A pair of three-star prospects committed to Power Five schools highlight the list of the area’s top running backs.

1. Jordan Anderson, Joliet Catholic

Illinois coach Bret Bielema has made big, powerful backs a centerpiece of his offense over the years. So it’s no surprise that Anderson has committed to the Fighting Illini. The 6-3, 215-pounder is 19th in the state’s senior class and 82nd nationally among running backs according to the 247Sports composite rankings.

2. Maurice Edwards, Warren

Southeastern Conference schools don’t recruit the Chicago area heavily, but Vanderbilt was impressed enough with Edwards to make him a priority. The effort paid off with a commitment from the 6-foot, 198-pounder, who is 16th among the state’s seniors and No. 66 nationally among running backs in 247Sports.com’s composite rankings.

3. Aaron Vaughn, Brother Rice

The 5-10, 185-pounder broke onto the scene as a freshman for Providence in 2018 and remains one of the area’s most productive runners. After transferring to Rice for his senior season, Vaughn is looking to be all-conference in the tough CCL/ESCC for the third straight year.

4. Trevor Burnett, Glenbard South

Air Force is among the schools that have offered Burnett a scholarship. The 5-10, 190-pounder is a top-40 player in the state according to 247Sports.

5. Nick Hissong, Cary-Grove

At 6-1 and 230 pounds, Hissong is the prototypical fullback for the Trojans’ option attack. His power running is especially well-suited for the playoffs, when bad weather can cause problems for pass-oriented teams.

6. Ben Clawson, Hersey

Army and Air Force have offered Clawson, who had as good of a spring season as anyone in the area. The 6-foot, 190-pounder averaged 11.7 per touch, finishing with 1,395 yards and 19 touchdowns in six games. Twice he scored five TDs in a game.

Loyola running back Marco Maldonado tries to avoid the defense at practice in Wilmette, Friday, August 20, 2021. Kevin Tanaka/For the Sun-Times

7. Marco Maldonado, Loyola

It’s Maldonado’s time now that Sun-Times Player of the Year Vaughn Pemberton has headed off to college at Ball State. The 5-11, 183-pounder split time with Pemberton in the spring against the state’s toughest schedule, averaging 6.0 yards per carry, so he’s ready to carry the load this fall.

8. Tony Phillips, Bishop McNamara

A 5-6, 170-pound sophomore from a small school may not be on a lot of fans’ radar. But Phillips has exceptional speed and offers from Tennessee, Syracuse and Florida Atlantic, so his profile will only rise.

9. Jalen Buckley, Batavia

The 6-foot, 205-pounder does a little bit of everything for the Bulldogs as a running back and strong safety. He averaged 9.0 yards per touch in the spring with four TDs and also was a state-qualifying long and triple jumper.

10. Kendrick Washington, Shepard

The South Suburban Red Player of the Year in the spring was productive on both sides of the ball: 556 yards (10.2 per carry), nine TDs on offense, four interceptions and one touchdown on defense. A 6-foot, 185-pounder, he has interest from several Division I programs.

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When Przemyslaw Frankowski got back from his productive stint with Poland in the European Championships, the speedy winger looked like a different player with a more clinical final touch. Asked why, Frankowski had a reasonable explanation for his uptick in performance despite not getting much of a break.

”It’s a huge boost [to play with the national team],” Frankowski told the Sun-Times through a translator. ”You gain experience. You play in new situations. You really grow.”

Frankowski, of course, now is plying his trade in France after a transfer to RC Lens that netted the Fire around $3 million, a transaction that likely was helped along by his showing in the Euros. But Frankowski wasn’t the only Fire player to show growth in his play after returning from a major international competition.

Midfielder Gaston Gimenez, a designated player and the Fire’s second-highest-paid performer, played for Paraguay in the recent Copa America. Before he left for the South American championship, Gimenez was struggling through a quiet second season in Chicago that raised questions about his fit and future with the Fire, who hold an option on his contract for 2022.

Since coming back, however, Gimenez has looked more like the player who had a strong 2020 season next to Alvaro Medran, helping to solidify the Fire’s three-man midfield. But Gimenez’s explanation for his resurgence after appearing in a major tournament was different from Frankowski’s.

