Kaylie Sippel, St. succeeds Francis

Kaylie Sippel He eventually turned out to be wrong. And that’s a good thing.

Sippel, a three-sport athlete at Beecher, attended St. Louis in Joliet as a freshman. She was a little overwhelmed when she started playing softball in college at St. Francis.

“I thought there was no way I could play more than one varsity sport,” he said.

Wrong.

After attending some matches, Sippel said that she missed playing volleyball. He also joined this team after his sophomore year.

For the next two years until the start of senior year, Sippel balanced the two sports by studying and studying to maintain a perfect 4.0 GPA while majoring in biology.

That’s a pretty big workload, but there’s more. A few months ago, basketball was calling us.

The number of saints was small. Assistant Adam Schwarzentraub coached Sippel in high school and reached out to see if she would be ready to help the women’s team.

Now Sippel is a three-sport athlete again.

“I can’t say no to people,” Sippel said. “I always have to be busy. I don’t like free time and I like to have all my minutes taken advantage of.”

Although he hasn’t had a ton of minutes when it comes to playing time in basketball, his presence at practice has been a big help to the injury-plagued Saints (8-16).

St. “We had some dead bodies and were dealing with nagging injuries, so we were looking for who could help us,” the Francis coach said. John McGinty aforementioned. “Adam recommended Kaylie and she was great too.

“It’s really nice of him to do that.”

Sippel is also part of a squad that includes former standouts from the region. Hannah Cholke (St. Laurence), Le’lani Harris (Marist), Ryann Houbolt (St. Laurence), Mia Kennelly (Oak Grass) and Laurelei Thormeyer (Destiny).

Amanda Jensenwho coaches softball for the Saints, said he did some work with McGinty so they could both benefit from Sippel’s talents.

St. Francis was ready to open the softball season on Wednesday. Sippel, a left-handed outfielder/first baseman, has a .403 career average for the Saints with just nine hits in 315 at-bats.

“Kaylie is one of those kids who is good at everything she does,” Jensen said of Sippel. “Good at academics and athletics; Everything he does, he does well.

“It’s so effortless. “It comes naturally to him.”

Sippel had 2,022 assists and 291 kills as a setter/spiker in her three-year volleyball career.

Cara CurrierShe was a three-sport athlete at Augustana who coached the Saints in volleyball. He understands the demands from Sippel.

“There are times when he goes to two practices a day,” Currier said. “This can be difficult, but he does it well.”

Since adding a third sport, there have been days when Sippel would practice softball for two hours at the Cadence Sports Center in Joliet, then return to campus to play basketball for two hours.

And he loves it.

“The girls are super supportive, so it makes it easy to go to two practices a day and see their faces,” Sippel said. “They’re all so wonderful and so beautiful. They’re so much fun to be around.”

Fifth-generation graduate of Beecher, father ToddAt the same time, St. Sippel, who played baseball at St. Francis, applied to medical school with the idea of ​​becoming a doctor.

“I want to be in the emergency room, helping people at their worst times,” he said. “I knew I loved science, I was working in a hospital setting, and I really loved the doctors I worked with.

“When I saw how they interacted with patients, I wanted to do that, too.”

She plans to return for a fifth year and will play volleyball in the fall.

As for basketball?

“If they ever need me again, I’m here,” he said.

Jeff Vorva is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.