Sandburg’s boys sports have packed a lot of trophy cases over the years.

Five different programs have combined to win 14 state titles: five in wrestling, four in volleyball, three in soccer and one each in baseball and cross country.

Former Eagle Lukas Verzbicas won multiple national titles in cross country and owns the U.S. high school record in the 2-mile.

But one sport that’s lagged behind the others is football. The Eagles last had a winning season in 2015, also the last time they qualified for the IHSA playoffs. Their most recent postseason victory came in 2010.

Now Troy McAllister aims to change that.

After a historic 11-year run at Phillips that included state titles in 2015 and 2017 — the first two in Public League history — McAllister is taking on the challenge of making Sandburg football relevant again.

His reputation has preceded him, and has created a buzz not usually associated with the Eagles.

“With a new coach coming in, especially [one] like coach McAllister, there’s obviously a lot of excitement,” junior quarterback Christian Evans said. “The past couple years for Sandburg have been rough for football. But I feel a lot of people are excited for this year, to see a change.”

Senior linebacker Luke DeVito appreciates the passion McAllister brings to his new job.

“It’s definitely a change for Sandburg to have a guy like this,” DeVito said. “In the past, we haven’t had a lot of coaches with the motivation and the caring that he brings to the program.”

McAllister knows a thing or two about reclamation projects. Twelve players showed up for his first practice at Phillips in 2010. His debut was a 48-20 loss to TEAM Englewood — “we got smacked” — the beginning of a 2-7 season that is his only losing year as a head coach.

The Wildcats made the IHSA playoffs the next year and not long after went on a six-year run that included the two state titles, a runner-up finish, a semifinal berth and two quarterfinal appearances.

Along the way, McAllister resigned in May 2014 to take the Evergreen Park job. But that didn’t work out and a couple months later he returned to Phillips for the state title runs and seven more seasons.

He doesn’t regret any part of the journey. This move follows the unexpected death in January of Mike Larson, McAllister’s longtime defensive coordinator and best friend.

“I think that spring season was good for, in particular, the senior class and our coaching staff at Phillips,” McAllister said. “It was really good to be out there … they got a lot of healing.”

McAllister and Larson had an agreement to stick with it at Phillips and see what they could accomplish. It was more than any Public League football program in the state playoff era.

“And then, life changes,” McAllister said. “And when [Larson] passed, it just made you kind of step away and think, ‘What was the next move?’ For me, this was it.”

Like Phillips when he arrived, Sandburg poses a challenge. Besides the lack of recent success, there’s the fact that the Eagles play in what McAllister considers the best public school conference in the state: the SouthWest Suburban Blue.

Lincoln-Way East is the area’s most dominant public school program, while Bolingbrook and Homewood-Flossmoor also are perennial powers, and Lockport is a team on the rise.

But McAllister appreciates the perks this Sandburg team has that his Phillips clubs didn’t: a locker room of its own and a stadium just across the parking lot from the school, among other things. When the Eagles next host an IHSA playoff game, they won’t have to jockey for a favorable time slot at Gately Stadium like Phillips did.

“I don’t think many people, unless you’re from CPS, understand it — the little extra details you have to have mapped out because everything … can be all over the place,” McAllister said. “So it’s nice just having some of those little things handled.”

That leaves McAllister and his staff to focus on coaching. Don’t expect him to change a winning formula.

“How we run practice and how I coach, I’m not really changing that,” McAllister said. “We’ve tried to take what’s worked at Phillips and transfer it over here. …

“It’s gonna be a learning curve and we’re gonna have our struggles. But the plan is over the course of time, we start to build success.”

If that looks anything like McAllister’s last stop, those trophy cases at Sandburg will be a lot fuller down the road.

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SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Some wounds never quite heal, even after more than six decades.

For 93-year-old Wilmette, Illinois, resident Terry Brennan, his dismissal at Christmas 1958 after five seasons as Notre Dame football coach seems to fall under that category. The former Fighting Irish football standout, hired at 25 to replace legendary coach Frank Leahy, revisits the stunning end to his star-crossed tenure in “Though The Odds Be Great Or Small,” published this week by Loyola Press.

“I think truly there’s some bitterness there,” co-author William Meiners said in a phone interview. “He was pretty hurt by this thing.”

While the book focuses mostly on 1957 and Notre Dame’s quick turnaround after an injury-marred 2-8 season, a somewhat reluctant Brennan, along with Terry Brennan Jr., did wade into some of the circumstances surrounding his controversial dismissal.

Coming off a 6-4 final season that pushed his career mark to 32-18 (.640), Brennan had just received a public vote of confidence in Chicago from Notre Dame athletic director Moose Krause.