Actually, he didn’t really have one.

”Honestly, I really don’t know,” Gimenez said through a translator. ”I don’t have a response for that question. I just know that when we’re with our national teams, we try to do the best we can, and then we come back and we have to go in right away to be with our club team.”

What Gimenez said highlights one of the unique challenges of soccer. Unlike most other sports, the top players must jet between their clubs and national-team commitments during the season, often flying thousands of miles and getting little time to rest between competitions.

Like Frankowski, however, Gimenez hasn’t seemed the worse for wear. If anything, the challenge seems to have ignited something in him.

”We want to get in there because our national teams need us when we get there with them and our clubs need us when we come back,” Gimenez said. ”It’s really just a matter of adapting quickly and being where we are to help our team out.”

Captain Francisco Calvo played in an international tournament, too, suiting up for Costa Rica in the Gold Cup. And Calvo, whose performances had been uneven to start the season, has turned in some of his better outings with the Fire since returning to the team.

Calvo’s play, the steadiness of Mauricio Pineda and the rapid improvement of young center back Carlos Teran were reasons why the Fire had given up only two goals in the four games before their 3-2 loss Wednesday at Inter Miami.

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Any opera singer worth a grain of salt has belted out a version of “O Mio Babbino Caro.”

Should they be criticized for a lack of originality?

Almost anyone dabbling in oil painting has tried a Bob Ross landscape.

Should it be set on fire — “happy little trees” and all — for the crime of monotony?

Art is art.

And you best believe that Year 34 of the Madden video-game franchise also falls under that same set of rules.

Is Madden 22 filled with mind-blowingly new concepts? No. The changes are more subtle than that. But again, art is art, and for the series that revolutionized sports gaming as we know it, that’s the best way to approach the latest version.

The first game you play won’t feel much different. Yes, the demands of what gamers want might have outgrown the Frostbite engine that was the toast of the franchise years ago. But swim out of the shallow end and give the gameplay some time.

The control and graphics of the receivers are better, the blocking feels much more realistic and the collisions have an even more violent feel than before. If hammer hits nail the right way in Madden 22, nail loses.

Sure, there still is going to be the graphical glitch where a cornerback’s arm appears to go through the body of a receiver and knock the ball away. But that’s the life most gamers have to experience no matter the game.

EA Sports did a solid job making the home screen easier to navigate, which was a big complaint last season. The way it uses cover boys Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady also is well done and not overboard.

But why does Madden 22 get a higher grade this season?

The long-awaited, much-begged-for improvements to the Franchise Mode.

For many diehards of the series, Franchise Mode always was the reason to come back year after year. Maybe that’s why EA Sports became so complacent with it. It’s like the company left it on the trophy case as the shining beacon for the game and didn’t touch it as dust and filth grew on it.

The complaints with that mode were loud last season, and to EA’s credit, it listened. Franchise Mode always should be about control over an entire organization. The players, the personnel, the coaching staff and the scouts.

Now that’s more of a reality than ever.

First, there’s a staff page for the coaches that allows gamers to fill out RPG-like (role-playing game) skill trees that turn the team’s play style into what they want it to be.

There’s control over practice intensity, which goes hand-in-hand with injuries,. There are goals for individual players to meet for upgrades. There’s game-planning for the upcoming opponent for the analytics junkies.

What really hit home, though, was the scouting map for college prospects and the ability to assign scouts to certain regions.

When EA shut down the NCAA College Football franchise in 2014, it was a gut-punch to sports gamers. Running a dynasty mode for a college football program with the ability to recruit the country, as well as hone in on certain states to steal a top prospect from a buddy, was the muscle of why NCAA was so good.

While Madden’s version isn’t the same, it still captures the idea of identifying a prospect, keeping an eye on him and then changing a draft board based on that intel.

That was the hidden gem in Madden 22, and it carries a lot of weight in the final grade, especially with an online franchise team.

Does the game still have a few warts? Absolutely.

