NEW YORK — With a crisp white graphic look and roomy pockets, the uniforms to be worn by Team USA at the closing ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics were unveiled Wednesday by official outfitter Ralph Lauren.

The uniforms, along with Ralph Lauren-designed Olympic Village attire for the American athletes, had been ready to go when the Games were postponed last summer due to the pandemic.

“It seems like we’re all go now,” David Lauren, the company’s chief branding and innovation officer, told The Associated Press ahead of the reveal. “They had been designed, produced and ready to roll.”

The Games are now scheduled to open July 23 and end Aug. 8 as organizers continue to figure out how to hold them with the pandemic still raging and just 100 days to go. In the meantime, Ralph Lauren is ready with opening and closing parade gear for the more than 600 Team USA athletes, those participating in the Paralympics and Olympic-themed items for sale to the public.

Opening ceremony uniforms will be unveiled in July.

Lauren, the son of the fashion giant’s founder, said sustainability was top of mind this Olympic go around.

Ralph Lauren, which has been outfitting Team USA since 2008, worked with Dow on a cotton pre-treatment dyeing process that uses less water, chemicals and energy than more traditional methods. The process was used for a navy Polo shirt each athlete will receive.

A leather alternative using plant-based materials and agriculture biproducts free of synthetic plastics was used for a patch on the closing ceremony’s white stretch denim pant, which is made of U.S.-grown cotton. And like the lightweight drawstring jacket, a striped red, white and blue belt to be worn by the athletes is derived partially from recycled plastic bottles.

The patches are already a keepsake of the historic Olympic delay: They say “Team USA” with the year 2020 printed in red.

The zip jackets in white include navy collars and hoods, and striped red, white and blue cuffs. An American flag patch is on one arm and “USA” is on the other, the latter also down one pant leg. The athletes will wear a classic white Polo shirt, white sneakers with a stripe design and navy masks also made of American cotton. The uniforms were made in the United States.

The company’s Olympic retail collection will be available for purchase beginning Wednesday on Ralphlauren.com and in June at select Ralph Lauren retail stores, select U.S. department stores and online at TeamUSAShop.com. All revenue supports Team USA.

“We want our athletes to really be ambassadors for American style, culture and sportsmanship,” Lauren said recently via Zoom from Manhattan. “We also understood that the message for the Olympics was about sustainability, that this would be the most sustainable Olympics in history and a chance for the team to showcase ingenuity around new ways of thinking about our environment.”

Daryl Homer, a silver medalist in saber fencing at the 2016 Games, is hoping to make his third Olympic appearance. He was one of three Tokyo contenders to model the closing uniforms for the AP at the Polo Ralph Lauren store in Manhattan’s SoHo district.

The Olympic delay, said the 30-year-old Homer, was tough at times, with a year off from competition.

“I feel pretty prepared,” he said. “I’m just getting ready the best I can, given the situation. I’m just happy for there to be a Games.”

Homer, living in Harlem during the pandemic, used his downtime to be “a normal person and step outside of sports a little bit. I read, I went on walks, I ran, I tried to stay in good shape. I tried to just be present where I was.”

Jordyn Barratt, a Honolulu native now living in San Diego, was also on hand to show off the uniforms. The skateboarder hoping to make the Olympic team for the first time now that her sport has been added said “it’s all starting to feel real in the last month or so. It’s feeling a lot more real and a lot more stressful.”

The 22-year-old has nationals, a pro tour stop and world championships to go before the Olympics, with no competition since November 2019.

“It’s done great things for women’s skateboarding. It’s a very male-dominated sport,” Barratt, a park skateboarding specialist, said of the Olympic nod to her field.

And Barratt is thrilled for the chance to possibly head to Tokyo with her childhood friend, fellow skateboarder, Olympic contender and 2019 world champion Heimana Reynolds, a Honolulu native who moved to San Diego in November 2019, before the pandemic hit.

“I was probably like 8 or 9 years old just seeing her at the skatepark and we’d constantly just go skate together. We never really ever thought that we’d be this far in skateboarding. It’s really cool that we went from childhood skate buddies to traveling around the world competing, and now to this,” said Reynolds, also 22 and a park skateboarder.

“She was probably like the first girl skateboarder that I had seen,” he said. “I was like, wow, this is really cool that there’s girls out there skating.”

