching Tyler Andracke throw out the first pitch before last Saturday’s baseball game between host Mahomet-Seymour and St. Bede, would the veteran M-S baseball coach go with Andracke, a Mahomet youngster battling leukemia for just over a year, or Blake Wolters, a junior right-hander on the current Bulldogs roster who is committed to pitch at Purdue, in a win-or-go-home scenario?
“Great question,” DiFilippo said. “But I have to take Ty. If you are 7 years old and you take on cancer like he has with such a great spirit, he is not afraid to fight. I will let Ty be my starter and take my chances with Wolters closing the game.”
The Bulldogs are off to an impressive start this season, compiling a 16-3 record and winning their last six games going into Saturday’s scheduled doubleheader at Mattoon.
But what M-S did in making a kid like Andracke — plus his parents, Eric and Traci and big sister, 9-year-old Brooklyn — feel like an All-Star last Saturday is nearly as impressive.
The M-S baseball program raised a little more than $5,000 during its Strikeout Cancer event against St. Bede that featured a barbecue lunch, a 50-50 raffle and other items, all in an effort to help make sure a sports-loving 7-year-old left-hander has a promising future.
“Eric and I talked that day about how much has happened in the last year,” DiFilippo said. “We have been supporting them for the last year, and it was great to see a happy and smiling Ty and Brooklyn on the field throwing out the first pitch.”
DiFilippo also credited St. Bede coach Bill Booker for his help and generosity at the event.
“His program jumped on the chance to help Ty and his family,” DiFilippo said. “They brought a significant donation with them along with some other gifts.”
M-S won the game, 6-5, but DiFilippo is hopeful his players will remember last Saturday for more than the final score.
“We talk about how we have the responsibility to help those in need when we can,” DiFilippo said. “We have good and bad days in life and baseball. We have to learn how to enjoy the roller coaster of life and make sure the highs are not too high, but not let the lows get us down. No matter if we lose or have errors, we are blessed to still be able to play this game.”
Unity senior Blake Kimball, second from left, celebrates with, from left, his dad Tom, his mom Amanda and his sister Blair on Thursday afternoon at Unity High School in Tolono after Kimball was surprised during his lunch hour with The News-Gazette’s Male Athlete of the Year award for the 2021-22 school year. Kimball has been a star in football, basketball and baseball this school year for the Rockets and is Unity’s first male athlete to earn this honor since The News-Gazette first started handing out this accolade in 2003.
Coming soon
Thursday afternoon marked the start of a new tradition The News-Gazette sports department hopes to continue in the years ahead.
Thanks to the fine folks at Unity High School, with a big shoutout to Unity football coach and athletic director Scott Hamilton, we were able to pull off an idea only a few weeks in the making: an in-person ceremony to unveil our high school sports Male Athlete of the Year for the 2021-22 school year. We’ve been honoring one male senior and one female senior Athlete of the Year since 2003.
This year’s recipient is Unity senior Blake Kimball. The three-sport standout for the Rockets — he was our All-Area football player of the year as Unity’s quarterback, a first-team All-Area boys’ basketball selection as a starting guard and is a key pitcher/infielder on a Unity baseball team rolling along with a 21-2 record this spring — received a pleasant surprise during his lunch hour on Thursday in Tolono.
We surprised Kimball in front of his classmates, family and coaches with a framed front page honoring his efforts, along with a plaque from the University of Illinois Army ROTC.
“Just like any other day I was eating lunch at the cafeteria, saw Coach Hamilton walk in, turned around, saw all these media presences and I was like, ‘What’s going on?’” Kimball told our preps coordinator Colin Likas. “I soon learned. It was super nerve-racking at first, very surprising and overwhelming, but a really cool achievement.”
We’ll have a more comprehensive breakdown of Kimball’s accomplishments later this summer when we run our Preps Year in Review package, spearheaded by Likas. But we wanted to take a moment, before the school year ended and summer vacation started, to let this particular athlete get a bit more recognition from the people closest to him.
