DePaul Prep Defeats St. Ignatius to Win 3A Sectional

It didn’t look good for the Rams midway through the first set when they were down 18-12. Then, slowly at first, they cut the margin to 22-17. Then the Rams charged back outscoring the Wolfpack 7-1, taking the first set 25-23.

The second set saw the more typical Rams play—steady building a lead. They took the Wolfpack 25-16 in the second set and the match. A 3A Sectional final match and advance to the Super-sectional on Monday. One game away from the State Tournament.

The Wolfpack are an excellent volleyball team. Every bit the equal of the Rams. Ignatius returned most of their team from last’s 3A third-place finishers. It was the Wolfpack that ended the Rams’ season last year in the Sectional semi-final. The Rams have been working toward this win all year. Even so, the Wolfpack seemed a little shellshocked by the Rams’ first set comeback.

The did not get down; they came back and won. This just might be the Rams’ year. The Rams have a remarkable 36-3 record this year. But one the three losses came at St. Laurence on October 3rd in three sets.

St. Laurence is next. The Super-sectional is Monday evening at Hinsdale South high school. With the St. Ignatius defeat avenged, there is another defeat to take care of on Monday.

As for the photos, I went a little crazy. I shot 2987 photos. I picked out 109 to process. I ended up only working up 40. I wanted to get as many as I could knowing this would be a historic game between two of the top teams in the state.

The light is always challenging in the Gentile Gym. Very yellow non-LED lights. I spoke to St. Ignatius AD Mike Hurley about it. I told him that he could not be outdone by DePaul Prep AD Pat Mahoney who just bought new LED lights for the Tom Winiecki Gym which will be installed before the basketball season. Hurley smiled and said nothing about getting new lights. My personal crusade to improve the lights in Catholic Leagues gyms still has a way to go.

I hope you like the photos.

DePaul Prep v. St. Viator Photo Gallery

Most times when I take photos I just do the best I can in the moment. I can usually tell if the photos will be any good. Sometimes—rarely—when I open photos I have taken, I am surprised at what I find, surprised how much I like the photos. This is one of those times.

My thanks to Pat Mahoney and the other designers and benefactors of the as yet unnamed DePaul Prep Stadium. The light is wonderful—truly outstanding. Thank you.

A proper article about the game will follow. I wanted to get these photos up by themselves first.

I hope you like them.

DePaul Prep Takes on Notre Dame at Marovitz

Just my second time photographing golf. I need more practice on where and when to shoot. I got a few good shots. The fading evening light was a little challenging.

Many thanks to DePaul Prep’s Justin Lane and Pat Mahoney for allowing me to use their boys varsity team as test subjects. Special thanks to Rams Jack Kennedy, Wyatt Carlson, Emmitt Miller, Aiden Williams, Alex Johnson and Will Hartman for dealing with the distraction of a guy taking their photo while golfing. That can’t be easy to deal with.

And it was also great to see my friends Doug and Elsa Johnson whose son Alex is an excellent golfer.

DePaul Prep Football Waits . . .

As we were coming out of the depths of the COVID shutdown, I started planning for high school sports again. DePaul Prep was moving into a new school building and building a new football stadium. I thought I would, and still will, fully document/photograph the first game and the first season in the new stadium.

When the Governor and the IHSA moved the bulk of high school sports to the Spring, my plans changed. The Fall practices were a chance to take some photos, see the new state-of-art DePaul Prep stadium and have the players and coaches get used to having me around so I am not such a distraction when play begins.

I would like to thank DePaul Athletic Director Pat Mahoney and Head Coach Mike Passarella for graciously inviting me in and for being so accommodating. And a special thanks to the young men who carry on the proud tradition of Gordon Tech/DePaul Prep football.

As always, Go Rams!

These are some of my photos.

Who Else is Wondering About Basketball?

It happens about this time every year. The March playoffs fade. I spend time with my wife after not being around much in February and March. I go about other things long neglected. But by the middle of May, basketball returns to my mind. I put the dates of the Riverside Brookfield tournament, and the Ridgewood tournaments in my calendar. I fiddle with my cameras, charge the batteries, empty the memory cards. I get ready . . . and wait.