Reynolds, Barratt joked, was the “goody goody kid” growing up.

Lauren noted the Olympics will be the first time since the pandemic began that the “world has come back together again.” He called the Games a “coming out party” with a “sense of hope that we all need in our lives right now.”

Like other Olympic fans, Lauren is disappointed to be missing out on attending the Games in Tokyo. Organizers have decided overseas spectators will not be allowed. He has attended opening ceremonies for Olympics past in Beijing, Vancouver, London and Atlanta.

“It’s one of the great experiences of my life, to see all of these teams come together, to see the energy. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before,” he said. “When you’re there in person, it’s electric.”

There’s a sense, he said, that “we’re all one.”

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BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. — A prosecutor said Wednesday that he will charge a white former suburban Minneapolis police officer with second-degree manslaughter for killing 20-year-old Black motorist Daunte Wright in a shooting that ignited days of unrest and clashes between protesters and police.

The charge against former Brooklyn Center police Officer Kim Potter will be filed Wednesday, three days after Wright was killed during a traffic stop and as the nearby murder trial progresses for the ex-officer charged with killing George Floyd last May, Washington County Attorney Pete Orput said. Second-degree manslaughter carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

Potter was arrested Wednesday morning at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in St. Paul. An attorney for Potter did not immediately respond to messages from The Associated Press.

The former Brooklyn Center police chief has said that Potter, a 26-year veteran and training officer, had intended to use her Taser on Wright but fired her handgun instead. However, protesters and Wright’s family members say there’s no excuse for the shooting and it shows how the justice system is tilted against Blacks, noting Wright was stopped for expired car registration and ended up dead.

Potter, 48, resigned Tuesday, as did Police Chief Tim Gannon.

The Star Tribune reported that concrete barricades and tall metal fencing had been set up around Potter’s home in Champlin, a suburb north of Brooklyn Center, with police cars guarding the driveway. After Floyd’s death last year, protesters demonstrated several times at the home of the former Minneapolis officer charged with killing him, Derek Chauvin.

Police say Wright was pulled over for expired tags, but they sought to arrest him after discovering he had an outstanding warrant. The warrant was for his failure to appear in court on charges that he fled from officers and possessed a gun without a permit during an encounter with Minneapolis police in June.

Gannon released Potter’s body camera video the day after Sunday’s shooting. It showed her approaching Wright as he stood outside of his car as another officer was arresting him.

As Wright struggles with police, Potter shouts, “I’ll Tase you! I’ll Tase you! Taser! Taser! Taser!” before firing a single shot from her handgun.

Wright family attorney Ben Crump said the family appreciates criminal case, but he again disputed that the shooting was accidental, arguing that an experienced officer knows the difference between a Taser and a handgun.

“Kim Potter executed Daunte for what amounts to no more than a minor traffic infraction and a misdemeanor warrant,” he said

Cases of officers mistakenly firing their gun instead of a Taser do happen, but experts say they are extremely rare, usually less than once a year nationwide.

Transit officer Johannes Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to two years in prison after responding to a fight at a train station in Oakland, California, killing 22-year-old Oscar Grant in 2009. Mehserle testified at trial that he mistakenly pulled his .40-caliber handgun instead of his stun gun.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, a white volunteer sheriff’s deputy, Robert Bates, was convicted of second-degree manslaughter after accidentally firing his handgun when he meant to deploy his stun gun on Eric Harris, a Black man who was being held down by other officers in 2015.

Potter was an instructor with the Brooklyn Center police, according to the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association. She was training two other officers Sunday when they stopped Wright, the association’s leader, BIll Peters, told the Star Tribune.

In her one-paragraph letter of resignation, Potter said, “I have loved every minute of being a police officer and serving this community to the best of my ability, but I believe it is in the best interest of the community, the department, and my fellow officers if I resign immediately.”

Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott had said he hoped Potter’s resignation would “bring some calm to the community,” but that he would keep working toward “full accountability under the law.”

“We have to make sure that justice is served, justice is done. Daunte Wright deserves that. His family deserves that,” Elliott said.

Police and protesters faced off again after nightfall Tuesday, with hundreds of demonstrators once more gathering at Brooklyn Center’s heavily guarded police headquarters, now ringed by concrete barriers and a tall metal fence, and where police in riot gear and National Guard soldiers stood watch.

