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Pigskins and Ponytails
Courtesy of the Chicago Force With 37 seconds to go in the 2011 National Football Conference Championship, Chicago Bears backup quarterback Caleb Hanie dropped back and launched a ball that landed...
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Fast Tracked
Claire Hungerford [Show as slideshow] The old U.S. Steel Mills have been abandoned for almost 30 years. Prairie has fought through the vast fields of concrete, asphalt, and steel; most of the permanent...
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Playing the Advantage
Harry Backlund [Show as slideshow] “If you notice, everything starts here and moves up.” Juan Moreno stands at the edge of a small astroturf soccer field and motions around at the encompassing school...
View ArticleContact sports
The camera wobbled as it zoomed in on two sets of hands rubbing Vaseline on a man’s cut eyelid. The man with the bloodied, swollen face was Mike Alvarado, and he was losing this boxing match. The gore...
View ArticleSticking Up for Lacrosse
Paul looked on appreciatively from the sidelines as his son came off the bench for the first time in the game. Two years younger and a head shorter than the other players around him, Paul Jr. chased...
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Floats Your Boat
Jamie Keiles Three types of people turned out last Sunday for the Chicago Boat, Sports & RV Show: boat people, family people, and conventioneers. The boat people flocked to McCormick Place for the...
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Whose Destination?
(Isaac Dalke) Underneath the Metra tracks at 53rd Street and Lake Park, a row of gleaming bicycles sit outside on the sidewalk. In a window behind them, bikes hang inert from hooks like animal...
View ArticleEntropy at mile 21
“It is marath-ON!” So declared Dustin Shaw as he slipped on his volunteer jacket and rejoined a circle of his friends, all huddled together like penguins against the stiffening cold. Shaw and a motley...
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Batting 300 Million
They say it takes a village to raise a child. But what does the child say about the village? What if the village happens to be a testosterone-fueled 300 million dollar megalopolis of athletics...
View ArticleRing Leaders: The unlikely odyssey of a boxer, his manager and the woman who...
By Bill Hillmann When middleweight boxer Osumanu Adama represented Ghana in the Sydney Olympics, he was overcome by the pressure of the event and lost his very first bout. Adama turned pro and became...
View ArticleMartial Arts, Victorian Style: Bartitsu at Forteza Fitness brings back the...
By Kristen Micek Forteza Fitness has an unassuming entrance set at the back of a small lot, but the recently opened center for physical fitness and traditional European martial arts is not something to...
View ArticleSmashing the Resistance: Billy Corgan is Back in a Whole New Arena
By John Moss Two young women showed up to the Excalibur nightclub one Friday evening in January. Each paid a $20 admission to the “#1 Mega Club & Party Castle” in Chicago, but neither had come to...
View ArticleMud Thirsty: The Dirt on the Latest “Running” Craze
By Zach Freeman At the starting line for a typical street (or trail) race, you may see a few characters (the guy with no shirt on, the barefoot runner, perhaps even someone with full body paint on if...
View ArticleTale of the Whales: The Forgotten Story of Chicago’s Original North Side...
By Eric Lutz The Chicago Whales needed a win. It was October 3, 1915, and the North Side squad was heading into the final game of the season in a dead-heat for first. They’d played 151 games, won...
View ArticleRace Review: Les Turner Strike Out ALS 5K (July 10, 2012)
RECOMMENDED RACE Breakdown: Despite boasting the use of U.S. Cellular Field—made especially impressive since the end of the course involves runners going completely around the interior bottom level of...
View ArticleRace Review: Terrapin 5K and Music Festival (August 8, 2013)
RECOMMENDED Breakdown: Moving from pre-Lollapalooza to post-Lollapalooza may have brought down registrations a bit (from 3,543 last year to around 2,500 this year) but last night’s Terrapin 5K and...
View ArticleRace Review: Firefly Run (September 7, 2013)
Breakdown: “Who’s going to Bar Louie after this and getting wasted?!?” demanded the race announcer before the Firefly Run last night. Yes. It’s that kind of run. With a planned tour through eighteen...
View ArticleRace Revew: North Shore Triathlon
RECOMMENDED RACE Breakdown: The triathlon is its own special animal—a hybrid that combines swimming, biking and running into one elaborate event. Mastery of one aspect of the sport does not necessarily...
View ArticleGentlemen’s Club: When Football Came (Back) to the University of Chicago
By Martin Northway, X’70 “Isn’t that where all the Reds are?” was a common reaction among my high-school classmates when I told them I was enrolling at the University of Chicago. Even in the sixties,...
View ArticleRace Review: Strike Out ALS 5K (July 15, 2014)
RECOMMENDED RACE Breakdown: What a difference a year makes. Last summer the temperature during the Strike Out ALS 5K hovered in the high nineties with nary a cloud to be seen. Last night, runners...
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