Hall of Fame
One of the most decorated pitchers in the history of ICC Softball, Tonya Gilles-Koch joins the group as a 2024 ICC Athletics Hall of Fame inductee.
While at ICC, Gilles-Koch was a two-time NJCAA All-American in the circle, including a 1st team nod as a freshman. In her two years, Gilles-Koch not only led ICC to a pair of NJCAA 3rd Place finishes, but she did it while beating a combined six NCAA Division-I opponents during the regular season, just part of her total 23 wins as a pitcher for the Cougars. Her sophomore season, she pitched 129 innings and whittled her earned run average all the way down to an impressive 0.87. At one point, she was rated as the #2 pitcher in all of the NJCAA with a 0.51 ERA.
After garnering athletic scholarship offers from 24 institutions, Gilles-Koch ultimately chose Illinois State. While with the Redbirds, she went (25-5) and finished in 9th place at the Women's College World Series as a junior. Academically at Illinois State, she was also named to the Dean's List.
Post-college, Gilles-Koch played for the nationally renowned Pekin Lettes for eight seasons. She also appeared as a player in the famed 1992 film "A League of Their Own," which has since been announced to be preserved in the United States' National Film Registry.
Gilles-Koch has also been an important piece to the area softball coaching community. She has taught pitching at ICC, Bradley University, and Millikin University. She has given pitching lessons to girls for 45 years, leading to her students garnering a rough estimate of 500 scholarships to college. Her students include ICC's three-player pitching staff of the 1988 National Championship team and nine Peoria Journal Star Players of the Year.
Gilles-Koch has proven herself to be a winner, with Coach Lorene Ramsey saying "every time you took the field with Tonya, you knew you had a very good chance of winning, no matter who you were playing."
