Chicago Sports

The busy, active and heavily talked about transfer portal in college basketball this spring has included dozens of former Illinois prep products who are on the move.

Many of those former Illinois high school stars are impact players and almost all of them have found a new home for next season.

Here are the 10 best transfers and where they’re headed (listed alphabetically).

Darius Burford, Bolingbrook (Elon to Illinois State)

A huge addition for first-year coach Ryan Pedon at Illinois State. The jet-quick guard is dynamic in the backcourt and fresh off averaging 13.4 points, 4.1 rebounds and three assists as a sophomore this past season.

Bryce Hopkins, Fenwick (Kentucky to Providence)

A fresh start for the former top 50 player in the country as a senior in high school. Hopkins played sparingly as a freshman at Kentucky, averaging just six minutes a game. The 6-6 forward will have a great opportunity to establish himself in the Big East this season.

Connor Kochera, St. Viator (William & Mary to Davidson)

Kochera hit the ground running in his first year of college basketball. As a freshman he averaged 13.4 points and 4.8 rebounds. Those numbers resulted in being named the Colonial Rookie of the Year.

As a sophomore this past season the skilled 6-5 Kochera put up 10.9 points, 4.8 rebounds and 1.8 assists. He upped the number of three-pointers made from 25 as a freshman to 44 as a sophomore.

Now he makes the big step up from the Colonial Athletic Association to the Atlantic 10 Conference champions.

Dante Maddox Jr., Bloom (Cal-State Fullerton to Toledo)

The strong, athletic 6-2 guard put together a heck of a freshman season two years ago. Maddox averaged 11.9 points, 2.1 rebounds and 1.8 assists while shooting 43 percent from three and 90 percent from the line. This past season he averaged 6.8 points a game.

Now Maddox heads to a program where several Illinois products have thrived over the years.

Javon Pickett, Belleville East (Missouri to Saint Louis)

Following four years at Missouri, where he started 84 games and scored 950 career points, the hard-nosed 6-4 guard is heading even closer to home for his final college season. Last season Pickett averaged 11.1 points and 3.1 rebounds for the Tigers.

Xavier Pinson, Simeon (LSU to New Mexico State)

The smooth point guard has been productive at both of his high-major spots.

In his junior season at Mizzou, his last season there prior to transferring to LSU, Pinson averaged 13.6 points and 2.9 assists.

This past season for fired LSU coach Will Wade, Pinson was a starter in the SEC and averaged 9.8 points while upping his assist and steals numbers to 4.8 and 1.9, respectively.

Antonio Reeves, Simeon (Illinois State to Kentucky)

Following a season where he averaged 20.1 points and a three-year career where he scored nearly 1,200 career points, Reeves was one of the most coveted players in the transfer portal.

The shooting he provides is a premium in the game today, and Reeves made 76 three-pointers as a junior while shooting a very respectable 39 percent from beyond the arc.

Terrence Shannon Jr, Lincoln Park (Texas Tech to Illinois)

The physical attributes are off-the-charts. A lengthy 6-6 gazelle who can run with guards in the open floor and elevates off the floor as well as anyone.

Shannon has a vast amount of high-level experience, including 21 starts for the 2020 Final Four team as a freshman. He put up modest numbers this past season, averaging 10.4 points, 2.6 rebounds and two assists.

Illinois and coach Brad Underwood will welcome all that Shannon brings to the table next season.

Malachi Smith, Belleville West (Tennessee-Chattanooga to Undecided)

A late entry into the transfer portal just a few weeks ago, Smith is working out for NBA teams while still zeroing in on a potential landing spot in college.

The 6-4 guard blossomed into a star who led Chattanooga to a NCAA Tournament berth this past season. He averaged 19.9 points, 6.7 rebounds and three assists. He’s a two-time All-Southern Conference performer and has scored over 1,300 career points in his three years.

Jeremiah Williams, Simeon (Temple to Iowa State)

The 6-5 Williams is a stat-sheet stuffer and as versatile as they come, capable of playing and defending multiple positions.