About 90 minutes before a 10 p.m. curfew, state police announced over a loudspeaker that the gathering had been declared unlawful and ordered the crowds to disperse. That set off confrontations, with protesters launching fireworks toward the station and throwing objects at officers, who launched flashbangs and gas grenades, then marched in a line to force back the crowd.

State police said the dispersal order came before the curfew because protesters were trying to take down the fencing and throwing rocks at police. The number of protesters dropped rapidly over the next hour, until only a few remained. Police also ordered all media to leave.

Brooklyn Center, a suburb just north of Minneapolis, has seen its racial demographics shift dramatically in recent years. In 2000, more than 70% of the city was white. Today, a majority of residents are Black, Asian or Hispanic.

Elliott said Tuesday that he didn’t have at hand information on the police force’s racial diversity but that “we have very few people of color in our department.”

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Bauer contributed from Madison, Wisconsin. Associated Press writers Doug Glass and Mohamed Ibrahim in Minneapolis; Tim Sullivan in Brooklyn Center; and Stephen Groves in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, contributed to this report.

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A little more than two years later the mayor is finding out just how difficult it is to turn the page on the nation’s racial history. The shooting of Daunte Wright, a Black man, by a white police officer has set off protests, political upheaval and painful reckoning about racism and representation in his small city.

Mike Elliott is among many who celebrated his election as mayor of Brooklyn Center as the beginning of a new era, marking the first time one of Minnesota’s most racially diverse places would be led by a person of color. Elliott, a Black man who had emigrated from Liberia as a child, was almost giddy in talking about his plans for multicultural city hall.

“It’s incredible, it’s really incredible,” Elliott said then of Hmong, African, Vietnamese and white residents living side-by-side in the inner-ring Minneapolis suburb’s working-class neighborhoods. He called his 2018 election “an opportunity for the great diversity of the city to have a voice at the table.”

A little more than two years later the mayor is finding out just how difficult it is to turn the page on the nation’s racial history. The shooting of Daunte Wright, a Black man, by a white police officer has set off protests, political upheaval and painful reckoning about racism and representation in his small city. The debate echoes one that engulfed neighboring Minneapolis and many larger communities last year after the death of George Floyd. But in Brooklyn Center, it is playing out in a place where some believed they’d made progress — only to be thrust to the front lines of the fight.

“It’s been very difficult for myself, for the community, to deal with the pain and the agony that comes from watching a young man be killed before our eyes,” Elliott, 37, told reporters Tuesday.

Since the Sunday shooting, the mayor has become the face of this community’s struggle, which comes as a former Minneapolis police officer is on trial in the Floyd case.

Elliott has promised transparency and vowed accountability for Wright’s death. He’s calmly fielded scores of questions from activists pressing for answers and plans. He’s expressed empathy for the protesters who’ve clashed with police, and ventured out in the nighttime protest in protective gear to appeal for peace: “I could feel their pain. I could feel their anger. I could feel their fear,” he said of this encounter.

Under pressure to swiftly fire the officer involved, Kim Potter, Elliott and the city council voted to fire the city manager, and give control of the police department to the mayor. On Tuesday, Potter and the police chief resigned. Elliot made clear the city already had been moving toward firing Potter. He said he hoped her departure would “bring some calm to the community.”

But the mayor also has acknowledged systemic sources of the distrust between residents and police in his city. Of the roughly 50 sworn officers on the city’s force, “very few” are people of color and none live in Brooklyn Center, he said, acknowledging he saw the latter as a clear problem.

“There is a huge importance to having a significant number of your officers living in the community where they serve,” he said.

The racial gap is not uncommon in suburban police departments, but is especially stark in Brooklyn Center, one of a nation’s many rapidly diversifying suburbs. About 45% of the roughly 31,000 residents are white, according to Census figures. Minneapolis, meanwhile, is 63% white.

The city has long drawn families from Minneapolis’ historically Black north side neighborhood. But over the past two decades, Brooklyn Center has become home to thousands of immigrants from Laos, Vietnam and West Africa in search of affordable homes, good schools and community. Nearly a quarter of its residents are foreign born.

