Baseball: Joyce ignites St. Charles North's special season

St. Charles North's batting order is a tall stack of dry kindling on a 95-degree day and leadoff man Brendan Joyce is the match.

The North Stars entered the 2016 season with a burning desire to advance further in the state tournament than any team in the program's 14-year history, thanks to a lineup stocked with future Division-I combustibles like senior right fielder John LeGare (Purdue), junior shortstop Zach Mettetal (Memphis), junior first baseman Tyler Mettetal (South Carolina) and junior Sam Faith (Oregon), among others.

St. Charles North has achieved that goal, thanks in part to Joyce, a player 12th-year coach Todd Genke over the past two weeks has called "our spark", "our energizer" and "the catalyst" behind an offense averaging 7.9 runs per game.

Batting for the second straight season atop North's lineup, Joyce plays the role of Mrs. O'Leary's cow to perfection. The 5-foot-11, 180-pound senior enters Friday's Class 4A state semifinal against Mundelein having reached base in 50.7 percent of 139 plate appearances.

His team-high of 40 runs equates to 13.5 percent of the North Stars' total of 299.

"Being the catalyst for our team and getting on base and scoring in the first inning is my biggest goal," Joyce said. "Every coach preaches get your first man on and good things will happen."

For his role in making good things happen for the St. Charles North baseball program - like snagging its first state finals berth and winning its second straight outright Upstate Eight River title - center fielder Brendan Joyce has been named the honorary captain of the 2016 Daily Herald All-Area Team/Fox Valley.

Brendan is the fourth of Gerry and Kristen Joyce's five children. The South Elgin resident has three older brothers, but he's the only boy in the family to stick with baseball to the high school varsity level. One brother gave up the sport in sixth grade, another after his freshman year.

Brendan said his parents gave him the opportunity to try several youth sports to see which he enjoyed. The youngest Joyce brother settled on America's big three: football, basketball and baseball. He played all three sports as a freshman.

Though he developed a love of baseball early on, Joyce said winning only 9 games during his freshman season at St. Charles North despite months of practices made him think hard about his athletic future. "I was wondering, 'Do I love baseball this much?'" he said.

The question became mute the following season when his sophomore team won 29 games under the direction of coach Justin Moriarty, who moved the speedy outfielder from a corner outfield spot to center. Joyce fell in love with the position right away.

His love of the sport reinvigorated, he opted after his sophomore year to drop basketball. "Baseball and football are my sports," he said. "And I just love baseball. It's my favorite."

Between his sophomore and junior years Joyce had a conversation with Genke about his potential in baseball, which he had yet begun to realize.

Genke, a former professional baseball player who competed in the Phillies organization and for the Schaumburg Flyers, among other stops, saw potential in the speedy sophomore, though his hitting needed work. Joyce has been clocked in the 60-yard dash at 6.85 seconds, fast enough to start at cornerback last fall for St. Charles North's playoff-qualifying football team.

"I told him I thought he could be a college baseball player," Genke said. "I really thought if we could get his confidence going in the batter's box, people at the college level would love the way he runs and the way he defends. I've seen guys like him excel in the game just because of their speed, baserunning and ability to field. Then they figure out how to hit and it's like, wow.'"

Joyce said he has become a better hitter with the help of a St. Charles North coaching staff that includes Terry Ayers, Brett Wikierak and Sean Doherty, the latter a fixture on St. Charles North's first varsity teams in 2002 and 2003.

Joyce supplemented the coaching he received at school with three years of hitting instruction from Bobby Roan of the Kane County Dugout Performance Training Center in St. Charles.

Meanwhile, Joyce said he gained muscle by working out at former Geneva lineman Bryce Biel's Legacy Performance gym in St. Charles.

Improved strength contributed to a higher slugging percentage, which cemented his spot atop the lineup as a junior. He was named second-team all-area by the Daily Herald.

However, because college coaches largely target sophomores in the recruiting game, the ever-improving center fielder missed his initial window of opportunity to hook on with a Division-I or Division-II program. He received Division-III interest in the past year, but opted instead to attend Parkland Junior College in Champaign next fall.

"The ultimate goal is to get bigger, stronger and faster there and show more coaches what I can do," said Joyce, who maintained a 4.3 grade-point average on a 5.0 scale. "I hope to play two good years there, then see if I can play somewhere bigger."

"He was kind of a late bloomer so teams weren't really on him last year," Genke said. "Then he had a good year last year and some coaches thought maybe this is a guy we can give money to, maybe not. So the best route for Brendan was to go juco and get his general studies done. I'm confident people will see him and he'll get a D-I ride."

The future looks promising as Joyce continues to progress offensively. He enters the state finals batting .381 (40-for-105) with 14 doubles, 2 triples, 2 home runs and 26 RBI.

He drove in the biggest run of his 18-year-old life last Saturday in the Class 4A Schaumburg sectional final by pounding a Baltimore chop over the head of 6-foot-6 Batavia third baseman Glenn Albanese to plate the game-winning run in a 4-3 victory, North's first sectional title in baseball.

Though he looks forward to the college experience, Joyce said he is savoring every moment of the North Stars' run to the finals.

"This is an unbelievable feeling, probably the best feeling I've ever had," he said. "I told the guys after the (supersectional) game that I love this team because every game in the playoffs that we've played so far we've been down and there's been some adversity. Against New Trier we were down 3-0 the entire game. We just kept fighting. We don't give up. Ever."

Friday's forecast for Joliet calls for temperatures approaching 95 degrees, or as St. Charles North would term it, the perfect weather to ignite dry kindling.

Get to know Brendan Joyce

College: Parkland

Favorite music: country

Favorite singer: Florida Georgia Line

Favorite movie: Friday Night Lights

Favorite food: salmon

Favorite restaurant: Portillo's

Favorite baseball team: Cubs

Favorite athlete: LaDainian Tomlinson

Guilty pleasure: Burritos from Chipotle

If not baseball: Football