Despite dealing with university-imposed scholarship and recruiting limitations during his tenure, Brennan was soon dumped in favor of NFL-tested Joe Kuharich, a longtime friend and former Notre Dame classmate of Rev. Edmund “Ned” Joyce, Notre Dame’s executive vice president.

After coaching Mount Carmel High School’s powerhouse football team while completing law school at DePaul, “Dependable Terry” had the late Rev. Theodore “Ted” Hesburgh, Notre Dame’s youthful president, to thank for both his incredible opportunity and the end to a promising coaching career.

Despite multiple offers to coach elsewhere, on the college level and in the NFL with Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers, Brennan would limit his football contributions to some national television work in the 1960s. He went on instead to a career as an investment banker.

In roughly six hours of in-person interviews over three days, just before the arrival of COVID-19 in the spring of 2020, Brennan proved to be a mostly helpful if reluctant book subject. He termed his departure “ancient history” but still made clear his misgivings with the attempted damage control on Notre Dame’s part, both at the time and in the ensuing decades.

“That generation, they’re not ‘lay on the couch’ type guys who tell you all their feelings,” Meiners said. “I didn’t get a ton of that. That’s just his temperament. He’s not a boastful guy. Never has been. I would suspect he had to be talked into [the book project].”

Meiners, founder and publisher of the journal Sport Literate since 1995, was given access to Brennan’s detailed postmortem of the 1956 debacle, as well as 40 handwritten pages from the mid-1990s that were a reflection on his abortive coaching career.

In addition to fresh interviews with numerous eyewitnesses from Brennan’s time at Notre Dame, on and off the field, Meiners skillfully interweaves published accounts from a nascent Sports Illustrated and many other outlets from that transitional period.

In one of his post-firing interviews, Brennan told Sports Illustrated that Notre Dame followers “who hope for a return to the good old days are being very unrealistic.” He used the phrase “strange, strange business” to describe the profession he was leaving behind.

Four Notre Dame national titles later — the last one in 1988 — Brennan’s prediction doesn’t hold up as well as his sterling reputation for honor and dignity.

“They wanted [Brennan] to resign, which he wouldn’t do,” Meiners said. “That would have made it look like he was quitting. He didn’t want to do that.”

A certain air of mystery remains when it comes to Brennan’s dismissal, its timeline and the rationale behind it. While Brennan is given another opportunity to bat down some of what he views as revisionist history, Fathers Hesburgh and Joyce, the power combo that built Notre Dame into an academic and athletic juggernaut during their long concurrent tenures, died in 2015 and 2004, respectively.

“Ten years ago probably would’ve been even better to [write] it,” Meiners said. “Then maybe you can reach out to Hesburgh at that point. … More than one thing can be true at once.”

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Edwige Lawson-Wade has lived 100 lifetimes by her estimation.

As an international basketball star, her experiences playing all over the world — in numerous professional leagues — have provided her with an education no classroom could.

At 16, she decided to sacrifice a traditional life for her dream one on the court — much to her mother’s dismay — and began her pro career in France. Upon reflection, she said there isn’t anything she would do differently.

”I was very driven by my career, and it took over,” Lawson-Wade said.

The WNBA is a small world, and Lawson-Wade’s experience in it is a perfect example of exactly how small.

Sylvia Fowles used to style her hair when they played for Spartak in Russia. Diana Taurasi was there, too. Taurasi’s coach with the Phoenix Mercury, Sandy Brondello, coached Lawson-Wade with the San Antonio Stars. Brondello’s husband and current Sky assistant Olaf Lange coached there, too.

Lawson-Wade’s husband, Sky coach and general manager James Wade, began his coaching career in the WNBA with the Stars under the direction of Dan Hughes in 2012. He became an assistant on Cheryl Reeve’s staff with the Minnesota Lynx in 2017, coaching Fowles and Rebekkah Brunson, another of Lawson-Wade’s former teammates.

The web Lawson-Wade’s career has woven is intricate and once again came full circle when a longtime opponent became a member of the Sky in the spring.

”When Candace [Parker] made her decision to sign with the Sky, she asked me to have [my son] Jet make a video letting James know,” Lawson-Wade said.

Lawson-Wade said she was lucky to play on very good teams and against very good teams in her career. The 2008 Los Angeles Sparks were one of those foes.

Parker was a rookie with the Sparks, and Lawson-Wade was a shooter Stars teammate Becky Hammon used to kick the ball out to for three-pointers. In 2008, the teams played in one of the most memorable Western Conference finals matchups in WNBA history.

When Lawson-Wade was at a Sky practice earlier this season, Parker brought it up.