“It’s the future face of America,” said Rep. Samantha Vang, a Hmong-American and Democrat who represents Brooklyn Center in the Minnesota House of Representatives.

Elliott, who fled civil war in Liberia with his grandmother, is part of the migration story. He landed in Brooklyn Center, already a hub for Liberian of immigrants, as a middle schooler, according to friend and mentor George Larson, a former principal at Brooklyn Center High School.

Elliott told Larson he wanted to be secretary general of the United Nations. He participated in student government, organized volunteering projects and planned a prom. In 2010, he graduated from Hamline University in St. Paul with a degree in international management and a minor in political science. Elliott started a translation company and tutoring nonprofit before running for office.

“He had the leadership gene from the get go,” Larson said.

Elliott lost his first bid, but won the mayor’s office in 2018, defeating an incumbent who’d served for a decade. In an interview with Minnesota Public Radio, he set some modest goals for a community that struggled to attract businesses.

At the end of his term, he hoped his city would be celebrating the arrival of a movie theater, a grocery store co-op and “some nice sit-down restaurants,” he said. He talked about starting a festival that could celebrate the city’s many cultures and spark some connections.

“Really bringing people together, bringing people together to celebrate, but bringing them together to govern, as well,” he said.

There are signs of progress. A labor organizer and former Brooklyn Center City Council candidate, Alfreda Daniels Juasemai, ran for office last year after noticing a “disconnect” between Brooklyn Center city officials and the city’s residents, she said. Most, if not all, unelected city staff and police officers don’t live in the city, and residents only see city council members during Halloween when they pass out campaign literature as they take their children trick-or-treating, she said.

Daniels Juasemai said Elliott is “trying his best” to change that through efforts like knocking on doors and asking residents how they’re doing, or encouraging community members to attend city council meetings.

Having a mayor that looks like many of his constituents fosters an understanding that was absent before Elliott was elected, she said.

“It’s easier for people in the city to connect with him, especially people within the Black and brown community, about the issues that are happening whether it’s in the city or the country and how we can use that to make Brooklyn Center a better place,” she said.

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Mohamed Ibrahim is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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In an extensive timeline of that day, the report describes the movements of the Capitol Police as officers scrambled to evacuate lawmakers and it details previously unknown conversations between officials as they disagreed on whether National Guard forces were necessary to back up the understaffed force.

WASHINGTON — A blistering internal report by the U.S. Capitol Police describes a multitude of missteps that left the force unprepared for the Jan. 6 insurrection — riot shields that shattered upon impact, expired weapons that couldn’t be used, inadequate training and an intelligence division that had few set standards.

The watchdog report released internally last month and obtained by The Associated Press before a congressional hearing Thursday, adds to what is already known about broader security and intelligence failures that Congress has been investigating since hundreds of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters laid siege to the Capitol.

In an extensive timeline of that day, the report describes the movements of the Capitol Police as officers scrambled to evacuate lawmakers and it details previously unknown conversations between officials as they disagreed on whether National Guard forces were necessary to back up the understaffed force. It quotes an Army official as telling then-Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund that “we don’t like the optics of the National Guard standing in a line at the Capitol” after the insurrectionists had already broken in.

Inspector General Michael A. Bolton found that the department’s deficiencies were — and remain — widespread. Equipment was old and stored badly, leaders had failed to act on previous recommendations to improve intelligence, and there was a broad lack of current policies or procedures for the Civil Disturbance Unit, a division that existed to ensure that legislative functions of Congress were not disrupted by civil unrest or protest activity. That was exactly what happened on Jan. 6 as Trump’s supporters sought to overturn the election in his favor as Congress counted the Electoral College votes.

The report comes as the Capitol Police force has plunging morale and has edged closer to crisis as many officers have been working extra shifts and forced overtime to protect the Capitol after the insurrection. Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman received a vote of no confidence from the union in February, reflecting widespread distrust among the rank and file.

The entire force is also grieving the deaths of three of their own — Officer Brian Sicknick, who collapsed and died after engaging with protesters on Jan. 6, and Officer William “Billy” Evans, who was killed April 2 when he was hit by a car that rammed into a barricade outside the Senate. Evans laid in honor in the Capitol Rotunda on Tuesday.

A third officer, Howard Liebengood, died by suicide in the days after the insurrection.

