Six months somehow whizzed by since I last made a trip out to see family in Chicago so I was overdue for a return.
I left Tuesday morning on the home team airline out of LaGuardia. It was just a 48 hour visit but I was able to see everybody including my brother Tim (pictured above on the practice field behind St. Patrick’s High School in Chicago).
It was at St. Pat’s (the oldest Catholic all-boys’ school in the city) on Tuesday night that Tim and I caught a regional semi-final game of the Illinois high school basketball tournament.
Indiana’s state HS hoops tournament is probably the most famous but Illinois does it just as good. The term “March Madness” was coined in 1939 by an Illinois athletics administrator and the state has been playing an all-inclusive, single elimination tournament since 1908.
The game we saw pitted Maine South vs. Von Steuben. South won by 21. Maine South owns a significant enrollment advantage (2600 vs. 1700) and a much greater athletics tradition. Von Steuben is a Chicago public school (on Kimball south of Foster) with a science mission and a strong debate team. Von Steuben is also the alma mater of the great late-night sports talk radio host Les Grobstein.
Admission to the game was $4. We sat behind the Maine South bench. We were so close to the floor, we could listen in on coach Tony Lavorato Jr.’s huddle instructions. Late in the contest, Lavorato urged his squad not to “let up” on Von Steuben despite a squander-proof margin. It wasn’t until about a minute to go that the deepest part of the South bench was allowed to enter the game. A few of the guys held back grins when they finally got in.
What’s great about the Illinois high school hoops tourney is that everybody gets an invite. In theory, a team could lose every single game in the regular season and still win the championship. When March Madness started in Illinois a week ago Monday, 739 teams in four divisions (broken down by enrollment) opened with a shot at a state title.
Sure, a team like Von Steuben likely knew going in it would be near-impossible to win seven consecutive games against opponents that get progressively more difficult. But what a great feeling it must be to launch a competitive quest knowing you start from scratch just like every other team in the tournament. Win and advance. Lose and your done.
-My brothers and I met up with my cousin’s husband Dan at the Edison Park location of the Moretti’s pizza/pub chain Wednesday night for a few cold ones. The thin crust pizza there is exceptional. The Blackhawks, Bulls and Northwestern were playing simultaneously. A majority of the bar patrons on hand were fixated on the hockey game.
-I picked up copies of the Chicago area’s three major daily newspapers to read on the return flight Thursday morning. The suburban-centric Daily Herald’s eight-page Classifieds section was dominated by foreclosure notices. More than three-fourths of the section was filled with legal notices announcing court action on foreclosed property. You had to look closely to find the “help wanted” ads. There were just sixteen total low-wage job listings tucked among the scores of notices of foreclosed dwellings on the selling block.