”She took me out of the playoffs in 2008,” Parker said.

Lawson-Wade’s chapter with the Stars is just one in a book filled with memories and highlights. She has won three French championships, two Russian championships, three EuroLeague titles and one European championship.

But the most significant, by far, was the Olympic silver medal she helped the French national team earn at the 2012 Summer Games in London. This summer, she was shocked to find Jet rooting for Team USA during the Tokyo Olympics.

Lawson-Wade and Jet spent the last two months in Chicago. But they were heading back this week to France, where Lawson-Wade will embark on a new chapter in her career as a WNBA and international scout.

She also will be pursuing a second degree, to add to her masters in sport management, with the goal of becoming a team consultant in mind. Her husband, in a way, has been her first client.

For Lawson-Wade, watching the WNBA’s growth — with some of her oldest friends, teammates and coaches contributing to that — has been beautiful to see. Another goal of hers is to return to the league as a GM.

Her list of aspirations never has been short.

”She’s shown me the possibilities are limitless if you continue to work and believe,” Wade said.

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LAS VEGAS — Van Smith often bet on sports, and he lost often. He’d chase losses, lose more. He’d sometimes have to borrow money from his brother or mother to square accounts with unsavory Chicago figures.

He estimates to have dropped about $250,000 over several decades wagering on games. Always gainfully employed, with a sterling reputation as a maitre d’, he diligently paid his creditors.

“But I overdid it,” he says, “because of the foolish way I went about betting.”

Today, 62-year-old Dennis Van Rhinevault reveals his real name because he no longer feels ashamed about partaking in an industry that has become so mainstream.

His fortunes turned around, too, upon retiring to Vegas in 2016, thanks to a transformed discipline and rigid parameters that are critical to prospering in the ruthless business.

Friends call him Van, his middle name. I met him in the summer of 2017. Unlike so many professional sports bettors in this gambling haven, he only casually mentioned his profession. He was unassuming, soft-spoken.

A year later, I contacted him after securing a publishing contract for a sports-betting book. I inquired about his methods and tactics, his past. He opened more than 100 hand-written notebooks and detailed his involvement for six hours.

For personal reasons, he requested an alias. In my “Sports Betting for Winners,” published in 2019, and a Sun-Times profile that ran on May 2, 2020, we used a combination of his middle name and a nondescript surname.

Van Smith.

(“Is that you?” a few people texted him after seeing his silhouette photo in the Sun-Times.)

RIP, Van Smith. Forevermore, it’s Dennis Van Rhinevault, the real person who strives to impart the very real sports-betting lessons he has learned to interested parties.

“I believe I can help people maybe make some money based on the mistakes that I have made,” he says. “I began employing a bankroll and can’t emphasize how important that is. Changed everything. I either sink or swim with it.

“Slow and steady is the way to be. Otherwise, you’re going to flame out.”

A POLISHED APPROACH

Rhinevault was born and raised in Indian Head Park. Out of Lyons Township High, stints at Oklahoma State and Wisconsin-Stout didn’t quench his high-end-restaurant business interests.

Through his father, he met restaurateur Arnold J. “Arnie” Morton and Klaus Fritsch, now vice chairman of the Morton’s steakhouse chain. Van apprenticed in several Morton’s kitchens, graduating to front-of-the-house duties.

At 24, he was maitre d’ of the elegant Toledo Room at The Lodge of the Four Seasons in Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, and he flourished in the same role at Jack Binion’s steakhouses in Indiana and Mississippi.

He kept betting sports, kept losing.

At a nadir, a friend related his betting success using power ratings. That led Rhinevault to tinkering with ESPN ratings for professional sports, Associated Press rankings for colleges.

He overhauled his operations, objectives and thought processes. He built models, conducted extensive research, discarded rubbish. He aimed to construct a revenue stream that would provide living expenses in retirement.

Actions within each sport end when they hit certain units of profit, diminishing-return thresholds that he calibrates regularly.

For instance, one NBA angle halts when it hits four units of profit, often ending two or three weeks into a season. He quits betting baseball on Labor Day, due to September roster-call-up uncertainties.

He constantly massages and refines his formulas, the foundation being hardcore discipline based on the aforementioned bankroll and a typical wager-unit of one percent.

Sometimes, he will risk up to two units to gain a unit of profit. That basic unit would only increase with bankroll expansion, which he’d adjust annually.

A $100,000 bankroll has become $400,000. That’s his cap, because it can be difficult placing bets of $2,000, the maximum allowance at many sportsbooks, at two different shops.

Irresponsible blowhard touts who bellow about “five-unit” plays can irritate him, but he tries to tend to his own affairs.

