2023 All-Area softball Player of the Year: Immke holds late grandfather close after historic season

Jul. 2—URBANA — Shayne Immke always knew where to look after hitting a home run for the St. Joseph-Ogden softball team she starred for during a home game.

Beyond the left-center field fence at Randy Wolken Field. Regardless of whether or not her big swings sent the ball in that direction.

"Every time I'd round first base ... that's where my eyes would immediately go," Immke said. "(It's) where my whole family used to sit at, and I had a big crowd. ... I could always hear them screaming, especially my grandma."

Plenty has changed on this front since Immke's high school softball career ended on May 19 when the Spartans lost to Marshall in a Class 2A Sullivan Regional title game. The original Randy Wolken Field is gone, part of an SJ-O outdoor athletic facilities renovation project that's seeing the home of SJ-O softball rebuilt where the Spartans' old baseball field used to reside on campus.

Immke is moving on to play softball for Heartland Community College in Normal, offering different venues for attending supporters. The biggest difference of all, though, is that Immke's maternal grandfather no longer will be in attendance at her games.

David Hamilton, 75, died on June 13 after a largely private health battle.

The provided photograph attached to his obituary, published on The News-Gazette's website, shows him in the St. Joseph-Ogden High School bleachers.

Almost certainly watching a grandchild's sporting event.

"Our oldest daughter has two sons, and one of them had a T-ball game the week before (Hamilton) passed away," said Sadie Immke, Hamilton's daughter and Shayne's mother. "He was at the T-ball game, just watching. Had his little Smarties (candy) that my mom hands out to all the little grandkids.

"(Shayne) always looked for him. I think she always waved to him in the outfield."

Shayne put together a senior softball season this spring that Hamilton and everyone else around her could be proud of, earning The News-Gazette's All-Area Softball Player of the Year honor with a powerful left-handed swing that has her atop a lofty IHSA single-season record: home runs.

She hit her record-breaking 25th home run during the regional final, the last game she played with the Spartans. But she also hit .600 this season with a 1.536 slugging percentage and an absurd OPS of 2.180.

Among her 76 total hits were those 25 home runs, 16 doubles and a school-record 13 triples. Shayne drove in 64 runs, scored 77 runs and stole 20 bases on exactly as many attempts.

All throughout this impressive offensive display, which transpired between March 14 and May 19, Hamilton was there to watch alongside his wife Brenda.

Supporting the youngest of five children raised by former SJ-O softball player Sadie and husband Greg, a current Spartans softball assistant coach.

"They never missed a single game. ...They were always there before the (team) bus. If they weren't there before the bus, I'd text them," Shayne said. "I think the last couple of months he'd been hurting and he wasn't telling any of us, just because that's how he is.

"He would still go out and mow the yard. ... He was at my graduation. He's so selfless."

Apple not far from the tree

Shayne received some softball instruction from her grandpa when she was younger.

She remembers hearing about the Navy veteran playing fast-pitch softball back in his own younger years.

"He always had old gloves in his garage, and whenever we'd go over (to his house) we'd play Wiffle Ball," Shayne said. "He would play catch with me, and he knew how to throw a knuckleball underhand with a softball.

"I was like, 'Grandpa, you need to teach me that.' But my hands were never big enough, so I could never actually throw it. He tried to teach me."

Sadie noted her dad made sure to leave a positive influence upon her five children and her brother Nolan's two children.

"He was in all the grandkids' lives early on," Sadie said. "He always had a positive attitude with them."

"He was a special guy, for sure," Greg added. "He didn't miss many activities, whether it be here at the house or at the ball fields."

Shayne probably was destined to become an SJ-O softball player for more reasons than just her grandpa's influence. In addition to her mother playing in the tradition-rich program, older sisters Shelby and Abby were also SJ-O softball players. Abby helped SJ-O place third at the 2A state tournament in 2012.

Shayne's two older brothers, Brock and Isaiah, played baseball for the Spartans. Needless to say, the Immke family had a ball with a ball.

