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Positivity rate falls again with 3,194 latest Illinois COVID-19 cases

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Public health officials on Saturday announced 3,194 new COVID-19 cases, lowering Illinois’ testing positivity rate to 4.1% and offering a potential sign of optimism that the state is easing down from its latest surge in infections.

The positivity rate, which indicates how rapidly the virus is spreading, is still up sharply compared to the all-time low of 2.1% the state reached last month, while an average of more than 3,200 residents have tested positive each day over the past week — nearly double Illinois’ case rate in early March.

But the statewide positivity rate has now fallen or held steady for five consecutive days after a full month of troubling upticks.

Chicago’s regional positivity rate has fallen slightly over the past few days to 5.6%, and it’s dipped to 5.5% in suburban Cook County.

Despite any incremental progress, it’s still “a critical time in this pandemic,” according to Dr. Kiran Joshi, senior medical officer and co-leader of the Cook County Department of Public Health.

Mitchell Armentrout has the full story here.

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1:45 p.m. CPS is getting $1.8B in federal relief funding. Parents and students are demanding a say in how it’s spent

Rocio Almazan, a sophomore at Curie High School, is part of a student committee that listens to classmates’ concerns and suggestions for the school, including thoughts about remote learning over the past year.

The student group advocates for its classmates, sending letters and petitions. The problem is they’re rarely heard — and that’s an issue that needs to be fixed as Chicago Public Schools officials figure out how to spend $1.8 billion in federal pandemic relief funding, she said.

“CPS has excluded all stakeholders since the pandemic and continues to do so,” Rocio said.

The district has said it’ll use the money to support students through pandemic challenges moving forward, but families want a say in that process. The Chicago Teachers Union has also turned its attention to the issue now that high school reopening negotiations are complete and all district schools are clear to resume in-person learning.

Members of parent group Raise Your Hand, the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council and other community organizations held a virtual town hall Friday to share how they want the funds to be used. Among their top priorities are the hiring of additional special education staff to meet those students’ needs and funding housing vouchers for the 17,000 CPS children without permanent housing.

The groups also suggested closing the digital divide with working computers and internet for all students, providing additional resources for immigrants and children whose first language isn’t English, hiring restorative justice coordinators at all schools and opening school-based health centers.

Advocates were clear on what they didn’t want the money to go toward: paying off pre-pandemic debt.

Nader Issa has the full story here.

10:37 a.m. Worldwide COVID-19 death toll tops 3 million

The global death toll from the coronavirus topped a staggering 3 million people Saturday amid repeated setbacks in the worldwide vaccination campaign and a deepening crisis in places such as Brazil, India and France.

The number of lives lost, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the population of Kyiv, Ukraine; Caracas, Venezuela; or metropolitan Lisbon, Portugal. It is bigger than Chicago (2.7 million) and equivalent to Philadelphia and Dallas combined.

And the true number is believed to be significantly higher because of possible government concealment and the many cases overlooked in the early stages of the outbreak that began in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019.

When the world back in January passed the bleak threshold of 2 million deaths, immunization drives had just started in Europe and the United States. Today, they are underway in more than 190 countries, though progress in bringing the virus under control varies widely.

While the campaigns in the U.S. and Britain have hit their stride and people and businesses there are beginning to contemplate life after the pandemic, other places, mostly poorer countries but some rich ones as well, are lagging behind in putting shots in arms and have imposed new lockdowns and other restrictions as virus cases soar.

Worldwide, deaths are on the rise again, running at around 12,000 per day on average, and new cases are climbing too, eclipsing 700,000 a day.

Read the full story here.

9:04 a.m. Lin-Manuel Miranda, the Obamas and other celebrities make a stand for COVID vaccines on TV special

President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama and a slew of celebrities including Billy Crystal, Jennifer Hudson and Lin-Manuel Miranda are part of a special aimed at boosting COVID-19 vaccination rates.

“Roll Up Your Sleeves,” airing at 6 p.m. Sunday on NBC, will feature Matthew McConaughey interviewing Dr. Anthony Fauci to help separate “fact from fiction” about the vaccines, the network said.

Biden will make a direct appeal in support of the effort, while Obama will be joined by basketball greats Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal to reinforce the role of vaccines in allowing Americans to get their lives back on track.

