Three years in the past, I used to be requested by the Faith of Sports activities, at the side of Larger Floor Productions (the Obamas’ manufacturing enterprise), to write down a remedy for a documentary collection in regards to the historical past of Chicago highschool basketball. The catch: They needed to incorporate present basketball foreign money. They needed to incorporate the now.
So outdoors of telling the 100-plus-year story of the Chicago hoops model of ‘‘Sport of Thrones,’’ which actually is the story of Chicago Public League, Catholic League and suburban basketball, I wrapped the story round what I believed was going to be the brand new ‘‘it’’ to form town’s highschool basketball panorama on the boys aspect, having the cameras observe Curie and Kenwood for a complete season whereas telling the story of two faculties in a yearlong battle for town championship.
One college defending it (Curie), the opposite avenging its loss in it (Kenwood) the yr earlier than. Making an attempt to win its first.
The reason is that Kenwood, by no means referred to as a sports activities or basketball energy, was the varsity that had each its women and boys groups within the top-ranked metropolis and state basketball combine and each its gender-specific squads swept the JV/sophomore metropolis championships that yr. (Word: Even the varsity’s cheerleading and varsity dance groups took house city-championship honors that yr.) Apparently, one thing main was in progress on 51st and Blackstone.
Three years later, the fellas lastly beat Curie for Kenwood’s first metropolis chip the day after Valentine’s Day, and the Girl Broncos’ 71-55 state-playoff victory Thursday in opposition to Purple Division enemy Younger (which had overwhelmed Kenwood within the final three Public League women title video games) gave solutions to any questions on whether or not they have been for actual.
Each groups trying to find basketball state titles has been part of Kenwood’s new id, a part of the brand new power that has turn out to be its reckoning. As a twin select-enrollment/magnet program, in addition to remaining a neighborhood highschool and one of many high educational establishments within the metropolis’s public-school area for many years, Kenwood lately has grown right into a perennial powerhouse, a logo of the true energy of sports activities.
How success by way of sports activities builds presence, builds profiles, builds the general public and social standing and vanity of a complete college by being part of town’s sports activities dialog when, for generations, academia was the one lane that framed it.
Adjoining to Kenwood’s basketball arrival, its baseball program received town title in 2023 and is poised to avenge its loss within the city-championship sport final yr to Lane Tech and its soccer program hoisted city–title trophies in 2021 and 2023 and misplaced its most up-to-date protection to Younger within the metropolis championship sport final yr.
Overachieve a lot?
(The college’s women flag soccer crew, in solely its third yr of existence, already has a second-place end within the metropolis championship, adopted up by an 11-3 season and an look within the IHSA semifinals.)
But the complete backdrop behind Kenwood’s present basketball run will not be the run itself however what the varsity needed to overcome to get right here. The boys basketball free fall from the player-enrollment scandal final yr that pressured 5 gamers and three coaches — together with then-head coach Mike Irvin — to be ineligible in the course of the state event (17 gamers in complete have been discovered offenders within the residency-fraud investigation over a four-year interval), mandating members of the JV to symbolize the varsity main as much as its exit to Simeon within the sectional semifinals, appeared as if it is likely to be a dying penalty to this system.
One unimaginable to rise above and distance itself from. So to observe first-year coach Joe Mason rebuild this crew from the ashes in a single season to finish the common season ranked No. 1 within the state and No. 17 within the nation (MaxPreps.com), to be the one remaining crew within the state with a single-loss document (28-1), successful town championship and coming into the state playoffs as the favourite to win all of it . . . ‘‘particular’’ looks like such an understated time period to use.
Making the Broncos’ 120-34 rout of Juarez within the regional semifinals look like a press release sport to each different crew nonetheless alive that may need to face them on this decided Class 4A state-chip journey.
All mentioned, on either side of Kenwood’s younger males’s and younger girls’s basketball curriculums, we’re witnessing a eternally educationally commemorated public college of superior studying reworking right into a sports activities seminary. Witnessing it with out it shedding what it all the time has been and what it all the time has been about within the course of. A heavy, purposeful process. One which just a few excessive faculties inside of those Chicago metropolis limits ever have been in a position to pull off. Positively not in a span of solely 5 years.
As a father of two sons who graduated from Kenwood and likewise being a Sherman ‘‘Dilla’’ Thomas-aspiring historian of this metropolis’s basketball historical past, the Broncos’ attainment registers otherwise.
As authentic Kenwood principal Elizabeth Jochner as soon as mentioned in a 1985 interview: ‘‘The entire secret is excessive expectations. I’ve them, the academics have them, the scholars have them and the neighborhood has them.’’ Unexpectedly, 50 years later, it’s the athletics program inside Kenwood Academy that has risen. Win or study. By no means lose. Solely to count on much more.