In years at Temple, where he started 37 games, Williams proved to be an elite defender.His two-year career numbers of 9.4 points, 3.5 rebounds and 4.2 assists show his overall productivity.

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It’s been 10 days since Michael Kopech pitched, 10 days since he pitched seven scoreless innings of one-hit ball at Yankee Stadium in that riveting 5-0 White Sox victory capped by Tim Anderson’s three-run homer.

For the White Sox, it was an emotional win the day after Anderson and Josh Donaldson got into it. In the nightcap of a Sunday doubleheader beamed on ESPN, Kopech was also floating about the birth of his second child.

After retiring the last 13 batters in his previous start against the Yankees at Guaranteed Rate Field, Kopech retired the first 14 Yankees in New York against one of baseball’s most feared lineups, lowering his ERA to 1.29. After nine days of rest Kopech will face another tough one in the Blue Jays Wednesday (6:07 p.m., NBCSCH, 1000-AM). Lefty Hyun Jin Ryu (5.48 ERA) starts for Toronto.

What comes Wednesday with the Sox’ plan to monitor Kopech’s innings in his first year as a starter is the challenge of shaking rust and maintaining feel for his pitches.

Kopech is a creature of routine, so he has basically gone through his normal regimen between starts twice.

“Sometimes it’s nice to ride a positive start into the next one,” Kopech told the Sun-Times Tuesday. “Sometimes you have a rough one and you don’t want to carry that into the next one. It’s almost as if I have to flush a start and kind of start over. But I feel fresh, I feel good.

“It’s a positive thing — the team’s way of looking out for me since I haven’t thrown so much in the past few years, but I feel good and I feel ready.”

After pitching mainly out of the bullpen last season, Kopech made four starts in each of the first two months, throwing 42 innings. That pace would probably give him 24 starts and about 130 innings, but it could pick up a bit.

“The notion of an innings limit has always been soft,” general manager Rick Hahn said last week. “And by ‘soft,’ I mean it can go up or down. We entered the year with an expectation of generally where we would like him to finish. But over the course of the year, we have to adjust based on what we’re seeing with our eyes, how the ball’s coming out of his hand, what the metrics are showing us, mechanically [if] there are any issues and what he’s reporting.”

The big picture goal is having Kopech feeling strong in the postseason — should the Sox get there.

So Kopech still expects to get extra rest days intermittently throughout the season.

“I want to be to the point where I can be consistent on a five-day,” he said. “I’m not hoping I want to do that again but for their sake they might want to do that.

“I don’t want to have a limitation on me. I want this year to be as close to a normal year as possible. I try to go out there and make as many innings as I can, make as many starts. It’s great that they’re trying to loosen the reins a little bit but there are precautions they’re going to take.”

On a team that fell below .500 with their loss to the Jays Tuesday, the first of a tough stretch that has the Sox playing at the Rays next and then coming home to play the Dodgers, Kopech is first on the Sox in wins above replacement, a notch ahead of Anderson per Baseball Reference.

“First and foremost, I’m grateful for the position I’m in,” Kopech said. “Coming into the year I didn’t really know what I was. I had that late start in the spring [due to illness], the innings were very limited and when I got going I got in the groove again. I wasn’t sure how it was going to be getting back into a normal five-day but I’ve been fortunate to have some good starts and maybe some lucky ones sprinkled in there.

“Some games I’ve given the team a chance to win and that’s all you can ask for. I’m hoping to have a lot more of those.”

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Brittle scraps of Scotch tape stick to the marble walls, chipped and gouged from decades of comings and goings — and if it were any darker in the lobby of the Fine Arts Building on South Michigan Avenue, a flashlight might come in handy.

On the lobby’s west wall in small, tarnished lettering, it reads: “The Studebaker” above papered-over doors — a reminder of the building’s earlier life, stretching back to the late 1800s when it housed Studebaker buggies and wagons.

But then, a wafting odor of epoxy and the muffled growl of a drill, and it’s clear something is happening on the other side of those doors.

