All-area baseball MVP Cam Zunkel excels with Willowbrook

VILLA PARK – Transitioning to high school is tough enough for freshmen.

The new building, new classmates and extra classwork can take some getting used to.

Cam Zunkel attended freshman year at York and then transferred to Willowbrook when his family moved, which meant doing all the adjusting all over again. However, he had a close friend already at Willowbrook.

Zunkel and Matt Pizur had been close friends since they were about 9 years old, according to Zunkel. Pizur moved from Elmhurst to the Willowbrook High School district after eighth grade. A year later, Zunkel’s family made the same move.

When Zunkel arrived at Willowbrook, he already had a friend and baseball teammate as a familiar face.

“The transition was definitely tough,” Zunkel said. “I was ready to play baseball at one high school and then I got the news we were moving. I texted my friend Matt Pizur. We’d played together for years.”

After going to York for his freshman year, Zunkel then transitioned to Willowbrook. In year two with the Warriors this spring, Zunkel enjoyed an impressive season. He had a 9-2 record, a 1.78 ERA and 52 strikeouts on the mound and a .340 batting average and .437 on-base percentage as a hitter.

Zunkel’s play earned him the Suburban Life All-Area MVP honor.

A strong summer season last year led Willowbrook coach Vic Wisner to expect good things from Zunkel, but he didn’t know how good.

“He had a phenomenal summer and he pitched well,” Wisner said. “During the summer, he pitched two no-hitters. We knew he’d be good, but summer baseball is different. I knew he’d be good. I just didn’t know how good he would be.”

Zunkel said the summer season helped ease his adjustment to varsity ball. By the time the spring rolled around, his pitching arsenal was up to three pitches after offseason work with pitching coach Curtis Hudson, and his hitting later came around.

“[Hudson] really helped me develop a curveball and a change-up,” Zunkel said. “The hitting I worked on that during the winter, too, but the hitting didn’t come around until the middle-end of the season.”

Like his older brother, Tyler, who played at Willowbrook for one year after three at York, Cam Zunkel started playing at a young age. Because they were two years apart in school, they didn’t get to play on the same team together, but they made up for that in other ways.

“Growing up we were always playing together,” Cam Zunkel said. “We were outside with our gloves on. We would have ground ball competitions and fly ball competitions. We had a lot of big Wiffle ball games.”

While the Zunkel brothers didn’t get to share the diamond, they did share an old-school passion for the game.

“I always kid around that I called his brother old school,” Wisner said. “From where they wear their pants up high to how they play. Those kids always had the dirtiest uniforms. They always want to make the last play for the last out. Both are similar.”