Former first lady Michelle Obama will team with Miranda, Faith Hill and Jennifer Lopez in support of shots during the hour-long special hosted by spouses Russell Wilson, the NFL quarterback, and actor-singer Ciara.

Read the full story here.

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8:15 a.m. Stuck outside U.S. during pandemic, burst pipe floods suburban home, and Allstate won’t pay

The COVID-19 pandemic has messed with people’s lives in countless ways, but I hadn’t heard anything quite like the travails of Floyd and Betsy Rogers.

It’s a complicated story, so settle in.

The Rogerses are retirees.

He’s 78 and used to work at IBM before retiring early to help his brother operate a now-defunct garden center. She’s 79 and went back to school for her Ph.D. after her daughters went away to college, then worked for a time as a consultant retraining industrial workers.

The Rogerses have lived since 1975 in a two-story frame home near Glen Ellyn where they raised two daughters.

Younger daughter Becky Ackermann is a paleoanthropologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, where she lives with her husband Kurt and their 11-year-old son, the Rogerses’ only grandchild. Their older daughter died of a blood clot in 2002.

Like many people their age with their only surviving child and grandchild far, far away, the suburban couple make annual visits to their daughter’s family in Cape Town, over time gradually extending their stays to months at a stretch.

That’s where they were in February 2020, scheduled to return that April, when Betsy Rogers broke her pelvis, requiring a long, difficult rehabilitation during which she could not be on an airplane.

That meant they were still in South Africa when the pandemic struck.

There were no flights back to the U.S. for a while. By the time there were, it wasn’t really safe to fly from a COVID standpoint, so they settled in for Betsy to recuperate.

That’s why the couple was still in South Africa this past Jan. 22 when they were informed a DuPage County sheriff’s deputy had spotted water running down their driveway. A cracked pipe in an upstairs bathroom had flooded the house, destroying much of the interior and furnishings: 213,000 gallons escaped, according to the water bill they later received.

All very sad, but that’s why people have homeowners’ insurance. Right?

That’s what the Rogerses were thinking. But Allstate denied their claim, citing an exception in their policy for plumbing that freezes while a building is vacant or unoccupied “unless you have used reasonable care” to maintain the heat or shut off the water supply and drain the system.

Read Mark Brown’s full column here.

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New cases & vaccination numbers

• Public health officials on Saturday announced 3,194 new COVID-19 cases, lowering Illinois’ testing positivity rate to 4.1% and offering a potential sign of optimism that the state is easing down from its latest surge in infections.
• The positivity rate is still up sharply compared to the all-time low of 2.1% the state reached last month, while an average of more than 3,200 residents have tested positive each day over the past week — nearly double Illinois’ case rate in early March.
• Chicago’s regional positivity rate has fallen slightly over the past few days to 5.6%, and it’s dipped to 5.5% in suburban Cook County.
• The state reported its fourth most productive vaccination day yet with 160,014 doses administered Friday. Nearly 8 million shots have gone into arms overall, with about 3.3 million residents fully vaccinated — nearly 26% of the population.
• Officials also said 23 more residents have died with the virus, including 12 Cook County residents. The state’s death toll is up to 21,653 among about 1.3 million residents who have tested positive over the past year.
• Nearly a quarter of all Illinoisans are now fully immunized against the coronavirus after Thursday’s shot effort, which came a week after the state set a record with almost 176,000 administered doses.

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INDIANAPOLIS — Indianapolis’ tight knit Sikh community mourned Saturday as members learned that four Sikhs were among the eight people killed in the mass shooting at a FedEx warehouse.

The Marion County Coroner’s office identified the dead late Friday as Matthew R. Alexander, 32; Samaria Blackwell, 19; Amarjeet Johal, 66; Jaswinder Kaur, 64; Jaswinder Singh, 68; Amarjit Sekhon, 48; Karli Smith, 19; and John Weisert, 74.

Deputy Police Chief Craig McCartt said Brandon Scott Hole apparently began firing randomly at people in the parking lot of the FedEx facility, killing four, before entering the building, fatally shooting four more people and then turning the gun on himself.

It was not clear if Sikhs were targeted.

Police Chief Randal Taylor noted that a “significant” number of employees at the FedEx facility are members of the Sikh community. Some members gathered at a local hotel Friday looking for information on family and friends.

