Helluva August

It’s gonna be a helluva August.

I basically took July off from photos and sports writing; a much-needed break. It began to feel like a job.

I’m going to LA on August 1st for an overdue vacation, then the football season starts. I am gonna be taking photos and writing again. I am very jazzed about that.

I have wanted to go to Los Angeles for a long time. I was there in 1974 as a boy. I thought it was so cool. My dad bought a map of the stars homes and we drove around Beverly Hills. We drove past Lucille Ball’s house. When we came upon Paul Newman’s house down the street, there he was standing on the sidewalk out front in a white t-shirt drinking a Budweiser talking to a man I assumed was his neighbor.

My sister shrieked, “Paul.” She was all about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid at that time.

He looked up, smiled and waved. My dad kept driving.

How cool was that?

Well that was 50 years ago. Paul is gone, God rest his soul. But there must be others like that to see. Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, somebody like that.

My daughter Mary is going with me. She is totally into the trip but prefers to visit the reality TV locations like Sur restaurant from Vanderpump Rules. That’s fine. Reality TV is the one thing that she doesn’t mind me being around for, and the Cubs too. We religiously watched all the 2016 playoff games together.

I have never looked forward to a vacation as much as I have this one. I just want to go to LA and look around. I want actually see the places whose names I have been hearing my whole life. The San Fernando Valley, Malibu, Compton, Sunset Strip, Hollywood Walk of Fame, Orange County, Long Beach, etc.

Then when I get back football season starts. I am looking forward to covering the area teams again. Amundsen should be good again. Lane will be good. I really enjoyed Lane coach Dedrick DeWalt’s old school double wing offense last season.

DePaul Prep will give it another try. That school has become the premier Catholic School high school on the Northside. It’s up to about 1100 students. Mary Dempsey and her team are opening a new classroom building when school starts. It’s only a matter of time before Coach Mike Passarella’s Rams move up divisions and take over the CCL/ESCC the way Tom Kleinschmidt’s basketball teams have done with multiple state final appearances and a state championship.

I am gonna get out to as many St. Viator football games as I can as well. My brother Steve is not coaching football this season and promised to come in for a game. My brother Dan, Fr. Dan Lydon, CSV, for those non-family members out there, is the president of the school so I suppose I should show them some love. There was a time when St. Viator won the ESCC every year. But that was like forty years ago now. Dan and the St. Viator staff have plans to build an on-campus stadium. That will make a big difference for the school and the football program.

Once football runs its course, we are right into basketball. The Battle of the Bridge will be here before one knows it. That’s when the real funs begins. It should be a great new high school basketball season.

Great time to be alive.

DePaul Prep Mens Golf Falls to Mount Carmel 166 to 170

On Thursday (September 24, 2020), the DePaul Prep mens golf team lost to Mount Carmel 164 to 170 at Jackson Park Golf Course.

Assistant golf coach and DePaul College Prep history teacher Steve Cadwallader lead a young Rams squad against Mount Carmel. Playing for the Rams were freshman Jack Kennedy (Queen of Angels), freshman Wyatt Carlson (Chicago City Day School/Coonley), sophomore Alex Johnson (St. Benedict), sophomore Emmitt Miller (St. Alphonsus), sophomore Aiden Williams (Nettelhorst) and senior Colon Pilcher (St. Alphonsus).

The nine-hole match took the best four scores of the six Rams playing. Fourteen year-old freshman phenom Wyatt Carlson lead the Rams with a four over 39. Emmitt Miller shot 42, Alex Johnson 44, Colin Pilcher 45 and Aiden Williams 49.

Mount Carmel’s junior Ahmad Raoul shot a three over 38 and lead the Caravan to victory.

“We decided to start a golf program because people at one of the very first open houses . . . talked about their desire to play golf in high school. I decided right then and there that DePaul Prep needed to start a golf program so families who wanted to play golf could do so at DePaul Prep,” DePaul Prep Athletic Director Patrick Mahoney told me.

“Combine that with a couple of parents who were great in helping us find courses and spreading the word to other families and the ball started rolling. And we could not have done it without Justin Lane who was a soccer coach. He really wanted to coach golf,” Mahoney continued.

School leadership got on board quickly.

“[DePaul College Prep] President Mary Dempsey, Principal Megan Stanton Anderson and Lisa Pilcher, Director of Finance and Operations, were extremely generous in talking through starting a golf program and allowing us to budget for it and get it off the ground.

DePaul Prep also has a woman’s golf team. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get out to any of their matches. I hope to get to one this week.

The men’s golf team has had mixed results in their inaugural season: wins against Fenwick and De La Salle, losses against Marmian, Loyola and now Mount Carmel, fifth out of six at Montini’s tournament and a postponed match against St. Laurence.

The inaugural Ram Invitational at Ridgemoor CC which teed off Saturday (Sept 26th) included Fenwick, Mount Carmel and St. Ignatius. I couldn’t make it out to Ridgemoor so I will have to fill you in later on that.

As for the photos . . .

This was my first-time shooting golf and it shows. Frankly, these photos are crap. The exposure is way off. The color looks funny. Jack Kennedy’s face is so washed out. Not my finest work; not even good. I worried more about composition than making properly exposed photos. If people were not waiting for these photos, I would not publish them.

I want to thank Sun-Times and Max Preps photographer Kirsten Stickney (Twitter: @KirstenStickney, Instragram: KirstenStickneyPhotography) for encouraging me to shoot golf. She gently nudged me out of my comfort zone. Clearly, these photos show just how much I have to learn about photography. When I start making good photos of golf, I will have Kirsten thank for making me a better photographer.

Golf is challenging to photograph. It is hard to get good photos of golfers wearing hats and always looking down. I would like to express my appreciation to Alex Johnson and Jack Kennedy for not wearing caps.

However, my main concern was the loud shutter on my Canon DSLRs. The loud shutter noise during a golfer’s swing is an unacceptable distraction. Consequently, I got a lot shots of the golfers putting.

The late afternoon sun casts shadows. Many of the teeing grounds were backlit to the sun which made for dark foregrounds and shadowed faces. I pushed the ISO higher than I would have liked for daytime.

Shutter speed was an adventure. As one might imagine golf clubs and golf balls are moving pretty fast. I could not set the shutter speed as high as I wanted.

I am certain to get out to shoot more golf matches in the future—hopefully the CCL and GCAC tournaments this week.