CARBONDALE, Ill. – The Southern Illinois University softball team has signed Jordan Stewart, Brooklynn Danielson, and Delaney Osborne for its 2025 recruiting class.
Stewart is an infielder from Southlake, Texas, and was a First Team All-District player at Carroll Sr. High School. The infielder was also named the Defensive Player of the Year, TGCAL All-State, DFW Area First Team, and Academic All-District.
At the club level, Stewart’s team (Texas Hotshots Naudin/Texas Glory 18u Shelton) won top club nationals, were top three in IDT Colorado and Alliance National Championships, and she was also on the Extra Inning All-Summer Team.
“Jordan was a player we identified early on in the recruiting process that we wanted to go after extremely hard,” head coach Jen Sewell said. “Fans are going to want to see her play. She’s a really electric infielder who can go just about anywhere on the field. Jordan was brought up on the top club team in the country and she’s used to playing in championship games. I’m just thrilled she’s with us – I can’t say enough great things about her and her family. But getting her in a Saluki uniform is really going to be exciting. It’s a testament to the Saluki brand bringing in the top players from all over the country.”
Danielson, a pitcher from Kenosha, Wis., joins Stewart in the 2025 class after attending Mary D. Bradford High School. There, the righty was First Team All-State as a junior and Second Team All-State as a sophomore, and has been a varsity starter since her freshman year.
As a junior, Danielson posted a record of 13-3 with a 1.273 ERA and 214 strikeouts, leading to her second-straight All-County Player of the Year award. In her first season at Mary D. Bradford, Danielson was named the All-Conference Pitcher of the Year,
“There has been a significant uptick in really quality pitchers coming out of Wisconsin,” Sewell said. “Being that it’s generally Big 10 territory, we are thrilled to see Danielson choose to be a Saluki. She has a very hard to hit repertoire of pitches and a ridiculous amount of spin that is hard to square up. We’ve seen Brooklynn pitch a lot late this summer and this fall and I always appreciate what a bulldog she is. She just gets hitters out. And she does it like a professional and in a very composed way that makes her teammates really comfortable when she’s on the mound.”
Osborne comes to Southern Illinois by way of Loomis, Calif. A 3.85 GPA student-athlete and soon to be four-year varsity letterwinner for Del Oro High School, Osborne was an All-Conference center fielder while also being apart of a CIF Sac-Joaquin Section DII Championship team.
The centerfield/utility player is the captain of her travel ball organization, All-American Mizuno Gold-Jackson, where she has a cumulative batting average of .411, 14 home runs, and an OPS of 1.104.
“Delaney is a really interesting recruiting story because we were there to watch Kaytee Dahlstrom, her former teammate and current Saluki, pitch in the game and this centerfielder just kept making big plays,” Sewell said. “She’s a really good overall athlete and her ability to be a utility will really help us. I could see Delaney playing all over the field if we needed her to. Her athleticism also includes a big arm and a big RH bat that fits into our slugging mindset here at Southern. Delaney is a big energy kid too and grew up in a program that drills them in softball IQ which makes her a great fit for Saluki Softball.”
