Boys Athlete of the Year: Kyler shines for three sports in final year at DeKalb

DeKALB – Following the DeKalb baseball team’s season-ending loss to Crystal Lake South in a sectional semifinal, Derek Kyler stood on the outside of the team’s postgame huddle.

He held his hands behind his head, looking down at the grass. His highly decorated career with the Barbs – the football playoff runs, the conference basketball title and a regional crown in baseball – was finally over.

“Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I was going to cry or not when we lost, but once that final out happened, it hit me – I was done with high school sports,” said Kyler, the Daily Chronicle 2016-17 Boys Athlete of the Year. “It hit me really hard, and I wasn’t sure what to expect so I couldn’t help myself from crying because I grew up in this city and I did my best to represent it well, so it was sad to see it be over.”

Kyler could be considered a case study in the national debate over the specialization of high school athletes. After being named the starting quarterback in 2014 for what would become one of the best football teams in the state, he still added baseball in the spring for his sophomore through senior years.

As a senior, after the football team made a run to the Class 6A semifinals, Kyler added basketball to his résumé once again before closing out his prep career with the baseball team.

“He’s just an athletic kid, and he has a love and passion for all sports,” Barbs baseball coach Dedric Wright said. “I’ve known him since he was like 14, and he was still juggling multiple sports back then and it would be football to baseball to whatever else he has going on.”

Barbs football coach Matt Weckler highlights Kyler’s preparation as a major reason for being able to play three sports at a school as big as DeKalb. Kyler had sat out basketball season as a sophomore and junior and returned to the court as a senior. DeKalb coach Al Biancalana said he’s never had somebody on varsity who hadn’t been in the program the two previous seasons. However, Biancalana sat down with Kyler before the season and came away impressed with the senior guard’s maturity and desire to simply help out the team in any way possible.

Kyler experienced plenty of success on the throne of one of the most coveted spots in high school sports – starting quarterback. In his first play from scrimmage as a sophomore, he ran a 43-yard touchdown in a 33-14 victory over Vernon Hills, and Kyler did plenty of winning for the Barbs after that. During three years as starter, the Barbs went 28-8, and last season he helped No. 7 seeded DeKalb stun No. 3 seed Cary-Grove, 35-21, in the Class 6A quarterfinals.

It was a win that Kyler called his favorite sports memory at DeKalb.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt more joy after a sports game,” said Kyler, who was the Daily Chronicle Football Offensive Player of the Year in 2016. “Especially losing to Montini as bad as we did (49-14 in 2015), everybody is telling us we don’t have a shot against Cary-Grove, and we knew we did.”

During football season, Kyler was an electric playmaker as a dual-threat quarterback – passing for 2,615 yards and 35 touchdowns and rushing for 1,003 yards and leading the Barbs to the state semifinals for the first time since 1980.

As he switched over to join the Barbs’ basketball team, his role of head honcho greatly transformed to life as a role player off the bench – “I knew I wouldn’t be the superstar, score a bunch a points, make the game-winning shot or something like that,” he said. However, he helped chip in as the Barbs went 19-11 and won their third consecutive Northern Illinois Big 12 crown.

“One of the things I’ve always said about him is he’s the most humble kid I know,” Wright said. “In the game of football, there’s a lot of ego being the quarterback. Your chest is puffed out and then to go basketball, where you’re not the man and you’re a role player and then jumping back to baseball where you’re kind of the man, that says a lot about being humble and being a team guy. That’s one of the best qualities he has.”

While the Barbs baseball team went through its struggles – a 16-game losing streak and finishing the regular season 7-25 – Kyler was a major reason for their postseason run that included a Class 4A Hampshire Regional championship. He hit better than .400 during the season with 17 RBIs and 25 runs, but in the playoffs, he was 2-0 on the mound with a 0.75 ERA.

“I go back to the star quarterback thing – he’s been in pressure situations,” Wright said. “I think that helps the transition where it’s a tie game in extra innings and we got two outs, runners on, and you tell him he has to get the third out and he looked at me and said, ‘Yeah.’ ”

Now Kyler’s wardrobe of black and orange will be traded in for green as he heads to play football at Dartmouth, an Ivy League school in Hanover, New Hampshire. Kyler laughs that Wright has tried to talk him into playing baseball for the Big Green, too but balancing two sports and an Ivy League education may be a bit too much.

Regardless, the days of playing on a DeKalb home field or court are now over, but Kyler said he has memories with teammates from three different sports to remember about his days as a Barb.

“That’s really cool because it’s a different group of guys for every sport,” Kyler said. “It’s cool to get to know the personality of the team. The baseball guys are really loud and goofy, the basketball guys are more relaxed and laid back and the football guys were all over the place – you never knew what was going to happen.”