“I have several family members who work at the particular facility and are traumatized,” Komal Chohan, who said Amarjeet Johal was her grandmother, said in a statement issued by the Sikh Coalition. “My nani, my family, and our families should not feel unsafe at work, at their place of worship, or anywhere. Enough is enough–our community has been through enough trauma.”

There are between 8,000 and 10,000 Sikh Americans in Indiana, according to the coalition. Members of the religion, which began in India in the 15th century, began settling in Indiana more than 50 years ago and opened their first house of worship, known as a gurdwara, in 1999.

The attack was another blow to the Asian American community a month after six people of Asian descent were killed in a mass shooting in the Atlanta area and amid ongoing attacks against Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic.

Hole’s motives remained unclear Saturday.

The shooting comes the week Sikhs are celebrating Vaisakhi, a major holiday festival that among other things marks the date Sikhism was born as a collective faith.

“While we don’t yet know the motive of the shooter, he targeted a facility known to be heavily populated by Sikh employees, and the attack is traumatic for our community as we continue to face senseless violence,” said Satjeet Kaur, the Sikh Coalition’s executive director. “Further traumatizing is the reality that many of these community members, like Sikhs we have worked with in the past, will eventually have to return to the place where their lives were almost taken from them.”

The coalition says about 500,00 Sikhs live in the U.S. Many practicing Sikhs are visually distinguishable by their articles of faith, which include the unshorn hair and turban.

The shooting is the deadliest incident of violence collectively in the Sikh community in the U.S. since 2012, when a white supremacist burst into a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and shot 10 people, killing six. A seventh died in 2020 from complications stemming from the injuries he suffered during the incident. That gunman killed himself during a firefight with police.

Paul Keenan, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Indianapolis field office, said Friday that agents questioned Hole last year after his mother called police to say that her son might commit “suicide by cop.” He said the FBI was called after items were found in Hole’s bedroom but he did not elaborate on what they were. He said agents found no evidence of a crime and that they did not identify Hole as espousing a racially motivated ideology.

A police report obtained by The Associated Press shows that officers seized a pump-action shotgun from Hole’s home after responding to the mother’s call. Keenan said the gun was never returned. Indianapolis police said Friday that Hole opened fire with a rifle.

As the names were released, family and friends of the victims began posting remembrances on social media.

Samaria Blackwell, of Indianapolis, was a soccer and basketball player who last year graduated from Indy Genesis, a Christian competitive sports organization for homeschooled students. Teammates posted on Facebook that Blackwell “was always smiling and cracking jokes. She was so loving, goofy, encouraging, and supportive.” Family friends have organized a fundraiser for the Blackwell family to assist with funeral expenses.

Smith, the youngest of the victims, was last in contact with her family shortly before 11 p.m. Thursday, family members said in social media posts late Friday. Dominique Troutman, Smith’s sister, waited hours at the Holiday Inn for an update on her sister. “Words can’t even explain how I feel. … I’m so hurt,” Troutman said in a Facebook post Friday night.

Weisert had been working as a bag handler at FedEx for four years, his wife, Carol, told WISH-TV. The couple was married nearly 50 years.

McCartt said Hole was a former employee of FedEx and last worked for the company in 2020. The deputy police chief said he did not know why Hole left the job or if he had ties to the workers in the facility. He said police have not yet uncovered a motive for the shooting.

The killings marked the latest in a string of recent mass shootings across the country and the third mass shooting this year in Indianapolis. Five people, including a pregnant woman, were shot and killed in the city in January, and a man was accused of killing three adults and a child before abducting his daughter during an argument at a home in March. In other states last month, eight people were fatally shot at massage businesses in the Atlanta area, and 10 died in gunfire at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado.

___

Associated Press reporters Michael Balsamo and Eric Tucker in Washington and Pat Eaton-Robb in Connecticut contributed to this report. Casey Smith is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative.

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Many questions remain unanswered by the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. A spokeswoman for Kim Foxx said she couldn’t discuss the issues because they are the subject of an internal investigation.

A veteran Cook County prosecutor was placed on administrative leave Friday night because he “failed to fully present the facts” during a bond hearing last week when he didn’t specifically state that 13-year-old Adam Toledo was unarmed at the moment a Chicago police officer shot him, according to State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office.