It happened this year too. I started to get excited. I was itching to start my basketball routine. I was curious about what was going on. How things were going to be different? I called a few people. I outlined an article and I started filling it in.

But in case you haven’t noticed, we have a global pandemic health emergency that has cost 100,000 lives in the United States. CNN held my attention when basketball would have otherwise. My day job tasks soaked up hour after hour that ordinarily would have been addressed by others, or not at all.

Nevertheless, basketball is the jealous mistress that demands my affections. And she must be obeyed.

June is ordinarily the time when high school coaches are allowed time with their teams. They practice and play in tournaments.

“Not gonna be a June,” DePaul Prep head coach Tom Kleinschmidt told me. “Ordinarily, this time of year I get anxious for some basketball too. I talk to Heidcamp, Livatino, Clancy. We talk basketball and get back into it.” When I talked to Coach Kleinschmidt early that evening in May, he was sitting on his couch watching television. I suspect any other year he would have been doing something else at that time of day.

The June “live period” for high school basketball is not going to happen. Chicago Sun-Times’ Michael O’Brien reported on May 19th that the National High School Sports Federation has come with a plan to phase back into high school sports. Here is a link to his piece. However, the IHSA has not yet published any plan or any guidelines to open high school sports as of the date of this writing.

“The NCAA and IHSA have suspended June live period dates as of now. So there have been no formal announcements made on June or July . . .. In addition to this, the NABC and NCAA met to consider postponing July live periods for AAU this week, but have not made a final determination,” DePaul Prep sophomore coach Sean Connor told me.

“I have been told there is potential for the NCAA to add live periods in the fall (August, September, October) for AAU teams to play, but this is just in discussion right now,” said Connor.

So June is a no-go. No R-B tournament. Coach Mroz at Ridgewood told me his tournaments will not proceed.

July is when the players are engaged in the bulk of the AAU tournaments. Tom Kleinschmidt did not think that college coaches would be attending these basketball tournaments so there wasn’t much reason to do them. However, I haven’t gotten any word yet on when any decision about the AAU tournaments will be made.

There is some hope that a “live period” may happen around the time of the girls live period in September. We could see some tournaments or one-day shootout style events for boys basketball in September. But that is largely going to depend on how high schools operate in the fall. There is likely to be some combination of in-school days and e-learning days. How sports fits into that is anybody’s guess.

When asked what’s going on in the Chicago Catholic League, Coach Kleinschmidt and DePaul Prep Athletic Director Patrick Mahoney, (son of the legendary St. Viator High School Dean of Men Patrick Mahoney), both told me there will be some changes in the Blue and White Divisions in CCL basketball. Some teams will be moving up and others moving down. More on that later.

Pat Mahoney said all is on schedule to open the DePaul Prep football season at the new DePaul Campus opposite Lane Tech. The new state-of-the-art football stadium will be ready. Exactly what the football season will look like is also yet to be determined but those decisions are months away.

I guess we will have to just wait and see what happens. In the meantime, still more of the same. Waiting.

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Football is Here--Lots of Changes this Season

It’s game day. Start of the high school football season. I have basically taken a month off since the last of the summer basketball tournaments, but I’m back and so is football. Big changes this year so let’s get into it.

Opening night.

The area’s top teams are starting with out-of-state opponents. Sun-Times #1 Nazerath and #2 Loyola play out-of-state. The highest ranked City of Chicago teams, Simeon and Phillips also have out-of-state games to start the season. Opening the season against out-of-state opponents is just dumb. Who cares about that? But don’t get me started.

The marquee matchup of the evening, in Chicago at least, might be #14 Mount Carmel v. Curie at Mount Carmel’s new Barda-Dowling Stadium on campus at 64th and Dante. It should be fun to see Mount Carmel with a true home field. I might have to head down to that one.

We have Lane v. Lake View to entertain us this afternoon in what I am christening the 47th Ward Bowl. Both schools are located in Chicago’s premier neighborhood and the athletic programs at both are on the rise. My alma mater, St. Viator takes on Prospect this evening. Hersey was the usual opening week nemesis back in my day. Now it’s neighboring Prospect High School to open the season. The Lions should have their paws full.

Chicago Catholic League and East Suburban Catholic League Combine for Football.