“I learned years ago not to worry about what others do. Find out what makes you happy and try to achieve your goals. Comparing yourself to others is a recipe for failure and disappointment.”

STERLING RESULTS

Rhinevault’s plays and records can be followed, gratis, at VSLasVegas.com, which he started last year. The VS stands for Van Sports, a simpler marque than involving his last name.

In five complete seasons of NBA, NHL, NFL, MLB and college football, 25 individual seasons of data and documentation, only his 2020-21 NHL campaign wasn’t profitable.

Twelve of those returned at least 20 units of profit, topped by 2017-18 NHL (32.6 units), 2018 MLB (30.1), 2016-17 NBA (29.7) and 2019-20 NBA (26.8). The 2018-19 NHL season began horribly before turning around magnificently, going 18-0 at one stretch; it hit its threshold by New Year’s Eve.

Rhinevault might be low-key, but he is proud of his creation. After some coaxing during an hourlong chat Monday, he admits, “I’m confident I’m going to win.”

He plans to produce YouTube video tutorials. Newcomers will benefit, but punters of every degree might learn something. He’s content helping others avoid the many pitfalls he encountered.

“If somebody has been following me and what I’ve been doing, they’ve certainly been well-rewarded. I never want anybody to lose money because of something I said, but I do hope they’re up money.”

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The Steve Miller Band sang a song about how time keeps on slippin’ into the future. And it’s true. Things that happened more than a few days, weeks, months, even years ago feel as if they just happened.

And that’s what this quiz is all about. How recently did something happen? Each question has two Cubs and two White Sox as your multiple choices.

The answers are correct as of Aug. 21, the date of our last quiz. In case multiple players accomplished the feat in the same year, the player with the higher total is the correct answer.

So, as you fly like an eagle like the Steve Miller Band did in 1976, I wish you good luck on your Chicago Nine.

1. Who was the most recent Chicago player to hit 40-plus homers?

a. Adam Dunn

b. Todd Frazier

c. Derrek Lee

d. Sammy Sosa

2. Who was the most recent Chicago player to steal 40-plus bases?

a. Juan Pierre

b. Eric Young Sr.

c. Scott Podsednik

d. Lance Johnson

3. Who was the most recent Chicago player to strikeout 200-plus times in a season?

a. Kris Bryant

b. Yoan Moncada

c. Adam Dunn

d. Sammy Sosa

4. Who was the most recent Chicago pitcher to strike out 200-plus batters in a season?

a. Chris Sale

b. Yu Darvish

c. Jake Arrieta

d. Lucas Giolito

5. Who was the most recent Chicago pitcher to pitch 200-plus innings in a season?

a. Jon Lester

b. James Shields

c. Jose Quintana

d. Jake Arrieta

6. Who was the most recent Chicago batter to hit for the cycle?

a. Mark Grace

b. Andre Dawson

c. Jose Abreu

d. Jose Valentin

7. Who was the most recent Chicago pitcher with at least 35 saves in a season?

a. Carlos Marmol

b. Rod Beck

c. David Robertson

d. Addison Reed

8. Who was the most recent Chicago batter to hit 40-plus doubles in a season?

a. Jose Abreu

b. Melky Cabrera

c. Javy Baez

d. Anthony Rizzo

9. Who was the most recent Chicago batter with a “platinum sombrero” (five strikeouts in a game)?

a. Javy Baez

b. Ted Lilly

c. Yoan Moncada

d. Matt Davidson

QUIZ ANSWERS

1. Todd Frazier (40 in 2016)

2. Juan Pierre (68 in 2010)

3. Yoan Moncada (217 in 2018)

4. Yu Darvish (229 in 2019), Lucas Giolito (228 in 2019)

5. James Shields (218.2 in 2018)

6. Jose Abreu (9/19/17)

7. David Robertson (2017)

8. Javy Baez (2018)

9. Yoan Moncada (4/2/21)

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Arms crossed, polo buttoned and mask tightened, Blackhawks coach Jeremy Colliton sat deep inside Fifth Third Arena on Friday — weeks away from the start of his fourth season — exuding the same quiet, calm confidence he did during his first three.

But it’s clear to him this season should — and must — be different.

”We expect to be better,” he said. ”We made some progress last year, but ultimately I don’t think you can be in this league if you don’t want to be the best and get in the playoffs and win playoff series. We’re looking to take another step. And with the guys we’ve added, we think they can help us do that.”

While Hawks general manager Stan Bowman has attracted heavy attention all summer — both positively for his splashy trade and free-agent acquisitions and negatively for his apparent mishandling of the alleged 2010 sexual-assault scandal — Colliton has avoided the spotlight.