Inside, hidden almost in plain sight, is the newly renovated Studebaker Theater. With its glittering mirrored walls and ice-white lighting, the grand old theater once again radiates a kind of frosty warmth.

“It’s unique. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I don’t know that I’ve found a true comparison [in Chicago] because there are few theaters that are this grand but of this size,” said Jacob Harvey, the theater’s managing artistic director, leading a tour last week of the all-but complete multi-million dollar, two-year renovation.

By “this size,” Harvey means the relatively small capacity. It has 600 seats now, though when the theater first opened back in 1898, it could seat about 1,300 people. That’s back when patrons were jammed in up to the rafters. It opened only five years before the Iroquois Theater went up in flames during a performance, killing 602 of the 1,700 attendees.

“This was also the very early years of theater technology. There were still early experiments in terms of lighting and sound,” said Tanya Palmer, a Northwestern professor and Chicago theater historian. “A lot of what people would go to see were music-hall kind of experiences. … It was quite an event to go to this space.”

Though The Studebaker, 410 S. Michigan Ave., has hosted live events in recent years, it hasn’t been “fully functional” since the early 1980s when it was chopped up and converted into an art-house cinema. It closed in 2000, Harvey said.

But in its heyday, some of Hollywood and American theater’s biggest names appeared on stage, including Yul Brynner, Henry Fonda, Peter O’Toole, Louis Gossett Jr., and a young Martin Sheen.

Other somewhat less illustrious entertainers also performed there, including “Dr. Harlan Tarbell,” an illusionist famed for his “eyeless vision.”

Chicago native Mike Nussbaum, still acting at 98, remembers working at the Studebaker when he was a kid.

“If you went downtown to the Studebaker and wore a white shirt and dark pants with a tie, then they let you work in the upper balcony as an usher — and you got to see the show free,” said Nussbaum.

Nussbaum, who grew up in the Albany Park neighborhood, remembers seeing Hamlet there in the 1930s, with Ian Keith, a well-known Broadway and silent film actor.

“It was heaven,” Nussbaum said. “The opportunity to do that kind of work [as an actor] struck me even then as something I wanted desperately to do.”

On a recent tour, Harvey was keen to emphasize the state-of-the-art technology embedded, mostly unseen, within the theater. Where clunking metal levers once controlled the stage lighting, now it’s mostly done with computer touch screens.

“Basically everything is new, with the exception of the physical architecture itself,” Harvey said.

What hasn’t changed, Harvey said, is the expectation the theater will return to its 125-year-old theater roots, offering locally produced shows and those coming from out of town.

This month, a new musical, “Skates,” opens, billed as “‘Grease’ meets ‘Hairspray,’ with a dash of Xanadu!'”

The Studebaker is also set to become the new home of the Chicago-based NPR quiz show, “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!”

Despite the pandemic and the theater’s history of sometimes struggling to find audiences, Harvey said now is as good a time as any to reopen.

“There is something incredibly ephemeral and uniting about being in the theater and having that shared community experience that people have been craving and are continuing to crave,” Harvey said.

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Take it from Drew Smyly: “All lefties kind of stick together and gravitate towards each other. I don’t know why. Everyone calls this weird. But there’s some secret recognition lefty to lefty.”

A week ago, the lefties in the Cubs’ rotation outnumbered the right-handers. On Tuesday, when southpaw Justin Steele took the mound against the Brewers, he was the Cubs’ only healthy left-handed starter left.

Wade Miley had gone on the 15-day IL over the weekend with what the Cubs called a left shoulder strain. Smyly left the second game of a double header on Monday with right oblique soreness. Cubs manager David Ross said the team would determine next steps for Smyly after it got back imaging on the injury.

Steele, in a way, is a product of both the veteran lefties he shared a rotation with.

Smyly, who signed with the Cubs this spring, remembers seeing on TV that Steele was in the big-leagues last year and thinking, “I’m glad he made it.”

They’d rehabbed from Tommy John surgery together in 2018. Steele, 22 at the time, had played as high as Single-A. Smyly was already established in the major leagues and was only temporarily with the Cubs, who he wouldn’t suit up for until 2021.

