Softball: St. Charles North’s Paige Murray is the Kane County Chronicle Player of the Year

ST. CHARLES — St. Charles North coach Tom Poulin has seen his fair share of great pitchers during his time as head coach.

Back in 2022, he saw a switch of aces from Anastasia Pappas to Ava Goettel, who would help the North Stars win their first state title in program history that same year.

Two years later, he saw the torch get passed on once again, this time to Paige Murray.

And once she got it, she took it and ran.

“I could not have asked for a better junior season, or any season really,” Murray said. “My teammates were so supportive of me the entire year, and everything just kind of worked out.”

In her first season as the ace of the North Stars, Murray finished 19-5 with a 1.62 ERA and 229 strikeouts across 169 innings and held hitters to a .191 average, and helped pitch the North Stars to their second state championship in three seasons.

Considering the accolades, Murray has been named the 2024 Kane County Chronicle softball Player of the Year.

“When she gets in the circle, you know you’re always going to get her best focus and her best effort. You’re never questioning either of those things with Paige,” Poulin said. “She’s such a competitor and so tough. She stays in the moment as far and takes things one pitch at a time, and she just continues to improve.”

Murray saw plenty of work in her first two seasons with the North Stars, racking up 174 strikeouts over 40 appearances. She even closed out the 2022 state title game.

But even Poulin was shocked by what Murray put together in her first season as the North Stars’ ace.

“She acknowledged it right at the start of the year and was mentally preparing to be the number one pitcher and knew that type of responsibility was not something to take lightly,” Poulin said. “I anticipated her to have a very successful season, but she exceeded my expectations.”

Much of Murray’s success had to do with the work she did in the offseason to prepare to switch from relief to the starting role. And while she worked on getting her speed up and improving her spin rate to help go right at batters, she also had to deal with a mental switch as well.

“It was a big switch because I was used to only having to deal with two innings and only facing batters one time, and now I was going to face them four times,” Murray said. “So a lot of work went in with (North assistant) coach Thijs (Dennison) before every game to talk about how I’m going to approach every batter.”

Murray’s switch wasn’t the only big one that affected the pitching quality this season. The North Stars also had a new everyday catcher in senior Skyla Ritter, who came in after Sophia Olman graduated in 2023.

Fortunately for St. Charles North, not only had Ritter been catching Murray’s bullpen sessions for the past two years, but the two had also known each other since fifth grade. And when it came time for the two to take the field, the connection was undoubtable.

“They were on the same wavelength and like any great pitching and catching combination, they could read each other’s minds,” Poulin said. “When you have that combination and they are talented, unselfish and are always striving to improve, that’s what Skyla and Paige are like. That’s when you can overachieve.”

While Murray found plenty of success in the circle during the regular season, it was the postseason where Murray really showed off what she could do. She went 6-0 with a 1.00 ERA and struck out 55 batters over six games.

Murray’s best games came in the sectional and super sectional rounds. In games against Lake Park, St. Charles East and Whitney Young, Murray recorded 12 or more strikeouts in each of them, including a 14-strikeout performance to no-hit the Dolphins in the supersectional.

And while Murray said that the trip to the state title meant much more to her this time around compared to her freshman season, she said that the experience from two years ago, along with having to pitch in the DuKane Conference, helped her during the North Stars’ postseason run.

“I feel like freshman year, I was able to experience it for the first time and come in to close out the two innings, which prepared me for the state tournament,” Murray said. “But really, the whole season helped as well. The DuKane Conference is one of the best conferences and you never know what’s going to happen which each team, and they have amazing pitchers as well, which helped me and the team out.”

Murray still has one more year left with St. Charles North, and she said that she knows that her team is going to have a big target on their back thanks to owning the title of state champions once again.

But if there is one person that Poulin isn’t worried about improving during the offseason to make sure she’s at her best when the 2025 season starts, it would have to be his ace in the circle.

“You know that she’s going to put in the work, she’s going to analyze and look back on her strengths and weaknesses and she’s going to work on those weaknesses,” Poulin said. “She understands that when we start on day one, we start over again. We’re trying to get ready for that first pitch of the first game of next season, and going one at a time from that point forward to try and overachieve again.”