They were the believers.
They were the two who swore from the start that the dream of going Downstate wasn’t impossible at all.
They were the ones who insistently told their teammates they would end this softball season in the Class AA Elite Eight in East Peoria.
That’s what makes it so tough now that New Trier has actually made it, has defied both the odds and the hangover of a horrible tragedy to wind up where Ari Chester and Christine Christopoulos always knew they would.
Christopoulos will take the mound Friday at the EastSide Centre to face defending champion Oak Park and try to help make this remarkable season last one more day. But Chester, her soul mate, won’t be in center field to back her up or give her another of those mock-tough pursed-lips looks.
“But it’s nice to know we now have an angel in the outfield watching over us,” Christopoulos said Wednesday.
She and Ari clicked almost from the moment Christopoulos joined the Trevian Girls Softball Association about two years ago. The Trevian club has mostly New Trier district players, but Christopoulos, who then attended Niles North, fit in seamlessly with Chester; Chester’s twin, Caitlin; Katie Blankshain; Mary Gelber and Elise Menaker.
That, Christopoulos said, was the major reason she transferred to New Trier near the start of her senior year.
“I really realized what a great group of friends I had in these girls, and I didn’t have that at Niles North,” she said. “I wanted to have another year with them before college, not just a summer, an actual school year.”
She and her mother, Cathy, had almost made the move a year earlier but couldn’t find a place to live. Late last summer Cathy, a single mom, rented a house in Northfield, and Christine enrolled at New Trier.
Her transition to the school went smoothly because Christine had a ready-made support group, especially with Ari.
“She was my go-to girl,” Christopoulos said. “She was the one person who really made things easy for me.”
The two were inseparable. They had classes and free periods together and would hang out after school before heading for off-season hitting practice, where they would set up the boombox and work with the kind of edge that comes from knowing magic lies ahead.
“One thing those two girls had in common is they knew what they wanted to accomplish this year,” Cathy Christopoulos said. “They would say, `We’re going to state.’ It’s what they said all the time.”
“For a long time we were the only two who believed it,” Christine added. “Everyone knew we’d be good. Me and Ari . . . we knew we had something special this year.”
It certainly seemed that way March 20, when New Trier opened its season with a 15-0 victory over Von Steuben. Afterward, Ari and Christine rushed off for their Monday night ritual of watching “24,” then drove to a McDonald’s for a late meal.
Heading home Ari was driving north on the Edens Expressway when, witnesses said, a red car cut them off near Golf Road at about 9:45 p.m.
Christine didn’t even see it. She was looking down to send a text message when she felt Ari swerve and clip the rear of a semi-trailer truck. The car hit a median and flipped.
Christopoulos was upside down when it stopped rolling but crawled out a side window with minor injuries. Ari died a day later after hundreds of New Trier students flocked to St. Francis Hospital in Evanston in tribute to a young woman who used to show up at school with an arm lined with beaded bracelets she had made and disburse them until the arm was bare.
“It was nice to see how many people cared,” Christine said.
Chester’s teammates, individually and collectively, were emotional wrecks after her death. It didn’t help that reminders of Ari seemed to be everywhere, especially given the ritualistic nature of team sports, where the sudden absence of a habitual handshake or a particular joke can leave an aching void.
“At first it was almost unbearable,” Christopoulos said.
Not surprisingly the team was a mess on the field, losing six of nine games following the accident.
“People were all over the place,” Christopoulos said. “We couldn’t focus on the game.”
But it was in the midst of that stretch, during a 5-1 loss to Glenbrook South on April 12, that the magic returned to New Trier’s season.
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The game started with Christopoulos in tears because umpires wanted her to remove her white hospital band from her right, or pitching, hand.
“I wasn’t quite ready to let go,” said Christine, who got permission to cover the band with a wristband. (The band later came off by accident.)
Midway through the game the Trevians began to smile again, to kid around and cheer like they meant it. Maybe they realized that’s what Ari would want, or maybe it was the courage Caitlin Chester showed in playing on without her twin.
“We just kind of snapped out of it,” Christopoulos said. “After the game on the bus not one person was mad we lost.
“We realized it was a huge turnaround for us. Everyone was healing.”
New Trier went on to win 18 of its last 23 games, not bad for a team that entered the season unranked and under the radar.
Christopoulos has helped lead that surge. She not only has a 17-7 record with a 0.89 earned-run average but also leads New Trier (22-11) in hitting at .361 and in RBIs with 30.
“She really has emerged as a leader on the team because of her competitive zeal,” New Trier coach John Cadwell said of Christopoulos, who will play softball at Illinois next season. “She’s just an effective hitter in the clutch, someone who comes through at the most opportune times.”
Christopoulos has been dominant on the mound in the state tournament, during which Trevian opponents have scored just two runs in five games. In the sectional semifinals June 1, she returned to her old school and threw a two-hitter as New Trier defeated Niles North 8-0.
Monday, she threw a three-hitter as New Trier topped St. Ignatius 4-0 in the Niles West supersectional to ensure this season would be special after all, if not entirely in the way she and Ari expected.
“We still have moments in practices and games where you see a tear drip out of someone’s eye, and we know what it’s about,” Christopoulos said.
“It has brought the team closer. We are not only playing to win, but we also have a little extra in our hearts because we know how much Ari wanted it, and everyone wanted to fulfill her dreams.
“I’m proud of our team because of everything that has happened, to be so strong and for everyone to be willing to work extra hard. That’s kind of what Ari and I wanted, for everyone to work her hardest toward a goal.
“She would definitely be happy with our performance.”
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