“I remember his rehab went a whole lot smoother than mine,” Smyly said. “I think maybe because he was younger, I don’t know. Everyone’s different. … My elbow hurt every day of the rehab process. And every day he’d come in and just be throwing super hard and just feeling great, brand new. I was like, ‘Why is it like this for me?'”

Smyly laughs about it now.

“He was pretty mature back then,” Smyly said. “He was young, but personality-wise, he seems very similar [to now.] Hewas funny, very laid back and confident. But I remember I never wanted to play catch with him. Because he was hard to catch, he threw it really hard at you.”

Miley and Steele don’t go back as far, only becoming teammates when Miley signed with the Cubs in December. But their hometowns (Hammond, Louisiana and Lucedale, Mississippi) are only about a two and a half hour drive apart, which gave them “some common ground,” as Steele put it.

“His stuff’s good,” Miley said last week, adding how much he’s enjoyed watching Steele’s progress this season. “He does throw hard, he has all the nasty stuff, and now he’s learning how to use it. And I’m excited for that kid’s future because I think he’s got a really bright outlook ahead of him.”

Early in the season, Steele was fighting a tendency to rush to the plate in his delivery. Then Miley gave him the cue that clicked for him: Keep your back ear over the rubber.

He told Steele that was the cue he’d used early in his career when he had the same issue.

“Different things click with different players,” Steele said. “That’s why baseball is so weird. Because you take [two guys who are] doing the same thing wrong, you tell them the same cue to fix it. It’ll work for one, but you’ve got to say something different for the other one. That’s just what’s great about this game.”

Consistency will be a big focus in Steele’s development. In two starts against the Diamondbacks, Steele recorded a combined 19 strikeouts. The next week at Cincinnati, he gave up seven runs in two innings.

On Tuesday, he held the Brewers to three runs through five innings, despite walking four batters.

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For the Cubs, nothing about the 2021 season was easy. After a while — the trade deadline looming — every day became more awkward than the last. What would happen to the team’s core? Was it really going to be goodbye? It was all just too much.

But May 31 at Wrigley Field was magical. It was afternoon baseball, the weather was right and the red-hot Padres — the talk of the league at the time — were in town. The game itself would deliver so much on top of all that.

Anybody remember who homered twice? It was Patrick Wisdom, who capped his first week as a Cub with career homers Nos. 2 and 3 as the Cubs won 7-2.

But Wisdom wasn’t the only one. Javy Baez — like teammate Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant, a pending free agent — stepped up in the third inning and, with the count full against righthander Chris Paddock, took one 455 feet, standing at the plate and watching until the ball was rattling around the camera well high above the shrubbery in dead center. After homering again — his 13th already — in the seventh, Baez received a curtain call from the crowd of 24,824, which was maxed out at 60% due to pandemic restrictions.

“It felt like a playoff game,” he said afterward.

Bryant also homered — he used to do that sort of thing now and again, you know — and the Cubs finished the month at 30-23 and in first place in their division.

June swoon? Not gonna happen.

Break up the team? The front office better start embracing a winning Plan B.

Or so one wanted to believe after a game like that. Ah, well. The Cubs haven’t stopped swooning since.

Exactly one year later, the inconsequential Cubs were back at Wrigley, where they’ve stumbled and bumbled and — with the first-place Brewers in town and the second-place Cardinals on deck — undoubtedly will continue to be humbled.

The gap between these teams is nevertheless almost startling. The Cubs took the field Tuesday with a record of 19-29, 10 games under .500 before June for the first time since 2014. The Brewers were flashing a 32-18 mark, only 2 1/2 games off the league-best paces of the Dodgers and Yankees.

The Cubs are in a full-blown rebuild while president Jed Hoyer twists himself into a rhetorical pretzel posturing as though the R-word doesn’t fit. The Brewers don’t know how to say “rebuild,” either, because all they do is win and keep going for the gusto. It will surprise all of baseball if they don’t reach the postseason for the fifth year in a row, and just imagine if they win their first-ever World Series. If they can pull that off, there will be a debate worth having about which run was more impressive: the Cubs’ one that’s over-and-out or the Brewers’ one that’s still at full throttle.