“In court last week, an attorney in our office failed to fully present the facts surrounding the death of a 13-year-old boy,” Foxx spokeswoman Sarah Sinovic said in a statement. “We have put that individual on leave and are conducting an internal investigation into the matter.”

During an April 10 bond hearing describing allegations against 21-year-old Ruben Roman — who was arrested at the scene of Adam’s shooting in Little Village — Assistant State’s Attorney James Murphy told Judge Susana Ortiz that Toledo had a gun in his right hand a moment before he was shot.

“The officer tells [Adam] to drop it as [Adam] turns towards the officer. [Adam] has a gun in his right hand,” Murphy said. “The officer fires one shot at [Adam], striking him in the chest. The gun that [Adam] was holding landed against the fence a few feet away.”

Murphy’s statement matches a portion of what the video of the fatal March 29 shooting shows, but did not specifically note that Adam dropped the weapon and had his hands in the air less than a second before he was shot by the officer.

Chicago news outlets, including the Chicago Sun-Times, reported that Murphy was indicating Adam had a gun in his hand when he was shot.

Murphy will be on paid leave during investigation, Sinovic said.

The state’s attorney’s office has declined to say why it took five days for them to release a statement clarifying Murphy’s outlining of criminal charges, which is known as a proffer.

When they did — hours before footage of the shooting was released to the public by a police oversight agency Thursday — the state’s attorney’s office accused Murphy of “failing to fully inform himself before speaking in court.”

“Errors like that cannot happen and this has been addressed with the individual involved. The video speaks for itself,” Sinovic said Thursday.

In an internal letter to prosecutors Friday night discussing the office’s statement about Murphy, Foxx wrote: “It later because evident that the language of the proffer did not fully reflect all the evidence that had been given to our office.”

On Friday, Sinovic told the Sun-Times that not all of the footage released the day before was available to Murphy when he read the statement during Ruben’s bond hearing, but declined to say what footage was available to the office at that time and who in the state’s attorney’s office had seen it.

“It’s still under investigation what videos were available to [Murphy],” Sinovic said. “We’re still trying to figure out what he had access to when he made the statements in court.”

Sinovic said she could not say, nearly a week after the bond hearing, whether anyone else at the office had read Murphy’s statement before it was read in court and if it was approved by a superior. Nor would she describe the office’s policy for approving statements before they are read in court.

Two sources with knowledge of the investigation told the Sun-Times that Murphy’s proffer had not been approved or read by anyone else in the state’s attorney’s office before it was presented to the judge.

Sinovic stressed that the office did not believe Murphy had lied or knowingly presented inaccurate information to a judge, but were concerned that his statement in court had been misinterpreted because Murphy had failed to “make it clear at what point [Adam] didn’t have the gun.”

In her letter Friday, Foxx appeared to acknowledge what sources in the office said is a widespread perception that Murphy “was being thrown under the bus,” as one prosecutor who asked to remain anonymous told a reporter.

“For many of you it may have been jarring to see our statement regarding this matter,” Foxx wrote. “It is indeed a rarity to see the Office make such a public statement related to the actions of an [assistant state’s attorney]. It was not done lightly.”

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Here’s the latest news on how COVID-19 is impacting Chicago and Illinois.

Latest

CPS is getting $1.8B in federal relief funding. Parents and students are demanding a say in how it’s spent

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

Rocio Almazan, a sophomore at Curie High School, is part of a student committee that listens to classmates’ concerns and suggestions for the school, including thoughts about remote learning over the past year.

The student group advocates for its classmates, sending letters and petitions. The problem is they’re rarely heard — and that’s an issue that needs to be fixed as Chicago Public Schools officials figure out how to spend $1.8 billion in federal pandemic relief funding, she said.

“CPS has excluded all stakeholders since the pandemic and continues to do so,” Rocio said.

The district has said it’ll use the money to support students through pandemic challenges moving forward, but families want a say in that process. The Chicago Teachers Union has also turned its attention to the issue now that high school reopening negotiations are complete and all district schools are clear to resume in-person learning.

Members of parent group Raise Your Hand, the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council and other community organizations held a virtual town hall Friday to share how they want the funds to be used. Among their top priorities are the hiring of additional special education staff to meet those students’ needs and funding housing vouchers for the 17,000 CPS children without permanent housing.