This football season is gonna be different. The Chicago Catholic League and the East Suburban Catholic Conference have combined for football—again. The CCL and ESCC have formed one combined conference with 24 teams in 6 divisions. Basically, all the Catholic high schools that play football in the Chicagoland area will be in what amounts to one large conference with six mini-conferences inside based upon the school size, football participation numbers and program success. Here is a link to the combined schedule: click here. According to the press release on the ESCC website, there was a unanimous vote in favor of the combination by all the principals of the CCL and ESCC schools.

As explained to me but DePaul Prep’s Athletic Director, Pat Mahoney, the ten member ESCC was have difficulty with some larger schools having successful programs and others struggling to compete. The larger fourteen school CCL, which was divided into four divisions based upon enrollment, football participation and programs success was able to split into divisions that provided a chance for the smaller schools to be competitive.

Older readers among you may recall they tried this before. From 1996 to 2002, the CCL and ESCC combined into the “Metro Catholic Conference.” The difference between then and now is that the Metro Conference required member teams to play a full schedule of conference games. There was no room for regional or historic rivalries. And no room for traveling out-of-state for games either.  The new arrangement has fixed that. The new CCL/ESCC will have only seven conference games. Each team can schedule two non-conference games.

I am looking forward to the new arrangement. It should give some the smaller Catholic school a chance at six wins and some playoff births.

DePaul Prep Football Preview.

Frequent viewers to this channel will recall that much of my coverage has been on DePaul College Prep teams. Big changes on this front as well.

Long time head football coach and Gordon Tech state championship team member, Bill Jeske, is out as coach of the Rams. Bill lead the Rams to much success during his tenure even with the challenge of declining enrollment at Gordon and declining participation in football on Chicago’s northside.

But Bill is not gone. He is staying on as freshman football coach. Something of Gordon remains.

Taking over for Bill as varsity coach is Michael Passarella. Coach Passarella comes from a stint as a game analyst with the Cleveland Browns, an assistant and offensive coordinator at the College of DuPage and as an assistant coach at a high school in Texas.

“Coach Passeralla has brought a new enthusiasm to the program. The kids are excited about football. We have increased participation. Winning six games and making the playoffs is not outside the realm of possibility this year,” Pat Mahony told me.

He might just be right. This year’s DePaul schedule is tough but doable. DePaul Prep Rams look to rebound from last year’s winless season. The Rams lost to Marmion, Chicago Hope, Leo, Fenton, Wheaton, St. Joseph, St. Ignatius, DeLaSalle, St. Rita and St. Laurence.

With the maturing of a young team lead by talented senior quarterback Zach Burhans and Sr. WR Michael “Mikey” Flynn, the Rams will surprise some people.

The CCL/ESCC schedule provides some significant changes as well. The Rams will take on Roosevelt (2-5 in 2018), Sullivan (6-5), Carmel (4-5), Leo (3-7), St. Laurence (4-7), Marian Catholic (1-8), Providence (5-5), Joliet Catholic (10-4 and 5A State Champion) and St. Joseph (1-9). Hopefully for the Rams, the addition of two CPS teams and the addition of Marian Catholic to the Red Division will give the Rams a fighting chance at a winning record. Carmel, St. Laurence, Providence and especially, Joliet Catholic will be long shots. Upset one of those teams, handle the rest, and there you have it—the IHSA playoffs. Once you’re in, who knows. Just ask Tom Kleinschmidt. The Rams basketball team won 3rd in state last year. Maybe the Rams football team could find itself in DeKalb come Thanksgiving. Just saying.

Preps Coverage.

In other news, Mike Clark took over for Beth Long covering football in the Sun-Times. We will be well served by the professional in-depth coverage by Mike Clark. Michael O’Brien will continue his coverage as well. It’s great to see the Sun-Times dedication to prep sports coverage. Michael O’Brien and Joe Henricksen do such a great job on basketball. Michael and Mike will be great working on football.

It seems the Chicago Tribune has completely abandoned covering high school sports. I looked at the Tribune website high school sports page. The last story published was from July. Embarrassing. There is such a void in coverage out there; a million stories to tell; a  million photos to publish.  

There you have it. My first long form blog post. It’s not exactly journalism. Not exactly commentary. I will try to do more. Throw in some news, analysis, commentary and photographs. Hope you like it.