Showing posts with label Pete Doyle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pete Doyle. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

South Side Parade 2013: Leo Lions Learn About The Irish Game of Camogie ( Women's Hurling)

While waiting to step off in Sunday's South Side Irish Parade, members of the back-to-back IHSA Track Championship Leo High School team were instructed in the ancient Irish game of Camogie.

The Leo Lions With Annie Redmond of the GAA Champion Camogie (camógaíocht in Irish)  Squad - St. Mary's Camogie.  Camogie is the Woman's Hurling Sport sanctioned by the Gaelic Athletic Association.  St. Mary's play at Gaelic Park through the post-Memorial Day sweltering Chicago Heat.

Camogie like hurling is played with what looks like a sawed-off hockey stick and a leather ball called the sliotar


Matches are contested by two teams of 15 a side, using a field 130m to 145m long and 80m to 90m wide. H-shape goals are used, a goal (scored when the ball goes between the posts and under the bar) is equal to three points and a point (scored when the ball goes over the bar) is equal to one point.The rules are almost identical to hurling, with a few exceptions.[6]
  • Goalkeepers wear the same colours as outfield players. This is because no special rules apply to the goalkeeper and so there is no need for officials to differentiate between goalkeeper and outfielders.
  • A camogie player can handpass a score (forbidden in hurling since 1980)
  • Camogie games last 60 minutes (senior inter-county hurling games last 70)
  • Dropping the camogie stick to handpass the ball is permitted.
  • A smaller sliotar (ball) is used in camogie - commonly known as a size 4 sliotar - whereas hurlers play with a size 5 sliotar.
  • If a defending player hits the sliotar wide, a 45-metre puck is awarded to the opposition (in hurling, it is a 65-metre puck)
  • After a score, the goalkeeper pucks out from the 13-metre line. (in hurling, he must puck from the end line)
  • The metal band on the camogie stick must be covered with tape. (not necessary in hurling)
  • Side–to-side charges are forbidden. (permitted in hurling)
  • Two points are awarded for a score direct from a sideline cut (since March 2012)[7]
Camogie players must wear skirts or skorts rather than shorts.



It is brutal! The Leo Lions, gentlemen athletes all, were astounded by the skill and athleticism required of this ancient Irish sport.




St. Mary's Camogie:
 R. Callnan, A. Byrne, A. Redmond, N. O’Keefe, C. Murray, L. Mitchell, A. Wall, E. Hennessey, Colette Gill (1-2), E. McQuaid, N. Kerlin, Miriam O’Keefe (2-0), Grainne McCrickland (1-2).

Thanks Annie!

Friday, March 01, 2013

Peter Doyle and the Rosary - This Month in Irish American News

Pete Doyle -The Mr. Chips of Leo High School, Chicago IL



Leo Legend Pete Doyle greeted his guys, yesterday when these accomplished Lions returned to mentor the young Lions of Leo.  Every Alumnus from years 1967-Present, ask for Brother Doyle, Handsome Willie, Mr. Doyle, Pete!

             Peter Doyle and the Rosary – They’re Back at Leo High School


My Dad once told me, “Everything comes back but spats.” The old man knew what he was stalking about whether it was buying tools, jazz records, or clothing – buy to last and skip the trendy. His advice served me well, I love real jazz and eschew the Kenny G varietal elevator music, wear essentially the same public statement with my cloths and hair style (unaltered since 1966- urban prep/greaser) and I demand that the skilled craftsmen that I hire to improve or repair my home use only the best tools.


There are reasons why some things never change; they are classic, and why though out of sight and mind for whatever reason are always welcomed back. You can not say that of the Mullet-hair statement, the Nehru Jacket, or the Leisure suit.


That same can and should be said about wonderful persons and practices.


Pete Doyle is back at Leo. The former Irish Christian Brother who began his long teaching career at Leo High School in 1967, returned three years ago. Mr. Doyle is remembered as Bro Doyle by hundreds of Alumni who pay homage to the man who exemplifies the Spirit of the Lion.


Back in the day, Leo Pep Rallies were often punctuated by bleachers and balcony seats of Leo Men chanting “Handsome, Willie! Handsome Willie!!!!” Handsome was the appellation of student affection for a teacher or coach. The Irish Christian Brothers referred to one another not by their given names, but by their Christening names; thus, Brother Peter William Doyle CCF was called Willie – Handsome Willie.


Pete “Handsome Willie” Doyle teaches religion and coaches track and serves as this school’s campus minister. Leo High School is was and shall always remain Catholic.


No one exemplifies Leo’s Catholic culture better than Handsome Willie Doyle. Students learn exactly why Leo’s Catholic identity is the key to their success. There is much that goes into the tale and worship is a huge part of the glory that is Leo Alumni support and the continuation of the eighty seven year mission on 79th Street.