The groups also suggested closing the digital divide with working computers and internet for all students, providing additional resources for immigrants and children whose first language isn’t English, hiring restorative justice coordinators at all schools and opening school-based health centers.

Advocates were clear on what they didn’t want the money to go toward: paying off pre-pandemic debt.

Nader Issa has the full story here.

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News

10:37 a.m. Worldwide COVID-19 death toll tops 3 million

The global death toll from the coronavirus topped a staggering 3 million people Saturday amid repeated setbacks in the worldwide vaccination campaign and a deepening crisis in places such as Brazil, India and France.

The number of lives lost, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the population of Kyiv, Ukraine; Caracas, Venezuela; or metropolitan Lisbon, Portugal. It is bigger than Chicago (2.7 million) and equivalent to Philadelphia and Dallas combined.

And the true number is believed to be significantly higher because of possible government concealment and the many cases overlooked in the early stages of the outbreak that began in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019.

When the world back in January passed the bleak threshold of 2 million deaths, immunization drives had just started in Europe and the United States. Today, they are underway in more than 190 countries, though progress in bringing the virus under control varies widely.

While the campaigns in the U.S. and Britain have hit their stride and people and businesses there are beginning to contemplate life after the pandemic, other places, mostly poorer countries but some rich ones as well, are lagging behind in putting shots in arms and have imposed new lockdowns and other restrictions as virus cases soar.

Worldwide, deaths are on the rise again, running at around 12,000 per day on average, and new cases are climbing too, eclipsing 700,000 a day.

Read the full story here.

9:04 a.m. Lin-Manuel Miranda, the Obamas and other celebrities make a stand for COVID vaccines on TV special

President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama and a slew of celebrities including Billy Crystal, Jennifer Hudson and Lin-Manuel Miranda are part of a special aimed at boosting COVID-19 vaccination rates.

“Roll Up Your Sleeves,” airing at 6 p.m. Sunday on NBC, will feature Matthew McConaughey interviewing Dr. Anthony Fauci to help separate “fact from fiction” about the vaccines, the network said.

Biden will make a direct appeal in support of the effort, while Obama will be joined by basketball greats Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal to reinforce the role of vaccines in allowing Americans to get their lives back on track.

Former first lady Michelle Obama will team with Miranda, Faith Hill and Jennifer Lopez in support of shots during the hour-long special hosted by spouses Russell Wilson, the NFL quarterback, and actor-singer Ciara.

Read the full story here.

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8:15 a.m. Stuck outside U.S. during pandemic, burst pipe floods suburban home, and Allstate won’t pay

The COVID-19 pandemic has messed with people’s lives in countless ways, but I hadn’t heard anything quite like the travails of Floyd and Betsy Rogers.

It’s a complicated story, so settle in.

The Rogerses are retirees.

He’s 78 and used to work at IBM before retiring early to help his brother operate a now-defunct garden center. She’s 79 and went back to school for her Ph.D. after her daughters went away to college, then worked for a time as a consultant retraining industrial workers.

The Rogerses have lived since 1975 in a two-story frame home near Glen Ellyn where they raised two daughters.

Younger daughter Becky Ackermann is a paleoanthropologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, where she lives with her husband Kurt and their 11-year-old son, the Rogerses’ only grandchild. Their older daughter died of a blood clot in 2002.

Like many people their age with their only surviving child and grandchild far, far away, the suburban couple make annual visits to their daughter’s family in Cape Town, over time gradually extending their stays to months at a stretch.

That’s where they were in February 2020, scheduled to return that April, when Betsy Rogers broke her pelvis, requiring a long, difficult rehabilitation during which she could not be on an airplane.

That meant they were still in South Africa when the pandemic struck.

There were no flights back to the U.S. for a while. By the time there were, it wasn’t really safe to fly from a COVID standpoint, so they settled in for Betsy to recuperate.

That’s why the couple was still in South Africa this past Jan. 22 when they were informed a DuPage County sheriff’s deputy had spotted water running down their driveway. A cracked pipe in an upstairs bathroom had flooded the house, destroying much of the interior and furnishings: 213,000 gallons escaped, according to the water bill they later received.

