Six Time Illinois Track Champs -Leo Catholic High School -No Track? No Problem.

The New York Times/Chicago News Cooperative features the legendary Leo Catholic High School Track Team coached by Ed Adams.

Leo is the only private/Catholic/Independent school in the history of the IHSA to win a track title - make that six track Championships.

N.B. -I will encode the video later in the day. It is wonderful.
Here is Idalmy Carrrera's text in full: as promised!

Without Facilities, State Champs Make Due from Chicago News Cooperative on Vimeo.

In sports, it’s about numbers.

Leo High School won their latest track and field state title last May by one point. This marked the school’s sixth state championship. When Leo won its first state title in 1981, it became the first Catholic school to take the top trophy in track and field, and no other Catholic school in Illinois has done that since then.

But the biggest number for the Leo track team may well be zero. That is the number of indoor and outdoor practice facilities the team has–none at all–meaning one of the state’s top track teams trains by running laps and hurdles in the school’s hallways after class.

Leo is hardly the only school dealing with sub-par practice facilities: In fact, no Chicago public school has an indoor track. But Leo is the only Chicago school to win a state title in track and field in the last 15 years, a championship no Chicago Public Schools team has claimed since 1974.

“I think it would be easy to get a case of the poor-me’s based on a lack of facilities,” said Jim Prunty, president of the Chicago Catholic League. “But the fact of the matter is that in Chicago, you would be hard pressed to find a school with really great facilities. It’s a reality we’re all dealing with.”

The Illinois High School Association surveys high schools every year on its website regarding track and field facilities at state schools in order to determine postseason sites. However, many schools do not complete the survey, making it difficult to determine how many of the 777 IHSA schools have their own tracks.

“It’s not uncommon for teams all over the state to be running the halls or the stairs if they want to get started on conditioning early. Most schools in Illinois don’t have an indoor facility,” said Ron McGraw, an assistant executive director with the IHSA.

“Having facilities doesn’t make you a state champion and not having them obviously doesn’t keep you from succeeding.”

Track and field hit its peak in the U.S. almost three decades ago when American athletes consistently brought home Olympic medals for the sport. Its low visibility since then has been one of the reasons why fewer young athletes get involved with the sport. Funding for track and field programs also has dropped, said a spokesperson for USA Track and Field.

In 2010 CPS cut pay for assistant high school track coaches in an effort to save money in the district’s budget. According to information provided by CPS, there about 70 high schools with track and field teams. Eighteen schools have outdoor facilities on school property or at a nearby park, and four schools have stadiums with surrounding tracks that can be used for track meets.

At Leo–a Catholic school that is not part of CPS–the track and field team works on technique and conditioning in the school’s weight room, hallways and stairwell landings beginning in January. Any day that weather permits, they move practice outdoors to the sidewalks or nearby woods because almost any other surface, said head coach Ed Adams, is better on the athletes’ bodies than the hallway floors that have no give.

Adams has worked at Leo 17 years. Under his leadership, the Lions have won five of their six state trophies. He has done so despite a steep decline in school enrollment that finally leveled off in the last couple years.

Today, there are 148 students at the all-boys Catholic school that in its heyday enrolled more than 1,000. Chicago News Cooperative sports columnist Dan McGrath since the summer of 2010 has served as president of the school, which continues to face enrollment and financial challenges.

Adams, who has received a combined eight coach-of-the-year plaudits from the National Federation of State High School Associations and the Illinois Track and Cross Country Coaches Association, leads a team of 30–or about 20 percent of the school’s student body.

“Track and field relies heavily on individual talent available in your school,” Adams said. “It’s not easy to build, say, a powerhouse.”

Of the six students who represented Leo at the state track meet last year, five graduated and the other is now a sophomore. That athlete, Theo Hopkins, remembers spraying his teammates with water to celebrate the state championship.

“You know how teams in the pros do that with champagne? Well, we did it with water,” said Hopkins, 15. “Then we remembered we’re supposed to always be polite so we just got on the buses quietly and came home.”

The team is in a rebuilding year in a sport where success can be fleeting. Leo’s prior state win was in 2003.

“It doesn’t matter that we don’t have tracks or anywhere but the halls to practice on,” said Hopkins. “I want people to know that at Leo we don’t need a track because we work hard and that’s why we can win.”

Imagine what these tough and focused young gents could do with a fraction of the money tossed to any public school? Facta Non Verba - Deeds not Words!

Thank you Jim Warren, Jim Shea, Dan McGrath and Idalmy Carrera!

Why Bother With The Trib - The Real Reporting Can Be Found at Chicago News Co-Op

I read quite a bit. Even at this hoary-age of the dark-side of 58, I tend to remember what I read. Reading like plumbing, carpentry, and painting is an art. I do not plumb, carpent or paint, unless there is a very good reason to do so, like black water gushing up out of every household orifice, timbers a'cracking and chips of paint getting mixed in with the Lime and Salt flavored tortilla chips.

I read because I must. I have taught generations of high school kids not only to engage in reading, but introduced them to the very best in writing, in order to become discerning readers.

While a student at Loyola, I worked with a Stationary Engineer who was a 'big reader' - Mack Bolan, Nick Carter, Mickey Spillane, various and sundry crotch novels with titles like "Trailer Park Pam and the Big-Top Snake Wranglers at Play." While appreciative of the cover art that packages such tomes, I, none the less, found the lurid prose to be just that and came away from their sentences with the feelings of shame that must accompany young Ezra when Mom comes down into the basement with basketful of the twenty-something's laundry and catches Young E with his mitts around more than a pretzel stick, while watching the Kardasian hi-jinks on the wide-screen Hi Def.