Colliton, 36, spent valuable time with his family after a season away from them, then drove from Calgary, Alberta, to Chicago with them this month in time for his kids to start school. He has spent the last couple of weeks — and plans to spend the remaining few before training camp — casually catching up with players as they, too, trickle back into the city.

Behind the scenes, however, Colliton was in close touch with Bowman, who dramatically reconstructed the roster he will coach.

”I’m very happy with what we’ve been able to do,” Colliton said. ”Obviously, I have input. That’s one thing that Stan does: He wants to hear what you think and wants us to look at players and have an opinion. And then, ultimately, he makes the calls. If you looked before the offseason at some areas we wanted to improve, he has hit all of them.”

Colliton offered many of the same praises of new cornerstone defenseman Seth Jones that Bowman gave him last month. ”His size and skating combination, in a defender, is a huge advantage,” Colliton said.

The trickle-down effect Jones’ addition will have on every other defenseman’s workload intrigues Colliton even more, however.

”He can play a lot of minutes, and it just adds so much depth to our team,” he said. ”There’s less ice [time] we have to divvy up. And when you play a little bit less, a lot of times you can improve your performance.”

Colliton is even more familiar with new goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, who takes departed defenseman Duncan Keith’s place as the one Hawks veteran older than the coach.

During their playing days, Colliton and Fleury faced each other numerous times in the Islanders’ and Penguins’ organizations and were Canadian teammates during the world junior championships in 2004.

”He’s a tremendous practice goalie,” Colliton said. ”One thing I remember, even from way back then, is he never gave up on a puck. . . Even in warmups before a game, he’d just refuse to get scored on. And that kind of thing is contagious. One of the positives that we were thinking about when we acquired him is just his effect on the other goaltenders, [particularly] Kevin Lankinen.”

Colliton described Fleury as an instant mentor for Lankinen, whom he talked to about that recently. He also sees plenty of starts ahead for both goalies as the Hawks juggle an 82-game — ”82-plus, hopefully” — schedule again.

Jake McCabe, Tyler Johnson and other veterans have joined the mix, too. Jonathan Toews continues skating, although Colliton declined to handicap his confidence in Toews participating in camp. Patrick Kane has worked this summer to heal his undisclosed late-season injury, and Colliton said he doesn’t ”foresee any issues” there.

The result is a much-improved team, one that warrants higher expectations than any Hawks team since 2018.

It will be Colliton’s responsibility to ensure the Hawks meet those expectations. And that will be another new challenge for him.

Colliton already has navigated a lot during his NHL tenure. He survived the abrupt transition from Joel Quenneville in his first season and major pandemic-related interruptions and distractions in each of the last two. His work last spring, molding a patchwork roster into a compelling and mildly competitive team, was his most impressive yet.

For those reasons, he has enjoyed relatively strong job security, perhaps disproportionally so in this cutthroat business.

But the honeymoon is over. The shelf life for hockey coaches who don’t win isn’t long, regardless of extenuating circumstances, and Colliton hasn’t yet done much winning. His Hawks coaching record sits at 86-83-24 — essentially, 86 victories and 107 losses. That needs to change soon.

As he officially enters the first season of the two-year contract extension he signed in January, Colliton realizes that necessity but views it through a healthy perspective.

”I don’t feel any anxiety,” he said. ”I’m excited. We always expect to win. You want to win. The fact we have improved the roster and we have some more depth and competition, that’s only positive.”

The Hawks learned from the COVID chaos of last season, even permanently adopting some of the successful technological innovations they invented on the fly last season. The vast majority of the team is now vaccinated. Colliton doesn’t know the exact percentage but said there has been ”tremendous compliance.”

The Hawks also learned from their tactical successes and failures of last season. Colliton spent the summer, as usual, analyzing every facet of his oft-debated system — from forechecking to defensive coverage, neutral-zone gaps to special-teams structures — and brainstorming tweaks he could make.

Come October, when Colliton’s crossed arms return to the United Center bench, it’ll be time to prove he’s not only the ideal coach for the Hawks’ rebuild but also the ideal coach for their resurgence.

”Since I got here, the goal hasn’t really changed: We want to be an elite team, year in and year out,” Colliton said. ”We’ve made a lot of strides toward that. It’s not always a straight line. In any business or sport or whatever, it’s often not a straight line. But I feel really good about the journey we’re on.

”A lot of the guys I’ve been able to coach for several years now, I feel very comfortable that they know what we’re trying to do. We have a pretty good partnership going. It’s fun to have been part of the journey. And when we have that success, it’s going to be pretty rewarding.”

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