All very sad, but that’s why people have homeowners’ insurance. Right?

That’s what the Rogerses were thinking. But Allstate denied their claim, citing an exception in their policy for plumbing that freezes while a building is vacant or unoccupied “unless you have used reasonable care” to maintain the heat or shut off the water supply and drain the system.

Read Mark Brown’s full column here.

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New cases & vaccination numbers

• The Illinois Department of Public Health reported Friday 3,866 more cases were diagnosed among the latest 93,602 tests, keeping the state’s seven-day average positivity rate at 4.2% — twice as high as it was in mid-March, but the fourth straight day it’s fallen or held steady.
• Hospitals took on an additional 15 COVID-19 patients with 2,058 beds occupied Thursday night. That’s nearly a thousand more coronavirus patients than were admitted March 12.
• The state also reported 21 more deaths, including that of a Cook County man in his 40s, raising Illinois’ pandemic toll to 21,630.
• Officials on Friday announced Illinois’ second-most productive COVID-19 vaccination day yet with 166,885 doses going into arms statewide.
• Nearly 1.3 million residents have contracted the virus over the past year, compared to about 3.2 million who are now fully vaccinated.
• Nearly a quarter of all Illinoisans are now fully immunized against the coronavirus after Thursday’s shot effort, which came a week after the state set a record with almost 176,000 administered doses.
• Illinois is now averaging about 130,000 shots per day as Chicago vaccine providers prepare to expand eligibility to all residents 16 and older starting Monday.

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The first week of the National Women’s Soccer League Challenge Cup produced thrilling moments that fans have been waiting desperately for but concerning ones as well.

Here are three things we learned after the first week of the tournament.

NWSL attempts to set new standards for anti-discrimination as clubs take their own stances

The league’s first week of play was overshadowed by claims from Red Stars defender Sarah Gorden that she and her boyfriend were racially profiled by a member of the BBVA Stadium’s security staff following Chicago’s scoreless draw against the Dash.

The league formally opened an investigation under its anti-discrimination policy on Tuesday.

The league also announced in a list of findings by the league’s disciplinary committee that it would be fining the Red Stars for a violation of a league directive. Grant Wahl reported it the fine was related to partial team owner Sarah Spain’s tweet of support for Gorden after the league sent its board of governors notice directing them not to comment. Wahl also reported Gotham FC general manager Alyse LaHue was fined for the same reason.

Many fans expressed on social media that they took the league’s response to the showings of support for Gorden as censorship.

As the league’s investigation progresses, individual clubs and players made it clear where they stand, and that’s with Gorden. Red Stars players and the Black Women’s Players Collective shared posts condemning racism and discrimination in the league. The BWPC post also acknowledged that Gorden’s experience was not an isolated incident in the NWSL.

Thursday night, the entire team arrived at SeatGeek Stadium ahead of their match against the Portland Thorns wearing shirts that read “Believe, Support, Protect Black People.” The Red Stars also elected not to play the national anthem ahead of the match.

Portland Thorns threaten the Red Stars hopes of winning it all

While players and coaches frequently discuss the parity within the league, the Portland Thorns are certainly the greatest threat to the Red Stars’ hopes of winning the Challenge Cup title. Dames has said that he schedules the Thorns every preseason because of the challenge it presents to his team and the weaknesses the Thorns expose. Unable to schedule that preseason match this year, Dames got his team ready playing multiple collegiate programs, including Loyola and Notre Dame.

Following the scoreless draw against the Houston Dash in the tournament’s opening match, Dames said the attack was able to get into areas of the field that they wanted to, but decision making was an issue. The team faced similar issues in the second match of the Challenge Cup against the Thorns at SeatGeek Stadium. This match was marked as an early decider of which team would come out on top of the western division, and the Red Stars fell to the Thorns 1-0, exposing their lack of an established striker in the process.

Preview of what competition will look like during the Olympics

Through the first two weeks of the Challenge Cup, teams are getting a glimpse at what competition will look like when their national team players are competing in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics in July and August. The Red Stars are in a good position because of their depth but still struggled to find a rhythm in the attacking third in their first two games of the Challenge Cup. It isn’t likely that the Red Stars will lose any players from their attack to Vlatko Andonovski’s 18-player Olympic roster. With over two months before they lose Alyssa Naeher, Julie Ertz and most likely Tierna Davidson, there is more than enough time for the team to settle in. A key in winning every trophy available this year will be taking advantage of weakened rosters during the Olympic period.

