The 2025-26 Herald Cup: No. 4 York

Editor’s note: Now that the 2025-26 high school sports year is over, it’s time to announce the top schools in the Herald Cup standings. We devised a points system based on team state finishes to measure which of the 80-plus high schools from the Daily Herald circulation area had the best athletic year. Last week we announced the top five small schools in the Herald Cup standings. This week we’re unveiling the top large schools, one per day, starting with No. 5 on Monday through No. 1 on Friday.

York High School has been winning IHSA state titles for nearly 100 years.

After all that time, the Dukes continue to make history.

Caroline Coan won York’s first state tennis title this school year while the boys basketball team claimed its first top-four finish.

Carrying on its traditional success across the prep sports spectrum, York finished fourth in the 2025-26 Herald Cup standings for large schools with 111 points that were calculated by weighing team finishes throughout the fall, winter and spring.

How they did it

The Dukes were strong in boys (fifth in the state) and girls cross country (third), boys and girls lacrosse (state runner-up), and boys and girls water polo, which finished third and second, respectively.

Boys golf took third in Class 3A while the baseball and boys volleyball teams won regional titles. The Dukes took home six trophies in the spring.

Who made it happen

Second-seeded Coan won a three-hour match in the 2A final against No. 1 Helena Klooster of Marist. The junior dropped the first set in a tiebreaker and rallied from three games down in the third set.

Sophomore Karlin Janowski was the Class 3A champion in girls cross country after a runner-up finish as a freshman. She ran a personal-best 16 minutes, 10 seconds.

Senior Hunter Stepanich and junior Joseph Lubbe carried the Dukes to a fourth-place Class 4A finish in boys basketball. Despite nursing an injured ankle, Lubbe played all 36 minutes and tallied a team-high 20 points in a 58-56 overtime victory over St. Ignatius in the supersectional.

Key stats

Tessa Schultz scored 88 goals for the girls water polo team, which advanced to the semifinals for the third time in four seasons. She scored 5 total goals in the semifinal and final games.

Lubbe was the lone boys basketball player to average double-digit scoring. He made 92 3-pointers, which was the most among the four Class 4A semifinalists.

Key facts

The Dukes’ baseball team finished with a 16-20 record, but that didn’t stop them from winning a fifth straight regional title. The ninth seed upset No. 1 Willowbrook 5-2 in the final.

The boys cross country team notched its 46th top-four state finish and its first since 2019. The Dukes have won 28 titles.

The boys basketball team eclipsed for the 30-win mark for the first time. The Dukes have won at least 20 games in eight of the last 14 years, not including the COVID season of 2020-21.

They said it

“I'm so excited for Karlin, she was so laser-focused going into this race, she knew that she was going to have to take a risk, and her smart racing paid off,” York coach Lauren Deangelis said after Janowski’s championship run at Detweiller Park.

“I had to get locked in, for sure, to get back in the set, all while staying aggressive,” Coan said after rallying to victory in the state title tennis match.