The Capitol Police have so far refused to publicly release the report — marked throughout as “law enforcement sensitive” — despite congressional pressure to do so. House Administration Committee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., issued a statement in March that she had been briefed on the report, along with another internal document, and that it contained “detailed and disturbing findings and important recommendations.“ Bolton was expected to testify before the committee Thursday.

The report focuses heavily on failure of equipment and training Jan. 6 as Capitol Police were quickly overwhelmed by about 800 of Trump’s supporters who pushed past them, beat them and broke windows and doors to get into the building. It also looks at missed intelligence as the insurrectionists planned the attack openly online and as various agencies sent warnings that were disseminated incorrectly.

Bolton found that in many cases department equipment had expired but was not replaced and some of it was more than 20 years old. Riot shields that shattered upon impact as the officers fended off the violent mob had been improperly stored, Bolton found. Some weapons that could have fired tear gas were so old that officers didn’t feel comfortable using them. Other weapons that could have done more to disperse the crowd were never staged ahead of the rally, and those who were ordered to get backup supplies to the officers on the front lines could not make it through the aggressive crowd.

In other cases, weapons weren’t used because of “orders from leadership,” the report says. Those weapons — called “less lethal” because they are designed to disperse, not kill — could have allowed the police to better push back the rioters as they moved toward the building, according to the report.

In terms of the Civil Disturbance Unit, the report said there was a total lack of policy and procedure, and many officers didn’t want to be a part of it. There were not enough guidelines for when to activate the unit, how to issue gear, what tactics to use or lay out the command structure. Some of the policies hadn’t been updated in more than a decade and there was no firm roster of who was even in the division. The unit was at a “decreased level of readiness and preparedness” because there were no standards for equipment, the report said.

Bolton also laid out many of the missed intelligence signals, including a report prepared by the Department of Homeland Security in December that forwarded messages posted on forums supportive of Trump that appeared to be planning for Jan. 6. One part of that document included a map of Capitol tunnels that someone had posted. “Take note,” the message said.

The report looks at a missed memo from the FBI in which online activists predicted a “war” on Jan. 6; Sund told Senate investigators last month he never saw it. Bolton also details the force’s own internal reports, which he said were inconsistent. One Capitol Police report predicted that the protesters could become violent, but Sund testified before the Senate in February that internal assessments had said violence was “improbable.”

On intelligence, Bolton said, there was a lack of adequate training and guidance for dissemination within the department. There were no policies or procedures for open source data gathering — such as gathering information from the online Trump forums — and analysts “may not be aware of the proper methods of conducting open source intelligence work.”

The timeline attached to the report gives a more detailed look at Capitol Police movements, commands and conversations as the day unfolded and they scrambled to move staff and equipment to multiple fronts where people were breaking in. It recounts several instances in which police and SWAT teams rescued lawmakers who were trapped in the Capitol as rioters were nearby.

The timeline also sheds new light on conversations in which Sund begged for National Guard support. Sund and others, including the head of the D.C. National Guard, have testified that Pentagon officials were concerned about the optics of sending help.

The document gives the clearest proof of that concern yet, quoting Army Staff Secretary Walter Piatt telling Sund and others on a call that “we don’t like the optics” of the National Guard at the Capitol and he would recommend not sending them. That was at 2:26 p.m., as rioters had already broken through windows and as Sund desperately asked for the help.

The Pentagon eventually approved the Guard’s presence, and Guard members arrived after 5 p.m. While they were waiting, Sund also had a teleconference with then-Vice President Mike Pence, the timeline shows. Pence was in a secure location in the Capitol because he had overseen the counting of the votes, and some of the rioters were calling for his hanging because he had indicated he would not try to overturn President Joe Biden’s election win.

The AP reported Saturday that Pence also had a conversation that day with acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller in which he directed that he “Clear the Capitol.”

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Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Colleen Long contributed to this report.

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MLB announced an additional experiment for the independent Atlantic League — a so-called “double hook” rule that would force a team to lose its designated hitter as soon as it lifts its starting pitcher from the game.

In its zeal to add excitement to the game and tilt the playing field back toward beleaguered hitters, Major League Baseball on Wednesday announced its most ambitious experiment to be carried out in its minor-league laboratories: Moving the pitching back one foot, to 61 feet, 6 inches.