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Shyla Heal isn’t your average rookie.

She’s young, yes. At 19, she was one of the youngest players selected in the 2021 WNBA Draft. But her experience has her playing well beyond her years.

That experience comes from a lifetime of training with her dad, Shane, who had a storied basketball career of his own, and a professional basketball career that began before she was old enough to drive.

”My dad coached the Southeast Queensland Stars,” Heal said. ”Erin Phillips got injured, and we were really short on guards. I was going to be a developmental player that season, but I stepped in as the 10th man and played about 14 games when I was 14.”

Heal casually noted that becoming the Stars’ 10th woman at 14 made her the youngest player to play in the Women’s National Basketball League in Australia.

Heal moved a lot growing up, but a constant for her was playing basketball and training with her dad. They worked on her game every day. Heal learned two lessons from her dad that have had the most substantial impact on her game: always outwork your competitors and never back down.

Her dad played for the Australian national team in the NBL and had a couple of stints in the NBA with the Timberwolves and Spurs. He’s known to many U.S. fans for his infamous on-court feud with ”Dream Team” star Charles Barkley during warmups at the Summer Olympics in 1996.

When Heal was selected with the eighth overall pick Thursday by the Sky, following in the footsteps of Liz Cambage and Lauren Jackson as Australian women selected in the top 10 of the WNBA Draft, Barkley had a message for his old foe.

”Shane Heal, I want to congratulate you on your daughter,” Barkley said on ”Inside the NBA” on TNT. ”But you are so lucky I didn’t kill your ass over at the Olympics.”

Heal plays with the same grit and toughness her dad did. It’s one of the qualities that attracted Sky general manager and coach James Wade to the 5-6 point guard. That and her basketball IQ, among a list of other qualities.

Heal’s time in the WNBL includes being named Youth Player of the Year and leading the Townsville Fire to the finals against Cambage’s Southside Flyers. Last season, she averaged 25.3 points and 7.3 assists and shot 31% from three-point range and 85.5% from the free-throw line. She also dropped 30 points on the Flyers in the semifinals.

Cambage, Jackson and Penny Taylor are a few Australian players whose careers in the WNBA have inspired Heal along the way. Before the draft, she was able to speak to Cambage and Jackson a couple of times.

Jackson pulled her aside during the WNBL season and told Heal she loved the fearless way she plays the game, and Cambage told her she was the future of Australian basketball.

Heal is joining a championship-caliber roster, but she doesn’t feel pressure from that. She’s confident in her ability to create for her teammates and command the second unit. What she’s most looking forward to is improving her game under the tutelage of Sky starter Courtney Vandersloot.

”The fact we have another thinking point guard [in Vandersloot] that can show her the way and matches her style will allow her to learn a lot,” Wade said.

Heal will be arriving in Chicago sometime in the next week. It will be her first time in the United States since she was a young girl, which she said she doesn’t remember much.

For someone who has spent most of her life away from home, chasing her dream of playing in the WNBA, this move across the world is nothing but a dream come true.

”This is going to be a brand-new experience,” Heal said. ”I knew coach Wade was trying to build a championship team, and I believe in it.”

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LAS VEGAS — Carmine Bianco observes a Raphael Wicky interview and swears he’s listening to Jurgen Klopp, the Liverpool boss who guided the Reds to the English Premier League crown last season.

WagerTalk’s ace soccer handicapper, Bianco does double takes when he beholds Wicky, the second-year Chicago Fire FC coach who, like Klopp, wears spectacles and often sports facial scruff.

Bianco has difficulty distinguishing the Swiss Wicky from the German Klopp.

“[Wicky] actually sounds like Klopp,” Bianco says from his Toronto-area home. “He’s very deliberate, like Klopp, very monotone. His mannerisms, he’s like a carbon copy.”

The Fire (5-10-8 last season) would fare well by mimicking 2019-20 Liverpool (32-3-3), which won the EPL crown by 18 points over Manchester City.

Liverpool, however, also endured a recent six-match losing streak at its vaunted Anfield, the worst home slide in its 128-year history. That came amid a seven-game run in which it scored only once on its own pitch.