"There are so many pictures of me in my diapers at the ball fields," Shayne said. "I remember going to my sisters' games and I'm so, so excited. I'm like, 'I'm going to be able to wear Spartan (colors).' I loved the Spartan colors. I thought they looked so good."

Shayne didn't necessarily have to be a productive softball player because of this. Nor one whom scores of SJ-O fans would tell stories about for years to come.

"I remember my very first hardcore competitive travel ball team was Midland Magic. I was the smallest person on the team. I batted last. I played right field," Shayne said. "I was probably the worst person on the team, if I'm being completely honest.

"I remember going up to the plate, striking out, going to the outfield, putting my sunglasses on and crying. It was something I always took seriously."

Shayne admits to harboring a hatred of failing earlier in her life. It may have even bordered on a fear, the way she describes it.

"But I feel like that kind of set me up for when I got older," Shayne said. "Failing's just part of the game, and I've been there, done that with it for so many times.

"Maybe my 14U and late 12U, I was finally a little bit better (handling failure). But it wasn't until 16U that I was kind of like, 'Oh, maybe I am kind of good.' But I'd never say that to anyone."

Taking advantage of her chances

The Immkes run a lawn care business. This work led them to construct a shed on their property in which they could store and provide maintenance to various pieces of equipment.

But they also made room in the shed for a single batting cage.

As Shayne and Isaiah, the fourth of five Immke siblings, began to get older, Greg and Sadie decided it was time to go bigger.

"We have a lot of yard area, so (my dad) built the shed. Literally that's what he named it, the shed," Shayne said. "I can literally go out there whenever. ... If I had a busy day, (I can) even just get a bucket (of balls) in. I didn't have to drive anywhere."

Three batting cages are within this larger shed. Greg originally put a dirt base within the building to more realistically simulate a baseball pitcher's mound and softball pitcher's circle. His kids objected.

The younger Immkes eventually won out, when Greg realized his children would breathe in particles of the dried dirt. The flooring is now turf.

"Sadie and I talked about expanding for several years," Greg said. "Shayne and Isaiah being close in age has worked out really well because they can go out there together ... and team off each other, and it was a great combination for them."

Working in the shed wasn't the only reason Shayne eventually was able to become the IHSA single-season home run champion. Before high school, Shayne focused making contact that would allow her to utilize her speed on the basepaths.

Greg uncovered an opportunity for his two youngest children that changed Shayne's hitting approach.

"He got in contact with Aaron Judge's hitting coach. He's in St. Louis," Shayne said.

That'd be Richard Schenck, a connection of Judge's agent. After working with Schenck, Judge posted on Twitter in 2018 that Schenck is a "career changer." Judge set the new American League single-season home run record with 62 last year en route to winning AL MVP honors.

According to Shayne, Greg was an avid follower of Schenck's social media content.

"My dad was like, 'I wonder if Shayne and Isaiah could go in and see him,'" Shayne said. "We went one time, and he gave us a little mini lesson.

"There's where ... we kind of moved toward the line drive-pop fly (approach), so I can get more launch and air on my ball."

Combining this change with Shayne getting in the weight room more, beginning in her sophomore year, meant Shayne possessed more power in her swing.

Her freshman softball season at SJ-O was wiped out by the COVID-19 pandemic. But Shayne quickly made an impression as a sophomore, launching 17 home runs while batting .608.

"Literally don't know how that happened," Shayne said. "That came out of nowhere. ... All the sudden I was hitting home runs, and I was like, 'This is new.'"

Shayne greatly enjoyed her sophomore year with the Spartans softball program. But she ended her junior campaign, in which she hit .651 with nine home runs, feeling frustrated by her fielding at second base. To the point where a main goal she created before her senior year was to cut down upon her errors.

She wasn't going to work on fielding in travel softball during the summer between her junior and senior years, however.

"I wasn't even thinking about playing college softball (after high school) because I was just in a really bad mental state with softball," Shayne said. "I was having bad anxiety, a bunch of stuff. ... So I took the summer off."

Greg and Sadie fully supported their daughter's decision.