The change will occur in the second half of the Atlantic League season as MLB once again will use the affiliated but independent minor league to workshop potentially massive changes to the game at the big league level.

Some experiments failed to gain traction — such as the “stealing first base on a passed ball” concept.

Others are now viewed as imminent — such as the automated ball-strike system, or “robot” umpire.

And others actually made it to the major leagues – such as the three-batter minimum that has handcuffed managers while also failing to cut down on the length of games.

Now, as average fastball speed creeps toward 95 mph and strikeouts annually outpace hits, MLB is hoping to reverse a 15-year trend of strikeout rates increasing from 16.4% of all plate appearances in 2005 to a record 23.4% in 2020.

In announcing the experiment, MLB says moving the mound back by a foot will convert a 93.3 mph fastball (the major league average in 2020) to a 91.6 mph fastball. Nearly three dozen pitchers who threw at least 80 innings in 2019 — the last full season — average nearly 95 mph per fastball, which would theoretically make their heaters easier to handle while, perhaps, impacting the bite of their secondary offerings, as well.

As for pitcher health, it cites an experiment conducted by the American Sports Medicine Institute in October 2019 that utilized “high-level collegiate baseball players” throwing from various distances; they registered “significant differences in key measures of rotational motion (kinetics) or acceleration (kinematics) among the varying pitching distances. In addition, ball velocity and strike percentage remained consistent.”

Naturally, all eyes will be on the second half of the Atlantic League season for dips in strikeout percentage and spikes in batting average. MLB last month announced a handful of experiments throughout the minors, including increasing the size of bases to better incentivize stealing them and limits on pickoff throws and time between pitches.

MLB announced an additional experiment for the league — a so-called “double hook” rule that would force a team to lose its designated hitter as soon as it lifts its starting pitcher from the game. The league hopes the rule would “incentivize teams to leave their starting pitchers in longer,” and serve as a compromise between the American and National league approaches to the DH.

The rule would theoretically curb the use of “openers” to start games, although reversing a nearly century-long trend of starting pitcher diminution would require much more than a singular rule change.

Read more at usatoday.com

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This was a trying and turbulent season for high school basketball programs, players and coaches. And there wasn’t anyone who did a better job of holding it all together than DePaul Prep’s Tom Kleinschmidt. 

This was a trying and turbulent season for high school basketball programs, players and coaches.

There were the on-and-off discussions for months as to whether there would even be a season. When it finally did tip in February it was an abbreviated one.

Along the way there were COVID-19 shutdowns, pauses, canceled games and plenty of teenaged-emotions to tend to and nurture. And, oh, throw in no state tournament to play for at the end of it all.

Coaches were in uncharted water, figuring out and putting out fires as they came. This season, more than ever, coaches were there to hold it together — at least as best they could. And there wasn’t anyone who did a better job of it than DePaul Prep’s Tom Kleinschmidt.

As a result, Kleinschmidt is the 2020-21 City/Suburban Hoops Report Coach of the Year.

In this unprecedented season, DePaul Prep did win the one high-profile event that was played, beating Evanston in the championship game of the Chipotle Clash of Champions to wrap up a 14-2 season.

The grinding but rewarding end-of-the-season run, which included a huge win over Brother Rice in Catholic League play and the Chipotle title, stands out. But it’s how DePaul was able to get to that point that impresses even more. The process wasn’t easy, starting with a program COVID-19 pause just after the season had started.

Star guard TY Johnson remembers the team’s Zoom meeting when his coach told them they were being forced to shut down. The Rams beat St. Joseph on Feb. 8 but didn’t play again until Feb. 19, beating St. Ignatius after having one full practice in the days leading up to that game.

But Johnson also remembers all that his coach did from a distance while practicing proper COVID-19 protocols. While Kleinschmidt was physically away from his team, he made an impact.

“He first made sure we all were staying on top of our school work and our grades,” said Johnson, who is headed to play at Loyola next season. “He always is making sure we are taking care of things off the court. Then he made sure we stayed in shape and were ready with specific workout plans he sent us. He was the one who kept us locked in and told us to believe and that nothing can break us.”

Kleinschmidt had already established himself as one of the premier coaches in the state before this season. He rebuilt the DePaul program, averaging 22 wins a year with six consecutive regional titles in the past six seasons. The highlight was a sectional title, followed by a trip to Peoria and a Class 3A third-place finish in 2019.

