Glenbard West's Ebl getting extra fielding practice - with White Sox

All that baseball experience paid off for Glenbard West junior Anna Ebl.

Surrounded by hardball-loving brothers Nick and Luke, a father, Rob, who still plays in a master's league, and a supportive mother, Heather, Anna played Little League Baseball from kindergarten through eighth grade before turning to softball. Most of the time she was the only girl on her team.

"It's just a big love for the game that we all share, and it was never a thought for me to switch to softball," she said. "Some of my friends asked me, but I just wanted to stick with what was closest to home."

It turns out Anna often is closer to first or third, enjoying her second season as a ball girl for the Chicago White Sox. She also plays center field with the Hilltoppers junior varsity softball team.

"I don't even know how to put it into words," Anna said of the experience.

"It's an amazing opportunity that I was given. Sometimes after doing it for so long I forget how cool it is to be out there. It all comes back to you as soon as you get back on the field and everything's all there in front of you, the whole crowd's around you."

It wasn't just given to her. Before last season Mary Jo Stegeman, who leads the Chicago Pioneers girls baseball program, tipped off Rob Ebl to an audition for the position and thought Anna might be a good fit.

Grouped down the first-base line at Guaranteed Rate Field, about 45 male and female applicants took turns fielding balls hit in their vicinity, or trying to, with the hope of landing one of little more than a dozen positions to work during the season. Then they went home.

"It was a little stressful walking out of the stadium without knowing where I stood," Ebl said. "But I fielded all the balls that were hit to me, so I felt OK that it would all work out."

She got the call, as they say, and last season Ebl was the White Sox's sole female ball girl, working 15 games from her chair down either the right- or left-field lines. She's done four games this season, next up in the second week of June depending on her availability.

Arriving at the park in full uniform (Nick and Luke rib her for looking like a "complete superfan"), she enters near the dugout and locker room entrances but is not allowed communication with the players and gets more acknowledgment from the visiting team, Ebl said.

Occasionally she'll be surprised by familiar faces from Glenbard West or the Glen Ellyn Phillies travel softball team, and she said on the whole fans are respectful. If she makes the rare boot of a foul ball her boss, White Sox manager of game presentation Michael Gomez, has the perfect comeback:

"There are guys who make millions of dollars and they make errors, too, sometimes," Ebl repeated.

On the other hand after making a diving grab of a foul smash during the Houston Astros' 10-1 win on April 21, she got a thumb's up by third base umpire Laz Diaz and Astros third baseman Alex Bregman.

Ebl called it a great summer job, but she's got lots on her plate - baby-sitting twice a week with upcoming internships at a theater company and the First Congregational Church of Glen Ellyn.

But like the entire White Sox organization, she's taking the long view.

"It's definitely time to branch out, but I do plan on doing this for as long as I can," Ebl said, "and maybe get a World Series ring out of it."

Mr. 500

We'd be remiss not to note that with St. Francis' two-game win over Plainfield Central on April 28 at Benet's boys volleyball tournament, Mike Lynch won the 500th match in his 20-year career as Spartans coach.

A 1977 graduate of St. Francis, Lynch was assisting Peg Kopec's girls team in 1998 when a group of boys with little to no experience approached him about starting a team.

The boys team debuted in 1999 and since then the varsity program has averaged 25 victories and has won four regional titles. Lynch coached each of his six assistants this season when they attended St. Francis.

Everyone's a winner

Wheaton North beat Naperville North in softball on May 3. Huskies coach Jerry Kedziora was a little more forgiving since that was the day of the DVC Cares donation drive.

"It would be nice to win these games, we want to win these games. But they understand after doing all of this that it is just a game and there are more important things that matter," he said.

The "all of this" he cited is the $3,000 and a room full of household cleaning supplies the combined DuPage Valley Conference softball squads donated to Mutual Ground in Aurora, which provides services to victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

Led by Kedziora and his former assistant coach, Laurie Davidson, over the past decade DVC softball has contributed nearly $25,000 to charitable causes, narrowing the recipient down to Mutual Ground the last several years.

The reception the Huskies got at Mutual Ground, delivering a truck load of goodies, swept away any hard feelings over that May 3 loss.

"(The players) were blown away by how grateful the people are," Kedziora said. "The girls realized what they're doing reaches a whole bunch more people than just themselves."

Eye of the Tiger

Wheaton Warrenville South senior Chase Stebbins is a go get 'em type.

Attending the 2016 State Farm Holiday Classic basketball tournament with the rest of the Tigers, he learned of a $1,000 scholarship annually awarded four seniors based on leadership skills, academics, student activities and community service. In the past 13 years the Holiday Classic Scholarship program has awarded $52,000.

That was all Stebbins needed to hear.

"Obviously the word, 'scholarship,' is interesting to a junior high school basketball player," he said.

When the Tigers returned to Bloomington for the 2017 Holiday Classic, Stebbins' thoughts returned to the scholarship, and he applied. He detailed his 3.98 grade-point average, his Special Olympics volunteerism and membership in WW South's Key Club, National Honor Society, Student Council and with the football team.

The good news - he'd been selected among the four 2018 recipients - recently arrived when his parents, Mike and Laura, were out of the house. Once they returned Chase baited them by announcing they needed to have a "serious talk."

The crafty incoming University of Illinois freshman assuaged his parents' initial fears of legal trouble or whatnot with the happy announcement. As any amount of tuition relief is cause for celebration, hugs and hollers ensued.

Stebbins was surprised he was chosen ahead of teammates who applied with "the same credentials." There's something to be gained by the power of positive thinking.

"I went into it thinking I would get it," Stebbins said.

doberhelman@dailyherald.com

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