Whether it’s because I’m a purist or that guy now yelling “Get off my lawn” to the neighborhood kids, The Yard remains unplayable. It’s not football. It’s some weird version of “Kill the Carrier” that brings no interest to the table.

The Face of the Franchise does a good job taking a college standout through the draft process — yes, there are some preachy, cheesy moments — and remains a nice alternative to play as a single-player campaign. But it’s just that, an alternative that doesn’t grab anyone.

What’s nice, though, is the game improved over last year’s semi-disaster. That’s why it gets a solid B+.

Appreciate the art.

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One person was killed and twelve others wounded, including a 9-year-old in shootings across Chicago Friday.

A man was shot and killed Friday morning in Lawndale on the West Side.

The man, 26, was shot in his chest as he stood at the rear of a vehicle with its open trunk around 10:40 a.m. in the 2400 block of West Polk Street, Chicago police said.

Paramedics took him to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said. His name hasn’t been released.

A 9-year-old boy was hit in the arm by crossfire on the Far South Side, just around the corner from where his father was killed in a mass shooting four years ago.

Derwin Moore Jr. – called DJ by his family — was leaving a corner store with his mother and two siblings in the 400 block of East 111th Street when gunfire erupted around 12:10 p.m., hitting him and a 22-year-old man, according to police.

DJ was in good condition at Comer Children’s Hospital, police said. The man was shot in the ankle and taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in fair condition, officials said.

A man was shot walking to his house in Gresham on the South Side.

About 8:25 p.m., the 27-year-old was walking from his vehicle to his home in the 8300 block of South Aberdeen Street when he was shot by someone in a silver Buick sedan, police said.

He was taken to University of Chicago Medical Center with a gunshot wound to the armpit and his condition was stabilized, police said.

A woman was shot during an argument in Avalon Park on the Far South Side.

The woman, 22, was in a car arguing with a man about 12:55 a.m. in the 8100 block of South Stoney Island Avenue when he shot her in the foot and forced her out of the car, police said.

She was taken to Trinity Hospital where her condition was stabilized, police said.

Nine others were wounded in citywide shootings Friday.

Two people were killed and ten others wounded in shootings in Chicago Thursday.

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Two people were shot outside a gas station Saturday morning in Austin on the West Side.

About 2:55 a.m., an unidentified male and female were outside a gas station with about 20 other people in the 5100 block of West Madison Street when witnesses said someone in a black Dodge Charger opened fire, Chicago Police said.

The male suffered gunshot wounds to his head and leg, and the female to her head, abdomen and lower backside, police said. They both appear to be adults, police said.

Both were taken to Mount Sinai Hospital where they were listed in critical condition, police said.

No one was in custody.

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Chicagoans seemed to be on board Friday with the city reinstating an indoor mask mandate – and Cook County residents will be under a similar requirement starting Monday.

County health officials announced that all individuals will be required to wear a mask indoor in multi-unit residential buildings and public places, such as restaurants, movie theaters, retail establishments, fitness clubs and on public transportation. Businesses have been ordered to post signs.

“We have no choice but to mandate that people wear masks indoors to help contain this spread of the virus,” Dr. Rachel Rubin, co-lead and senior medical officer of Cook County Department of Public Health, said in a statement.

The city and county mandates, which apply to anyone age 2 or older, regardless of vaccination status, come amid a surge in the Delta variant and after two months of relative face freedom following the lifting of most COVID-19 restrictions locally.

“It’s a little thing to prevent a big thing,” said Don Brogdon, 61, as he left a Mariano’s grocery store Friday in Roscoe Village.

Speaking through a mask adorned with playful Australian Shepherds, Mary Rhodes, 78, said bringing the mandate back was a “no brainer.”

“The mayor is doing the right thing, and I hope businesses enforce it,” said Rhodes, a retired fundraiser from North Center whose son, a therapist in Chicago, recently had a breakthrough case of COVID-19.

“And it’s the right thing for kids,” said Rhodes, noting she was old enough to remember the scourge of polio and how some kids had to be put on “iron lungs.”

She said she gets “ticked off” over people who refuse to wear masks because they feel it steps on their personal liberty.

