{"id":163,"date":"2012-03-01T17:17:31","date_gmt":"2012-03-01T22:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/?p=163"},"modified":"2012-03-01T17:17:31","modified_gmt":"2012-03-01T22:17:31","slug":"163","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/?p=163","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Six months somehow whizzed by since I last made a trip out to see family in Chicago so I was overdue for a return.<\/p>\n

I left Tuesday morning on the home team airline out of LaGuardia.\u00a0 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\u2019s High School in Chicago).<\/p>\n

It was at St. Pat\u2019s (the oldest Catholic all-boys\u2019 school in the city) on Tuesday night that Tim and I caught a regional semi-final game of the Illinois high school basketball tournament.<\/p>\n

Indiana\u2019s state HS hoops tournament is probably the most famous but Illinois does it just as good.\u00a0 The term \u201cMarch Madness\u201d was coined in 1939 by an Illinois athletics administrator and the state has been playing an all-inclusive, single elimination tournament since 1908.<\/p>\n

The game we saw pitted Maine South vs. Von Steuben.\u00a0 South won by 21.\u00a0 Maine South owns a significant enrollment advantage (2600 vs. 1700) and a much greater athletics tradition.\u00a0 Von Steuben is a Chicago public school (on Kimball south of Foster) with a science mission and a strong debate team.\u00a0 Von Steuben is also the alma mater of the great late-night sports talk radio host Les Grobstein.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Admission to the game was $4.\u00a0 We sat behind the Maine South bench.\u00a0 We were so close to the floor, we could listen in on coach Tony Lavorato Jr.\u2019s huddle instructions.\u00a0 Late in the contest, Lavorato urged his squad not to \u201clet up\u201d on Von Steuben despite a squander-proof margin.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t until about a minute to go that the deepest part of the South bench was allowed to enter the game.\u00a0 A few of the guys held back grins when they finally got in.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s great about the Illinois high school hoops tourney is that everybody gets an invite.\u00a0 In theory, a team could lose every single game in the regular season and still win the championship.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Win and advance.\u00a0 Lose and your done.<\/p>\n

-My brothers and I met up with my cousin\u2019s husband Dan at the Edison Park location of the Moretti\u2019s pizza\/pub chain Wednesday night for a few cold ones.\u00a0 The thin crust pizza there is exceptional.\u00a0 The Blackhawks, Bulls and Northwestern were playing simultaneously.\u00a0\u00a0 A majority of the bar patrons on hand were fixated on the hockey game.<\/p>\n

-I picked up copies of the Chicago area\u2019s three major daily newspapers to read on the return flight Thursday morning.\u00a0 The suburban-centric Daily Herald\u2019s eight-page Classifieds section was dominated by foreclosure notices.\u00a0 More than three-fourths of the section was filled with legal notices announcing court action on foreclosed property.\u00a0 You had to look closely to find the \u201chelp wanted\u201d ads.\u00a0 There were just sixteen total low-wage job listings tucked among the scores of notices of foreclosed dwellings on the selling block.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 It was just a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[25,24],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s28tEv-163","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":166,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions\/166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}