The legend grows for Jacobs grad Garden
Jacobs High School graduate Delaney Garden has been dominant both on the pitcher’s mound and at the plate this spring, compiling some of the best statistics in her four years at Lewis University.
She was rewarded by being named player and pitcher of the year in the Great Lakes Valley Conference.
A unanimous first-team all-GLVC selection, her third season on the first team, the senior left-hander is 18-9 with a 1.51 ERA and 225 strikeouts in 185⅓ innings pitched. Batters are hitting .196 against her, and she’s thrown 7 shutouts. Through May 1 Garden ranked fifth nationally in Division II in strikeout-to-walk ratio, tied for fifth with 25 complete games, tied for seventh in shutouts, ninth in strikeouts, and was in the top 18 in innings pitched and walks allowed per 7 innings.
Garden, a left fielder, has a .464 batting average, a .519 on-base percentage, and she’s scored 59 runs and stolen 21 bases. Her 90 hits are second in Division II and she was tied for 11th in runs scored.
Garden also is a two-time National Fastpitch Coaches Association All-American Scholar-Athlete and a three-time recipient of Lewis University’s Delahanty Award recognizing athletics and academics. She’s been the GLVC player of the week three times this season and five times overall. Garden also threw a perfect game this season.
Good neighbors
Bradley senior Timmy O’Brien (Maine South) and Southern Illinois senior Josh Delgado (Grant) were among the 12 spring recipients of the State Farm Missouri Valley Conference Good Neighbor award for their work on and off the field.
In Delgado’s case it was on the track, where at the Fighting Illini Twilight meet he ran collegiate bests in the 200- and 400-meter races. A finance major with a 3.41 grade-point average, he’s been on the MVC honor roll each of his first three years and, we’d suspect, will be on it again. Delgado has organized Carbondale’s annual “Trunk or Treat” event and has been on Southern Illinois’ Student-Athlete Advisory Committee four years, serving as vice president this year.
O’Brien, an infielder, was leading the MVC in home runs with 16 and led Bradley with 41 RBI, 87 total bases and a .600 slugging percentage. Also an MVC honor roll and Bradley dean’s list athlete, O’Brien holds a 3.84 GPA in mechanical engineering. He’s a team leader in Braves baseball’s partnership with the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation’s Vs. Cancer program, helping raise $80,000 as a team. O’Brien has participated with Team Impact Mentorship the past three years, and has even volunteered as a coach and judge for Peoria-area elementary schools’ annual speech tournament.
Great start for the Terrapins
Maryland sophomore golfer Emil Riegger (Hinsdale Central) made the Big Ten Conference All-Championship Team after tying for fifth place at the men’s conference championships. Riegger shot 1-under for the tournament, his fourth top-10 finish this season. He’s seeded fourth among 10 golfers at the Amherst (Virginia) regional, May 12-14. A transfer from Drake, Riegger tied for third at the 2022 Illinois High School Association Class 3A finals.
That Lumpkin magic
The University of Illinois Chicago beat Murray State 4-0 in women’s tennis to win the Missouri Valley Conference title for the first time. Not a huge shock, since it’s only the Flames’ third season in the MVC and they previously won multiple Horizon League titles. This was the first, however, for head coach Elizabeth Lumpkin Robinson (Naperville Central), in her second year at UIC after six years with the University of Oregon. Lumpkin Robinson is still the only player to win four IHSA girls singles titles, from 2000-03, before she went 24-1 at UCLA as a senior captain to lead the Bruins to the 2008 NCAA title.
At UIC athletics’ annual “Sparky’s” gala, she was named UIC coach of the year.