But what there’s no argument whatsoever about is which of these teams is relevant in 2022 and which isn’t. Not to mention which of these clubs repeatedly rises above its market size and limitations, and which slinks along below it.

It was all too fitting in Game 3 of this brutal homestand that the Cubs’ 26-year-old lefty starter, Justin Steele, took the mound with a record of 1-5 and the Brewers’ 26-year-old lefty starter, Eric Lauer, followed him there at 5-1.

Will Steele be here two years from now, one year from now, two months from now?

Will the who’s-who of “who?” that is the Cubs roster stick around, come and go, fade into oblivion?

It’s a cute story that Matt Swarmer — who started a game Monday as the Cubs dropped both ends of a doubleheader to the Brewers — pitched against 40-year-olds in a rec league to try to stay sharp in 2020. It would be even cuter if it were possible to take a few liberties with his surname, turn him into Kyle Schwarber and plant him back in left field.

And did you see that backup catcher P.J. Higgins is Swarmer’s guy, has been his battery mate for years? It’s nice. OK, so it ain’t David Ross and Jon Lester.

Are we to pay any attention at all to the bromance between young prospects Christopher Morel and Nelson Velasquez? Or is it safe to assume we don’t have quite the next Bryzzo on our hands?

Or maybe they’ll pan out and everything will be great. Until then, there is no joy — no magic — in Mudville.

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TORONTO — Andrew Vaughn tried. He really tried with four hits in a 6-5 loss to the Blue Jays.

The White Sox’ best current hitter in a lineup missing Tim Anderson, Luis Robert, Yoan Moncada and Eloy Jimenez, Vaughn homered, doubled and singled his first three times up against Jays tough right-hander Kevin Gausman, keeping a short-handed team in the game against the streaking Blue Jays Tuesday night at Rogers Centre.

Vaughn thought he was coming to bat with another runner on base after the Sox plated two runs in the sixth, but a baserunning gaffe put an abrupt halt to a rare offensive surge.

The Sox gave away the tying run when an apparent sacrifice fly by Yasmani Grandal brought Reese McGuire in from home. But Danny Mendick tagged up and was thrown out at second by left fielder Lourdes Gurriel before McGuire crossed the plate. Second baseman Cavan Biggio, with his back to Mendick, made a slick tag, and plate umpire Adrian Johnson emphatically waved off the run McGuire should have scored.

Vaughn collected his fourth hit, a leadoff single, in the ninth. Jose Abreu singled him to second but Jake Burger hit into a third-to-second double play, and Gavin Sheets struck out.

The Jays bullpen, after Trevor Richards served up those two in the sixth, held the Sox scoreless in the last three innings and the Jays won their sixth in row and 10th in 13 games.

The Sox (23-24) have lost four of six.

Facing the team that traded him for Zack Collins during spring training, McGuire had two hits including an RBI double and a run scored.

Mendick, taking injured shortstop Tim Anderson’s spot, doubled and singled, drove in two runs and scored a run.

Lucas Giolito served up homers to Alejandro Kirk in the Jays’ two-run second and four-run fifth, the biggest hits among eight allowed by the right-hander over 4 2/3 innings. Giolito walked two and struck out eight.

A man short — sort of

The Sox are playing the first two games of the Jays series one short of a full 26-man roster.

Starting pitcher Dylan Cease and reliever Kendall Graveman, who are not fully vaccinated, are on the restricted list for the series because Canada requires entrants to be vaccinated for COVID-19 at least 14 days prior to entry.

Because Cease pitched four-plus innings against the Cubs Sunday, the Sox can’t replace him on the active roster till Thursday. Reliever Kyle Crick filled Graveman’s spot.

This and that

Grandal batted leadoff for the 16th time in his career and struck out his first three times to the plate and finished 0-for-5, dropping his average to .163.

*Leury Garcia didn’t start because of a sore hip but said he expects to play Wednesday.