Klopp, alas, is mortal.

In this space, though, we’re only interested in profiting from such stellar runs or sorry slides. The Fire’s new season begins Saturday against New England at Soldier Field, and the Fire figure into two potential money-making angles.

“Wicky’s first season didn’t go very well,” says Bianco, 51. “There was a defensive indifference on that team. It might be good on offense this season. From a gambling point of view, I might have to look at Over on Fire totals early.

“That was them last season. They could score goals, they just made some errors which cost them games.”

TAKE ROAD FOE

Wicky, 43, was known as a combative defensive midfielder in a career that included time in the German Bundesliga and La Liga in Spain.

In the 14-team Eastern Conference last season, only Montreal (43) and D.C. United (41) allowed more than the Fire’s 39 goals. Showing defensive combativeness will be imperative in 2021.

And of the 26 MLS squads, only the Fire (0-5-6) did not win a road match.

In handicapping this season, that’s salient. A bettor using $100 as a unit, or usual wager, betting on the opposition plus half a goal — to cover a win and draw — in the Fire’s 11 away matches would have made $551.95, a nifty 50.2% return on investment.

That factors some heavy favorite odds (of -448 at Orlando, -435 at Columbus and -407 at Kansas City, for example) to be expected with securing bets that reward home-side draws, as insurance.

A $100 wager, for instance, on Philadelphia plus half a goal at home, at -340, against the Fire returned $29.41 on Oct. 28, when the Union won 2-1. Had Chicago knotted it late, no matter, the bet wins.

A 29.4% return for such security is not minor, and all 11 of those away matches paid a dividend. Bianco agrees that it’s wise to employ that angle this season.

“And I’m looking at their totals, too. After the MLS Is Back tournament, Chicago played 18 games and 14 of them had at least three goals. Another good angle.”

A 2.5 total-goals figure is typical in soccer matches, with -110 odds that incorporate a 10% vigorish (or vig) associated with such a side bet. A unit becomes a $110 wager. Fourteen won, paying $1,400. The four losses cost $440.

So betting Fire games Over netted $960 over that stretch, a 48.5% ROI.

Combined with the opponent plus a half-goal in Fire away matches, and $3,080 in wagers netted $1,511.95 in profit, a 49.1% return.

For anyone leery of paying a price higher than -200, those 11 wagers become four, $400 that would have netted $348.73. Add the Over action, and that’s $1,308.73 profit on a $2,380 investment, a 55% return.

Bianco also taps LAFC (+400 at Draft-Kings), defending-champion Columbus (+500), Orlando (10-1) and Atlanta (16-1) as worthy future plays to win the MLS Cup.

Components of a soccer portfolio that, with guile and tact, will be expanded as we monitor the season. We’ll update with additional action, and records, accordingly.

And we’ll furnish an occasional HammerLock selection — Sunday, in Bergamo, Italy, it’s Juventus at Atalanta, -111 on Over 3 goals.

EXPECT GOALS

Past performance, of course, never guarantees a windfall. However, Bianco enjoyed seeing at least three goals being tallied in four of the Fire’s five preseason matches against MLS foes.

And that’s without Bulgarian winger Stanislav Ivanov (left-knee surgery) and German midfielder Fabian Herbers (right knee). Kiwi midfielder Elliot Collier (left ankle) has been shelved for four weeks.

Moreover, Djordje Mihailovic, who had an MLS-best seven assists last season, was released, inked by Montreal.

The Fire did add 20-year-old Nigerian striker Chinonso Offor to complement Robert Beric, whose 11 goals represented an MLS-high 35% of his team’s total last season.

Bianco also likes that the Fire returned to the Kentucky bluegrass of Soldier Field, which begins 2021 with a 7,000-fan cap.

“That’s good for the players,” he says. “Foreigners, especially, don’t want to play on artificial turf. And 7,000 fans in that stadium will probably sound like 30,000 or 40,000.

“Can Raphael get them to play his system, play better defensively? The playoffs should be their goal. They’ll battle Montreal, Inter Miami and New England for that eighth spot. When they play those teams, they need to get full points.”

Should Wicky hone the Fire into a playoff side, a few more people just might mistake him for Klopp.

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