Chicago's two remaining big newspapers and their web-sites have become little more than Condensed Lite Nick Carter dailies.

The Chicago Tribune, to be fair, has made some modest gains toward substance in recent months, but any paper with a disc jockey as managing editor and editorial board propagandist is rather sad. The Sun Times, likewise has improved from its laughable days when Cheryl Redd called the shots, and has excellent journalistic foot-soldiers like Mark Konkol, Natasha Korecki, Maureen O'Donnell, Tim Novack and Abdon Pallasch and Southtown's Star's Steve Metsch.

However, you can not find a better source for reporting, opinion and insight than the Medill Castaways of the Chicago News Cooperative ( New York Times).

One of my favorite, Metro and City Hall beat journalists is Dan Mihalopoulos. Today, this gritty and exacting reporter cuts through fatuous opinions of the Aldermen and City Hall flacks and presents the realities of Chicago Police Manpower shortages.

The ACLU and the usual suspects of political loudmouths and phonies are providing cover form Rahm Emanuel's dodgy deployments. Dan Mihalopoulos offers the facts - reminding readers of what newspapers used to do. While the Emanuel 'Smart Sizing" of the Chicago Police Department might provide cover for aldermen and the Administration, saturating high crime areas with Officers will not necessarily solve the problem.

Only Dan Mihalopulos cuts to the chase -

The Chicago News Cooperative recently obtained a list of the unit assignments for the 10,300 sworn Chicago police department employees from a police source who requested anonymity because the department leaders have declined to release it.

The records described the unit assignments as of early October and appeared to reflect the vast majority of the recent personnel moves ordered by the Emanuel administration.

Most of the detectives were assigned to one of the department’s five area headquarters, while about 2,400 of the police officers were either assigned directly or detailed to specialized units, including the narcotics section and the internal affairs division.

It was impossible to deduce from the data exactly where the officers in specialized units were working. The list also did not include supervisors.

The other 7,000 police officers, representing a majority of the department’s sworn members, were each assigned to patrol beats in one of the 25 districts. The number of officers in each district ranged from a low of 191 in the 23rd district to 386 in the 7th district.

A comparison of the beat deployment figures with department statistics for property crimes and violent crimes in each district this year shows:

¶Four districts — the 25th, 8th, 6th and 4th — had higher ratios of both property crimes and violent crimes per officer than the citywide average.

¶The highest ratios of property crimes to beat officer counts were in the 14th, 8th and 25th districts, each of which reported at least 15 property crimes per patrol officer in the year’s first eight months.

¶The lowest proportion of violent crimes to officers was in the 1st district, which covers downtown Chicago, followed by the 19th district on the North Side.

¶The 4th district, in the city’s southeast corner, had the largest gap between staffing level and violence, with 4.05 violent crimes per officer.

The 4th district covers most of the 7th Ward, whose alderman, Sandi Jackson, praised Emanuel for adding officers to areas of greater need, despite tight budget constraints. But asked about the Chicago News Cooperative findings, Jackson replied: “There is absolutely a disparity. We are not where we would want to be ideally.”

Some experts say the reaction of aldermen in apparently underserved districts, though politically astute, would not lead to the wisest policies for fighting crime.

“It is reasonable and rational to expect that there should be more officers in areas with more crime,” said Arthur Lurigio, a professor of psychology and criminology at Loyola University. “But there is no evidence that would necessarily be the case.”

Lurigio said saturating areas with officers often merely pushed criminals to other places that then witnessed a spike in violence.

Imagine if high crime areas were saturated with beat officers, prowler cars and paddy wagons?

Imagine what Harvey Grossman and the ACLU say and how quickly they would shop for Federal Judges to sue over racist invasions and forces of occupation in Englewood, or Roseland?

Fourteen people were wounded and one killed last night, blares the Tribune in anticipation of a full explanation to people by Eric "The Water Boy" Zorn, or a thunderingly hilarious cop-slamming J'accuse from Bruce Dold.

Read The Tribune for laughs, read the Chicago Sun Times for the great reporters and skip the columnists, and read the Chicago News Cooperative in order to be fully informed.

To Well-Heeled Chicagoans

It is a shame that Chicago's 1%ers can meet at Smith and Wolinsky's and pony up hundreds of thousands of dollars and invest in a bar or a restaurant, but take a pass on helping to fund the only real news source in Chicago - The Chicago News Cooperative. I mean aside from a guy who moved to Chicago and already pumps millions into schools, the great John Canning, where are all of the Oxen Gore-ing PlumpCats and Kittens? Support Chicago News Cooperative. Us Helots are already pumped dry, by Rahm, Boss Preckwinkle, Governor Easter Bunny, and Boss Claypool -not to mention Boss Shakman.

This great source of news should be supported by the people who have the most treasure in their kicks. If you have a couple of hundred thousand dollars laying around your Gold Coast condo, Lakeview gray stone, or Hyde Park mansion, give Jim Warren a call, or write a huge check to

Chicago News Cooperative Contact Info:
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Chicago, IL 60601


www.chicagonewscoop.org

Chicago needs real news and good writing.



The two journalistic and editorial equivalents of "Trailer Park Pam and the Big-Top Snake Wranglers at Play" just aren't cutting it. Buck up, Buckaneers!