Pete Doyle and a group of teachers and students instituted the Leo Men Pray program that takes place immediately after school and before athletic practices. Out this program and Mr. Doyle’s religion classes emerged interest in a uniquely Catholic form of prayer. African American evangelical and a few Muslim students indicated great interest in a very particular devotion to Our Lady.


The Rosary is back at Leo High School – the school named for the Rosary Pope –Leo XIII. The Rosary focused and dedicated to Our Lady, became one of great Catholic devotions.


Remember devotions? You know ‘external, public practices of piety?’ Piety? That’s a toughie these days. Piety is equated to hypocrisy, or at the very least rather pinched in the sphincter. Piety is merely means ‘respect’ drawn from a very complex sense of Roman virtue. The Romans and subsequently the Catholic Church took virtue to mean the steps to good living – a gradus. At the most basic was pietas –recognition and reverence for ancestors. Piety came to mean doing a public act that reflected one’s faith and core beliefs. As Catholics dissolved into mere Americans, breast beating, signs of the cross, counting of beads, genuflection and finally living up to the faith became silly things performed by the unevolved. I took three Leo students out for lunch and said grace with the sign of the cross sandwiching the prayer and you should have seen the looks I got from tables of hep and hip.


I have had a rosary in pocket, as well as my keys, some folding money, a toothpick a hankie and those great tasting Listerine pads for years. I pray through the day with the beads tucked away. No need to publicly pronounce my pities unless invited or commanded to do so. The Rosary is a great help to me and it keeps me aware of my vanities and impulses. Don’t hurt none.


I asked Mr. Doyle about the interest our young men, mostly non-Catholic, have shown in this most Catholic of devotions. I began by asking, “You have been a long-time influence on generations of Leo Men (1967-Present). How do you see the young men of today?”


“You know, Pat, they are much the same: some take to studies, some to sports and all need to be loved and encouraged Like the young guys when I first came here to teach, they show a great interest in spiritual things. There seems to be a greater hunger for more sacred rituals and devotions along with their hunger for God and grasping some sense in this life.”


Pete Doyle was born in Los Angeles, CA and returned to teach there in the 1980’s after leaving the Irish Christian Brothers. Aside from that brief teaching hiatus and short stint with St. Gregory High School on the north side, Peter Doyle has stayed close to Leo.


Leo’s Mr. Chips explained the development of interest in the Rosary as a devotion, “Today’s Leo student has a much more spontaneous response to prayer. They are at ease with a personal relation to Jesus. As teens they love to do things in groups which seems to lend itself to a more formalized devotion and the rosary fills that need. Since we began the Leo Men Pray program traditional prayers have had a powerful effect from group prayer. The public nature of bearing witness to Christ through His Mother seems to have hit a chord with the guys. It is active prayer.”


The tangible benefits of holding onto the rosary during the Rosary itself seems to have added to the current interest by students, most of whom are non-Catholic. Doyle went on, “Holding onto a sacred object while publicly or privately praying, meditating and fingering the beads appeal to the young men. They like medals, medallions, charms and the like. The Church has always used the material to our own ascent to the spiritual.”


Pete Doyle is back and now the Rosary is Back. Get this. Pete Doyle wants to have a May Crowning here on 79th in the Leo courtyard at the Statue of Our Lady.



Thursday, February 07, 2013

Charisms in Catholic Schools: Keeping Important Instruments in the Orchestra



“Knowledge and wisdom seek a covenant with holiness.” Pope John Paul II alluding to St. John Cantius

In the introduction to John Sullivan's 2001 study of Catholic schooling Catholic Education: Distinctive and Inclusive the author developed a metaphor that struck me as profound.   The book discusses the polarities of Catholic education as distinctive from the other educational paths; public and independent as well as other denominational schools, while inviting all to participate. In Chapter One, Sullivan notes the diminished influence of religious orders on Catholic education and remarks "The 'orchestra' now plays without benefit of some interesting 'instruments.'  By that he mean the charisms that marked the educational methods which distinguished the religious orders operating individual schools.

Vatican II ( 1962-'65) seemed to accelerate the growing secularism in America. Post-WWII GI Bill Catholics viewed themselves more American than Catholic, especially those with college and post-graduate educations. By the 1970's Catholic education, in particular religion departments, adopted more Clown Jesus Superstar undercoating than the more durably simonized protective coatings of a Jesuit, Augustinian, Carmelite, or Dominican education.  Ask too many Catholics today what is the different and you would most likely be answered, "Hey, they're all the same."  

Religious discernment and judgement in general has suffered from an almost universal dumbing down.