*A schedule change for the Sox series in August in Kansas City now includes a doubleheader at 3:10 p.m. on the 9th and singles games on the 10th (7:10 p.m.) and the 11th (1:10).

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Leo Sorce was just 13 years old when he stood across the street watching flames rip through Our Lady of the Angels School in the winter of 1958.

He recalled being surrounded by dozens of his classmates who laid on the ground dying — if not already dead — but he said his inability to remember details of the carnage in front of him was a gift from God.

“My feeling is that we must always remember, we will never forget,” Sorce, 77, said through tears. “We have to honor our classmates and our sisters who lost their lives.”

On Tuesday, a statue memorializing the victims of the Catholic school fire that claimed 95 lives and injured hundreds more returned to the site after more than 20 years.

The Blessed Mother statue was displayed at the Church of the Holy Family, 1080 W. Roosevelt Rd., since 1999. It was moved there after Our Lady of the Angels Parish School closed.

It now sits at the entrance of the newly renovated Mission of Our Lady of the Angels’ Outreach Center. The center is on the grounds of the former school building at 3814 W. Iowa St.

A procession of Chicago Fire Department firetrucks drove the statue from Church of the Holy Family to Mission of Our Lady of the Angels’ Outreach Center on Tuesday afternoon.

A few dozen parishioners smiled as the firetruck, with its sirens blaring, turned onto Iowa Street with the statue hitched to the front of the truck. Some clapped as others held their cell phone out to record its arrival.

Many are fond of the statue that memorializes the 92 elementary-school students and three nuns killed in the devastating blaze that ravaged Our Lady of the Angels school in 1958. The devastating blaze triggered stricter fire safety codes nationwide.

It took several men to unhitch the 400-pound-marble statue and lift it onto its 200-pound-granite base, which has the names of every victim inscribed on it.

Third grade students from nearby Maternity BVM School sang hymns throughout the ceremony, and once the statue was remounted on its base, one student climbed a step ladder with the help of a firefighter to place a crown made of roses on the statue’s head.

Cardinal Blase Cupich blessed the statue and led parishioners in prayer. He also said the fire was the catalyst for many fire prevention policies in the Chicago area — like sprinkler systems, fire resistant doors and stairwells being closed off.

As for Sorce, he said it is somewhat of a bittersweet moment for him and many other survivors. He’s happy to see the statue home but saddened when he looks at the names of his former classmates.

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It became clear when outfielder Seiya Suzuki hit off a pitching machine Monday that the Cubs couldn’t delay their decision any longer. He had to go on the 10-day injured list.

“I can hit, but I feel like I’m not in a condition to play for nine innings,” Suzuki said Tuesday through interpreter Toy Matsushita. “… When I go out there, I want to be at 100% and just be at my very best.”

The Cubs backdated the move to Friday, the day after Suzuki sprained his left ring finger in Cincinnati while stealing second base.

Cubs manager David Ross said Suzuki kept lobbying for “another day,” to test his finger in the hopes of returning. But teams can only backdate a move three days, and the Cubs still have a Saturday doubleheader coming up in a packed week.

Suzuki becomes eligible to come off the IL on June 6, but he wouldn’t commit either way when asked if he was confident it could be a minimum IL stint.

“It’s quite different every day in terms of the condition on my finger,” he said, adding that as of Tuesday, he feels discomfort both hitting and catching the ball.

To keep his arm in shape, Suzuki has been playing long toss with his trainer Satoshi Kajiyama. But the past couple days, Matsushita has been catching the return throws for him – “worse than a child playing baseball” Suzuki joked of Matsushita’s glove skills.

The Cubs at least have outfield depth after calling up Nelson Vel?zquez on Monday. Over the weekend, the Cubs also activated Clint Frazier off the 10-day (appendicitis), and he started in right field on Tuesday.

With the infield no longer short-handed and Jason Heyward still on the IL, utility player Christopher Morel has been playing primarily center field. Heyward – who has no injury designation, indicating a COVID-19 related IL stint – joined the team in Chicago this past weekend but the Cubs say he’s still ramping up baseball activities.