“You can’t shout fire in a crowded theater, and those people that think their rights are being infringed upon need to read a little more,” she said.

Alaina Davis, 40, a data administrator for a large hospital system, said she hates masks but appreciates the need to wear one.

“I’m tired of it. For me to get a shot and be fully vaccinated and go through the side effects and still have to wear a mask, it’s hell, it’s really hell and it’s disappointing,” said Davis, who lives in Maywood and was leaving a salon in Humboldt Park after getting her hair done.

“But I think about the children and the elderly when it comes to wearing a mask,” she said. “You don’t want to see anyone fighting for their life on a ventilator.”

Eduardo Arocho, 50, who gives walking tours of Humboldt Park, thinks the mask mandate should never have been removed.

He pointed to himself as proof they work. “I haven’t died … so, so far so good,” Arocho said.

Edwin Torres, 34, and his wife, Emily Guerrero, 30, disagree on masks, but both will wear them.

“I think it’s a good thing because you don’t know who’s actually vaccinated and who’s not, so it would be the best thing for us to go back to a mask mandate until we get it under control,” Torres, a general contractor from Humboldt Park, said while walking his dogs.

For Guerrero, though, the toothpaste is already out of the bottle.

“It’s too late, the city opened up, and we did way too much to go back to the mask mandate. I feel like it’s pointless; whatever is going to happen already happened,” she said, referring to infectious spread.

Madelyn Amos, 23, applauded the mask mandate.

“I’ve had COVID, and it was horrible. So if I can protect someone from not having that experience I’d do what it takes, plus I have three friends who’ve had breakthrough cases,” she said.

Peter Hong, 51, a pastor from Logan Square who was headed inside a Planet Fitness in Logan Square to lift weights, said he’s “100 % in favor” of the mandate.

“I think it’s important for us to look out for the common good, or our collective need as a society,” he said.

Cornell Shepard, who works as a convention center security guard and lives in Bronzeville, doesn’t think COVID-19 is as dangerous as it’s being portrayed and doesn’t believe in masks — but he’ll wear one anyways.

“I think it’s just a simple cold,” Shepard, who is unvaccinated, said while filling up his car at a gas station at 47th Street and Michigan Avenue.

“The youth, we don’t need them. But I don’t have a problem with wearing a mask, I will abide by it. But it sucks, man, it sucks.”

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tom T. Hall, the singer-songwriter who composed “Harper Valley P.T.A.” and sang about life’s simple joys as country music’s consummate blue collar bard, has died. He was 85.

His son, Dean Hall, confirmed the musician’s death on Friday at his home in Franklin, Tennessee. Known as “The Storyteller” for his unadorned yet incisive lyrics, Hall composed hundreds of songs.

Along with such contemporaries as Kris Kristofferson, John Hartford and Mickey Newbury, Hall helped usher in a literary era of country music in the early ’70s, with songs that were political, like “Watergate Blues” and “The Monkey That Became President,” deeply personal like “The Year Clayton Delaney Died,” and philosophical like “(Old Dogs, Children and) Watermelon Wine.”

“In all my writing, I’ve never made judgments,” he said in 1986. “I think that’s my secret. I’m a witness. I just watch everything and don’t decide if it’s good or bad.”

Singer-songwriter Jason Isbell performed Hall’s song “Mama Bake A Pie (Daddy Kill A Chicken)” when Hall was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2019.

In this Tuesday Oct. 30, 2012 file photo, Tom T. Hall accepts the Icon Award at the 60th Annual BMI Country Awards in Nashville, Tennessee.Wade Payne/Invision/AP

“The simplest words that told the most complicated stories. Felt like Tom T. just caught the songs as they floated by, but I know he carved them out of rock,” Isbell tweeted on Friday.

Hall, the fourth son of an ordained minister, was born near Olive Hill, Kentucky, in a log cabin built by his grandfather. He started playing guitar at age 4 and wrote his first song by the time he was 9.

Hall began playing in a bluegrass band, but when that didn’t work out he started working as a disc jockey in Morehead, Kentucky. He joined the U.S. Army in 1957 for four years including an assignment in Germany. He turned to writing when he got back stateside and was discovered by Nashville publisher Jimmy Key.