What has occurred through vocation decline and the Catholic-lite religious education dynamics is the absence of charisms that marked, distinguished and glorified Catholic education. Religious Orders have distinct charisms. An example, noted in a recent monograph by a member of the Congregation of Christian Brothers (Irish Christian Brothers) notes the crisis that order has faced - "The charism usually proposed for Edmund Rice is that 'he heard the cry of the poor' and there has been a stress on his clothing, feeding and teaching the extremely poor and marginalised urban underclass to assist the condemned, the gaoled, the deprived, the oppressed and the desperate. While true as far as it goes, 'he heard the cry of the poor' has tended to be interpreted in an increasingly secular world in an increasingly secular way. It is true that the poor need bread (or rice!) or the skills to plant better grain, but, In fact, the desperately poor need Christ. The increasingly marginalised require salvation as much as the rich, the middle-class or anyone else. This tends to be obscured."  The article concludes - The charism of Edmund Rice was to instruct ignorant boys and young men in the Catholic faith - Gerald Kilmartin, c 1989

Brother Kilmartin seems to be addressing the diluting of the charism during the 1960s.  Ignorant boys can have Dads with comfortable bank accounts as well as boys who come to school without a square meal in their bellies or two nickels in their jeans.  The charism was stretched by some in the Congregation in order to avoid the classroom and opt to be Junior Joseph the Workers, living in a monastery with three hots and cot, while working at a factory in Clearing as a personal ministry.  A teaching order teaches.  When the mission statement gets skewed, why bother?  Vocations plunged.

All Catholic schools and especially the first Irish Christian Brother school in Chicago, Leo High School, operate like vineyards: grapes differ.  A connecting branch must get the operating growing and eventually the finished products flowing. There are no brothers at Leo and there has not been one teaching, coaching or administering since the death of Brother Francis R. Finch in 1999 and the Congregation's forced retirement of Brother John Steve O'Keefe in 2005. The brothers withdrew from Leo as a congregation in 1991. Leo High School remains a Catholic school of the Archdiocese of Chicago and managed to maintain something of the charism of the Irish Christian Brothers.  Alumni who were educated by the brothers make up a good portion of the faculty.  Alumni support for the school is robust.  Most encouraging is the presence of former Brother Peter W. Doyle.

Peter Doyle, now married, began his teaching career at Leo in 1967 and served many years as an English teacher, religion teacher, coach and was hired by Leo President Bob Foster as a principal. When Mr. Foster retired Pete Doyle returned to serve as teacher, coach and campus minister.  The Alumni are delighted.  The older silver maned contemporaries of mine still call him Bro Doyle and the young gents Mr. Doyle. Mr. Doyle is a an important cut of the vine, because he is a direct link to the charism that sparks Leo's mission.  He still reads the Divine Office daily and generated great interest in the rosary, especially among the non-Catholic African American students.

Catholic schools were built in order protect the faith of children from the radical Protestant, now Progressive secular, doctrines imposed on students.  Catholic schools developed within a tradition of scholarship and methodology - in fact many methodologies - with the result of training the children of the faithful enact the rituals, immerse themselves in the stories and traditions of the Catholic faith, and live the learned virtues as adults.

It matters that there are distinctions.  A Jesuit education is different from the one a Leo Man received, all the while both are powerfully Catholic.  When distinction is obscured, diluted, neglected, or ridiculed, the whole is diminished.  Catholics who accepted anything will swallow anything.  If that is the case, why bother?

Catholic schools must strengthen identity through the distinctive and inclusive qualities of the many charisms.
The orchestra needs the right instruments. 

Thursday, October 04, 2012

Thank God and John Kass - G-Men Meet Leo Men



John Kass again reports on the great young men of Leo High School.  Today, John presents the story of the visit of Jeremy Clark, Darryl Johnson and Mike Braxton to FBI Headquarters in Chicago.


At the start of the CPS Teacher Strike, John Kass of the Chicago Tribune paid a visit to Leo High School and talked to the great young men who work to become contributing people who will make a difference in Chicago's inner city.

Leo High School is a Catholic college preparatory high school, founded in 1926 at the orders of Cardinal George Mundelein to serve poor kids from neighborhoods south of the stockyards.  Leo has never been what some might call an elite secondary school and God willing never will be.  Some people term a school, that in reality is an exclusive school - where tuition and tests make it impossible for blue collar sons to find a seat in the classroom.  Leo is elite - it is blessed by God.