Madrigal reinstated

The Cubs reinstated second baseman Nick Madrigal off the 10-day IL, which he’d been on for three weeks with a low back strain.

“I feel like physically, mentally, I’m ready to get back on the field,” Madrigal said. “It’s tough sitting in the dugout for a couple weeks watching the guys not being able to be out there. So, I’m anxious to get back on the field and get it going again.”

In a two-game rehab assignment, Madrigal only got seven at-bats with Iowa over two rehab games, recording one hit.

“I’m not reinventing anything for me as a baseball player,” Madrigal said. “I’m confident in who I am, but there’s definitely been time to reflect and watch video.”

He noticed how “stagnant” and “stiff” he looked in the batter’s box. Madrigal, who last season was hitting .305 before sustaining a season-ending hamstring injury, has started this season hitting .203.

As he tries to regain his rhythm, expect to see Madrigal moving a little more before the pitch, a little bit of hip sway.

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The House Theatre of Chicago, a bright light of the local theater scene for 21 years, announced Tuesday that its most recent production was its last.

The company’s board had decided earlier in the season to “formally wind down operations” after Sunday’s final performance of “The Tragedy of King Christophe,” a historical piece about a Haitian slave rebellion, a statement from the company said.

“Our strategic assessment looking to the future made it clear that we did not have the financial momentum or audience/donor support to continue beyond this fiscal year,” Board President Renee Duba said in the statement. “We chose instead to maximize our current year programming and to honor all present commitments and partnerships with a thoughtfully planned exit from the Chicago theater scene — and a wealth of pride in what The House Theatre of Chicago has accomplished.”

Under the leadership of founding artistic director Nathan Allen, The House mounted such innovative hits as its premiere production “Death and Harry Houdini,” “The Terrible Tragedy of Peter Pan,” “The Sparrow,” “United Flight 232” and “The Nutcracker.”

The House’s focus in recent years has been the same two existential challenges facing many Chicago theater companies: surviving pandemic shutdowns and addressing allegations of structural racism.

For much of 2020 and 2021, the company presented no live shows. Discussions on race culminated in an action plan and a statement declaring that “our past programming, administrative, and artistic choices” failed to support an anti-racism mission.

“Our shows were mostly produced and written by white men with Eurocentric narratives that excluded Black, Indigenous, and POC voices,” it said.

Allen stepped down in October 2020. His successor, Lanise Antoine Shelley, was appointed in March 2021 and resumed live production in November with her own adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Snow Queen.”

She also directed “King Christophe.”

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After six years as one of the Bears’ most dominant players — when healthy — Akiem Hicks is heading to Tampa Bay.

The defensive lineman is signing a one-year deal to join Tom Brady and the Buccaneers, a source confirmed Tuesday. The contract could be worth up to $10 million.

Hicks was never expected to return to Chicago, and seemed to come to terms with that fact during the course of last season after trying, unsuccessfully, to sign an extension during training camp. The ending was messy. Hicks did not travel to Minnesota for the season finale. Instead, he spent time on Twitter clicking “like” on posts critical of the Bears.

Hicks, who turns 33 in November, didn’t fit the rebuilding Bears’ timeline under a new regime.

One of former general manager Ryan Pace’s best free-agent finds, Hicks signed a two-year, $10 million deal to join the Bears in 2016 after a midseason trade split his 2015 season between the Saints, who drafted him, and the Patriots.

In his first year with the Bears, he posted what was then a career high of seven sacks. He was so dominant that Pace gave him a four-year, $48 million extension in September 2017. He earned his only Pro Bowl berth the following season as the emotional leader of the NFL’s best defense.

After playing in every game his first three seasons in Chicago, Hicks was limited to five games in 2019 after dislocating his elbow in London against the Raiders. He played in only nine games last season because of groin and ankle injuries.

“I would challenge you to find another person on this team that has bled and fought and lived and died with this team the way that I have,” he said in December. “Whatever comes from that, I accept.”

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