Hall settled in Nashville in 1964 and first established himself as a songwriter making $50 a week. He wrote songs for Jimmy C. Newman, Dave Dudley and Johnny Wright, but he had so many songs that he began recording them himself. The middle initial “T” was added when he got his recording contract to make the name catchier.

His breakthrough was writing “Harper Valley P.T.A.,” a 1968 international hit about small-town hypocrisy recorded by Jeannie C. Riley. The song about a mother telling a group of busybodies to mind their own business was witty and feisty and became a No. 1 country and pop hit. It sold millions of copies and Riley won a Grammy for best female country vocal performance and an award for single of the year from the Country Music Association. The story was so popular it even spawned a movie of the same name and a television series.

In this July 16, 1977 file photo, Singer Tom T. Hall leans to the edge of the stage at the Jamboree in the Hills to meet the people near St. Clairsville, Ohio. AP

“Suddenly, it was the talk of the country,” Hall told The Associated Press in 1986. “It became a catch phrase. You’d flip the radio dial and hear it four or five times in 10 minutes. It was the most awesome time of my life; I caused all this stir.”

His own career took off after that song and he had a string of hits with “Ballad of Forty Dollars” (which also was recorded by Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings); his first career No. 1 hit “A Week in a Country Jail,” and “Homecoming,” in the late 1960s.

Throughout the ’70s, Hall became one of Nashville’s biggest singer-songwriters, with multiple hit songs including, “I Love,” “Country Is,” “I Care,” “I Like Beer,” and “Faster Horses (The Cowboy and The Poet.)” He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1978.

“Tom T. Hall’s masterworks vary in plot, tone and tempo, but they are bound by his ceaseless and unyielding empathy for the triumphs and losses of others,” said Kyle Young, CEO, Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, in a statement. “He wrote without judgment or anger, offering a rhyming journalism of the heart that sets his compositions apart from any other writer.

He also penned songs for children on his records “Songs of Fox Hollow (for Children of All Ages)” in 1974 and “Country Songs for Kids,” in 1988. He also became an author, writing a book about songwriting, “The Songwriter’s Handbook,” and an autobiography, “The Storyteller’s Nashville,” as well as fiction novels.

He was host of the syndicated TV show “Pop Goes the Country” from 1980 to 1983 and even dabbled in politics. Hall was close to former President Jimmy Carter and Carter’s brother, Billy, when Carter was in the White House. Tennessee Democrats urged Hall to run for governor in 1982, but he declined.

For his 1985 album “Songs in a Seashell,” he spent six months walking up and down Southern beaches to get inspiration for the summer mood of the LP.

He was inducted in the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008 and in 2012, he was honored as the BMI Icon of the year, with artists such as the Avett Brothers, bluegrass stars Daily & Vincent, Toby Keith and Justin Townes Earle paying tribute to the songwriting legend.

“I think a song is just a song,” Hall said at the ceremony in 2012. “They can do it with all kinds of different bands. It’s just a lyric and a melody. I was talking to Kris Kristofferson one time. They asked him what was country, and he said, ‘If it sounds country, it’s country.’ So that’s my philosophy.”

He married English-born songwriter Dixie Deen in 1968, and the two would go on to write hundreds of bluegrass songs after Hall retired from performing in the 1990s, including “All That’s Left” which Miranda Lambert covered on her 2014 album, “Platinum.” Dixie Hall died in 2015.

In 2015, music legend Bob Dylan singled out Hall for some harsh criticism in a rambling speech at a MusiCares event. He called Hall’s song, “I Love,” “a little overcooked,” and said that the arrival of Kristofferson in Nashville “blew ol’ Tom T. Hall’s world apart.”

The criticism apparently confused Hall, as he considered Kristofferson a friend and a peer, and when asked about Dylan’s comments in an 2016 article for “American Songwriter” magazine, he responded, “What the hell was all that about?”

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Swae Lee performs on day one of the Summer Smash Festival in Douglass Park, Friday night, Aug. 20, 2021.Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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