"It was important for her to be able to take a step back," Greg said. "She was missing so many family activities and just being a kid.

"With the mental awareness we have now, especially at the collegiate level ... we knew right away it was important to take a step back away, and if it was meant to be, the love would come back."

Regaining her passion

The love did come back.

Shayne said it was spurred on by missing her travel softball teammates last summer.

"If I went to college, like, how am I going to make friends? Those are kind of my people, in softball," Shayne said. "I love the game. It just was kind of getting a lot to me, to where I was like, 'I don't want to push myself too far to where I'm not going to love it anymore.'"

One of Shayne's most cherished moments within her senior softball season at SJ-O had nothing to do with a ball she hit or a play she made in the field for coach Larry Sparks' program.

Senior teammate Peyton Jones, whom she'll play and room with at Heartland, hit a grand slam during a May rivalry game against Unity at Randy Wolken Field, helping the Spartans to a 10-3 win.

"That will forever be my favorite memory of senior year, and all throughout high school," Shayne said. "Those are the little things that I remember, little things that we take pride in."

Shayne also fondly recalls moments she spent before and after SJ-O games with family members, including her grandpa.

"His favorite thing was just hugs," Shayne said. "I could tell him, 'Bye, love you,' and I'd walk away for a second and have to go back and give him another hug.

"I could have a bad game, and afterward he'd give me a hug and he'd be like, 'You had a great hit, though,' or he'd remind me of something that I did good."

Interestingly, Shayne said many of her home runs from this year are not on video. Even when she and others around SJ-O's program began realizing the state record she was approaching, the Immkes didn't become major proponents of filming each of Shayne's at-bats.

At least one home run, though, has been immortalized in this fashion, coming in a May 8 win against Tuscola at Randy Wolken Field. It's when Shayne hit her 23rd home run of the season to break the school record of 22 set by current Alabama softball player Bailey Dowling in both 2017 and 2019.

"The baseball team didn't have a game that day," Shayne said. "So they all pulled their trucks into the outfield. And they were all there — my boyfriend, all of his friends and my family.

"That home run is on video purposefully. ... Every time I watch it, it gives me chills because everyone was there and that just kind of meant a lot to me."

Reflecting upon the state home runs record, Shayne still expresses disbelief about her accomplishment.

"To me, it's just crazy. It feels like it's not real almost," Shayne said. "I don't like attention. I'm a very kind of stay-in-the-background type of person. When I was hitting my home runs, if my coach were to say something in front of the whole team ... I'd be like, 'OK, thanks. We can move on now.'

"I was talking to my sister and my grandma (recently) ... and I was like, 'It doesn't even feel like I hit home runs.'"

One final swing

Both Greg and Sadie elicited a similar reaction — dad from the Spartans' dugout, mom from the space beyond the outfield fence — when Shayne hit her 25th home run in Sullivan.

"I just cried," Sadie said.

"I did, too," Greg added. "It was just a happy occasion. It was overwhelming."

"She didn't let a lot of the past put the pressure on her," Sadie continued. "She would jokingly say, 'Abby is in the record book for singles and doubles.' That was going to be her inside goal, try to beat her sister in something. She tried to make it more fun."

Shayne wound up having plenty of fun in her last go-round with SJ-O softball, despite feeling some disappointment about the run ending without IHSA postseason hardware.

Her friendship with Jones also permitted Shayne to begin exploring college softball after formerly believing she'd live without it before she committed to Heartland coach Casey Jefferson's program.

"It's only been a couple months," Shayne said. "It happened super fast, but I'm excited and I wouldn't take it back for anything."

Shayne knows Hamilton won't be physically present whenever she makes her college softball debut. But she'll be keeping her late grandpa close to her heart and mind.

"My first game at Heartland might be a little bit hard for me, especially because I'm so used to him being there. But I know my grandma will come," Shayne said. "I'll just always remind myself of what he said, to have fun.

"So it'll be a little bit easier for me on the field. If I'm having a bad game, it'll be easier for me to just look up and know he's like, 'It's fine. You're fine.'"