Want to see more of Thursday’s event as it played out? Make sure to follow The News-Gazette on Twitter (@news_gazette and @ngpreps) and on Snapchat (news-gazette), and be sure to check out a video story at news-gazette.com.
And we’re not done yet. Plans are already in place to pull off the same surprise ceremony next week at another area high school to recognize our Female Athlete of the Year. Stay tuned.
College sightings
If you flip on one of ESPN’s channels this weekends and see a former high school standout on your screen, don’t be alarmed.
Morgan Day and her Oklahoma State softball teammates started an important three-game series on Thursday night against Oklahoma, with ESPN carrying the primetime game. Bedlam will ensue before the weekend ends.
Day, a 2017 Tuscola graduate, is thriving in her first season pitching with the Cowgirls, who are ranked eighth in the latest D1softball.com Top 25 poll. An Illinois State transfer, the right-hander carried a 9-3 record with a 2.40 earned run average and 89 strikeouts compared to only 17 walks in 67 innings pitched, into Thursday night’s opener against the top-ranked Sooners.
The rest of the Oklahoma State-Oklahoma series is set for easy viewing, too, with Friday’s 6 p.m. first pitch scheduled for ESPN2 before Saturday’s 4 p.m. series finale slated to air on ESPNU.
Speaking of ESPNU and local connections, Mica Allison will get the chance to showcase her talents on the network Friday morning.
Allison, The N-G’s 2017 All-Area volleyball player of the year from St. Thomas More who helped the Sabers win a Class 2A state title that fall, and her Florida Atlantic beach volleyball teammates play top-seeded Southern Cal at 9 a.m. during the second round of the NCAA tournament in Gulf Shores, Ala.
Allison, who started off her college career at Auburn before transferring to play two seasons at Illinois, is 10-8 in her first season playing beach volleyball with Florida Atlantic.
If the eighth-seeded Sandy Owls — yes, that’s the team’s nickname in a play off the school’s Owls’ nickname — can upset Southern Cal, a quarterfinal match against either fifth-seeded Florida State or fourth-seeded Loyola Marymount awaits at 3 p.m. Friday.
Back to the diamond
Prior to 2022, the last full softball season Bailey Dowling took part in was in 2019.
Then a junior at St. Joseph-Ogden, the power-hitting shortstop had already accumulated an IHSA state record 65 home runs during her decorated career with the Spartans.
But the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out her senior season at SJ-O, and a devastating knee injury — she tore her ACL, MCL and meniscus in her left knee — ended her freshman season at Alabama only 25 games into the 2021 season.
Having spent the offseason recovering, Dowling has started 45 of the Crimson Tide’s 47 games this season going into their regular-season finale series that starts Friday against Missouri.
She’s hitting a respectable .268 with eight home runs and 26 RBI for an Alabama team that is 39-9, ranked eighth in the most recent D1softball.com Top 25 poll and has every intention on reaching the Women’s College World Series after making it into the semifinals last year.
And, tying the start of this column to the end now, Mahomet-Seymour baseball is proving itself at the college stage, too.
Brooks Coetzee, a 2018 M-S graduate, is in his fourth season at Notre Dame and recently just earned his 100th start with the Irish.
Notre Dame’s right fielder is hitting .281, is tied for the team lead with eight home runs and has 33 RBI, helping the Irish to a 28-10 record and the No. 16 ranking in the latest D1baseball.com Top 25 poll. His old high school coach is certainly paying attention to what Coetzee has accomplished up in South Bend, Ind.
“Being able to coach a kid like Brooks from seventh grade through senior year was amazing, and now I am enjoying being a fan,” DiFilippo said. “We texted about his games, and I was able to take my varsity coaching staff to see him play this spring in Louisville. It was great to catch up in person with him.
“I am not surprised at how well he is doing. Brooks has always been willing to work and do what was needed. Most kids just don’t understand how much work it takes to play at that level and be successful. We are proud to say we were part of his process.”