In all these years I had never been out to Marmion. Our guy Paul Chabura is the athletic director there now. There are few people in the world that I respect more than Paul Chabura. He is just a great man for so many reasons. It was great to see that he is doing well.
The DePaul Prep Rams traveled out to Aurora to face the Marmion Cadets in a Chicago Catholic League crossover match up. Last year’s No. 1 ranked team, DePaul Prep Rams, lost all five starters to graduation. No rebuild here, just reload with new talented players—Dylan Arnett, Trevon Thomas, Julian Greene, Payton Kamin and Alex Gutierrez.
The Cadets came ready to play. They have some players too. #3 Collin Wainscott, #23 Trevon Roots and #2 Jabe Haith showed me something. They can move up and down the floor and hit shots. It was tie at the half. And I don’t think it was because the Rams took them lightly. It was just a boxing match with both teams trading punches.
The fact that the Rams were not moving the ball well—or at least as well as they can—had more to do with good play by Marmion than bad play by the Rams. The Rams did however, give up some points off back door passes. I haven’t seen that in years.
Even so, I never got the feeling the Rams were in much danger of losing the game. When the team is not playing well, I have seem Tom Kleinschmidt take over the game from the bench and get them on track.
This day was a little different. It was half time defensive corrections that did the trick. There was not a lot of shouting from the bench.
The Rams shut down the Cadets in the second half holding them to just nine points. A 23-23 tie at half turned into a 44-32 Rams victory. Whatever Coach said at half time, he needs to bottle it and sell it.
The photos were something of a challenge. Marmion has a nice big gym/auditorium but the lights are straight out of 1976. I boosted the ISO a little too much so the photos are much too grainy. I did not get the color balance right. But that is my fault. I just did not work at it enough in the processing. I should probably color balance when I go to a gym for the first time. Enjoy!