In the late 1960's, I heard street talk that Leo High School was on its last legs.  In the 1970's, when I began teaching high school, folks in the know  placed no chips on the Black and Orange ( Leo's Colors).  In the late 1980's, when I was teaching at La Lumiere School, alma mater of Justice of the United States John Roberts, word was out that Irish Christian Brothers were planning to leave Leo. In the 1990's Cardinal Bernardine ended all Archdiocesan financial support to Leo and the Irish Christian Brothers ended their sixty year presence at Leo, with exception of the heroic Brothers Rupert Finch and Steve O'Keefe.  Bob Foster became the first lay Principal in the school's history and the smart set gave fierce Foster  six months to one year until the Lion's roar would end.  The Lion roared louder behind the leadership and stewardship of the Leo Alumni. The Old Lion leaped into the New Millenium clawing and biting.  When President and CEO Bob Foster retired, everyone with half a brain sang the same old song.  Only a Father Pfleger could save Leo.  Wrong again.

Irish Christian Brothers, Cardinals, Educators, Business Wheels, and mythological heroes like Bob Foster and Mike Holmes,or quietly fierce leaders like Pete Doyle and Dan McGrath are merely human beings. Catholic schools are God centered.  God Provides.

Leo High School faces tough times financially and it always has. Enrollment goes up and down, because inner city families are challenged to pay what they honestly are able to do.  Support from Alumni and friends is always limited - there is only so much money. We would love to have piles of gold and swag to provide more for our wonderful, funny, challenging and sweet young gents, but we thank God for reach day, each gift and each opportunity to do more.

Life is prose and not poetry.  It is quotidian, messy, unsettling, costly and challenging - it is supposed to be. God provides the gestures from good souls like John Kass.

There is always God.  I do not believe that John Kass came to Leo merely to do a solid for old an pal, or get a great story. I believe that God's hand gave Kass's shoulder a shove. The same hand that wakes me up and sends me Leo High School, guides my hands on the wheel of the Canaryville van, keeps my tired old lamps focused on the proper Dan Ryan lanes and back to 79th & Sangamon with the Young Lions.

Thankl God it is not just up to me.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Leo High School's Magnificent 7 - 7th Illinois Track Title!


With the blessing of Francis Cardinal George on May 11th and Leo High School's All-Weather Indoor Track, the Lions roared at Charleston's Eastern Illinois University 2012 IHSA Class 1-A meet and takes home it seventh (7th) State Track Championship Trophy. Well done President Dan McGrath, Coaches Ed Adams, Pete Doyle and Marcus Pass and the Leo Lion Track Champions!

Facta Non Verba!

Update:


CHARLESTON, Ill. — Leo senior Keith Harris Jr. was somber.
He and sophomore Theodore Hopkins didn't finish where they had hoped Saturday in the 200-meter dash at the Class 1A boys track and field state finals, and Harris thought Leo's chances at a second consecutive team championship were finished.
Minutes later, Eureka helped lift Leo's spirits and its state title count.
Eureka finished fifth, ahead of Newton, in the 1,600 relay, the final race at O'Brien Stadium. That left Newton one point short of Leo's 35 in the team race. The Lions won by one point for the second straight season. Monticello (31) was third.
Leo's only event title came in the 400 relay, when Harris and Hopkins teamed with Corey Pryor and Marlon Britton to win in 42.76 seconds. Britton was second in the 110 hurdles to help the Lions to their seventh team title.
"We knew we had to score high in the relay to get a chance to win state, so that's what we did," said Harris, who finished fourth in the 100 and seventh in the 200. Chicago Tribune Sports



CLASS 1A TEAM SCORES
Leo 35, Newton 34, Monticello 31, St. Joseph-Ogden 30, Villa Grove 28, Casey-Westfield 28, Kewanee 27, Manlius Bureau Valley 26, Chester 24, Johnston City 22, Mooseheart 22
CLASS 1A WINNERS
Long jump -- Dontae Pryor, Kewanee, 23-3.75; Pole vault -- Mitch Mammoser, Newton, 15-11; High jump -- Kyle Landon, Chester, 6-10; Shot put -- Adam Weidner, Manlius Bureau Valley, 57-10.75; Triple jump -- Heath Byom, Knoxville, 43-10.75; Discus -- Ryan Pearce, Villa Grove, 166-11; 3,200 relay -- Monticello, 8:01.08; 400 relay -- Leo, 42.76; 3,200 -- Steve Schroeder, Monticello, 9:39.10; 110 hurdles -- Colin Carver, Casey-Westfield, 14.65; 100 -- Dontae Pryor, Kewanee, 10.61; 800 -- Eric Leonard, Niantic Sangamon Valley, 1:54.61; 800 relay -- Tuscola, 1:28.79; 400 -- Dan Farmer, Johnston City, 49.25; 300 hurdles -- Colin Carver, Casey-Westfield, 38.71; 1,600 -- Grant Nykaza, Beecher, 4:18.34; 200 -- Dan Farmer, Johnston City, 22.37; 1,600 relay -- Aurora Christian, 3:24.15