His teams are perennially tough and disciplined with a feisty defensive approach.

“When you play a Tom Kleinschmidt team you know what you’re going to get,” said Loyola Academy coach Tom Livatino, who has a long, friendly rivalry from their many Catholic League battles. “His players love playing for him. They’re connected, play great defense, are always well prepared, super tough and expect to win. He’s as good as it gets.”

But Kleinschmidt, like so many coaches this past season, was dealing with way more than scouting reports, player development and X’s and O’s.

First, the pandemic led to coaches doing their thing virtually through Zoom meetings. But even once the season started, coaches had to navigate it differently than ever before. These were young teens who have always been used to consistent, structured schedules through school and sports. That was all thrown off.

In addition, trying top maintain a sense of stability for players became paramount, especially adjusting to what amounted to a maze when trying to get through the season.

“The most difficult part of it was that every day you didn’t know if you were going to be able to practice or play a game, wondering if this was going to be your last practice or your last game,” said Kleinschmidt of the day-to-day uncertainty due to COVID-19 protocols.

While having very little control over the situation was challenging, Kleinschmidt said he and his staff tried to turn it into a positive. He wanted to make sure his players didn’t take anything for granted.

“We didn’t want to have this dark cloud over us,” he said. “So we went with that if this is our last practice or our last game, let’s make it our best. Let’s not forget this could be the last time you’re playing together with your best friends.”

And DePaul’s last few games of the season were the team’s very best.

In that final week the Rams won six games in six days, including Catholic League wins over Brother Rice and St. Rita, along with beating three highly-ranked teams in two days to win the Chipotle Clash of Champions. That remarkable run is as satisfying of an accomplishment as any team could have had in this odd, truncated season.

“That last week of the season … you couldn’t have scripted it any better,” said Kleinschmidt. “It was extremely satisfying.”

The Rams beat Catholic League leader Brother Rice in the final game ever played in the old Gordon Tech gymnasium, where Kleinschmidt’s retired number hangs on the wall from his all-state playing days

DePaul then took out previously unbeaten Young in the opening game of the Chipotle Clash of Champions, thanks to a sterling performance from Johnson. The 6-2 guard poured in 32 points in a convincing 55-43 win.

The Rams knocked off Fenwick and Bryce Hopkins in the semifinals after having lost to the Friars just one week earlier, and then beat up Evanston 51-36 in the championship game.

“I know it wasn’t the state finals but to beat Whitney Young, Fenwick and Evanston in 24 hours is a helluva run,” said Kleinschmidt of his team. “There wouldn’t have been any tougher road for us in Class 3A, and there probably wouldn’t have been a tougher road for those 4A teams.

Allen Cunningham/For the Sun-Times

“If you think about it, we could have played some non-conference game that didn’t matter to end the season on that Saturday. That would have been a terrible way to end a season, especially after all these kids have been through and all that they have put into the program.”

Yes, there was a star in place in Johnson. And a senior-dominated team featuring Johnson, Rasheed Bello, big man Brian Mathews, Jabari Sawyer and Cam Lewis was ready-made, poised to make a state run under normal circumstances. But the wise and sharp Johnson made a point not to underestimate the vision and belief his coach instilled.

“We were the underdog, but he put confidence in us in preparing for that tournament,” said Johnson. “His scouting reports are always incredible. He prepares us as a team and as players for the next level. And he’s intense and may yell a lot, but we know he loves us. He wants us to be better players and better young men.”

Kleinschmidt is quick to point out it’s the senior group, both their ability and mindset, that propelled the Rams to a final No. 1 ranking in the Chicago Sun-Times Super 25. He knew before the season he was fortunate as a coach to have this senior class, no matter what type of season played out.

“If we were able to play — and we know it looked cloudy for awhile there — but we knew if we played we were lucky to have this senior-laden team this year,” said Kleinschmidt. “They’ve been in big games, played downstate, had some experience on their side. We had the good fortune to have these kids. Our senior leaders kind of controlled the locker room and we benefitted from that.”

(As Editor/Publisher of the City/Suburban Hoops Report, a high school basketball publication for nearly two decades and a recruiting service, I have awarded a Coach of the Year in Illinois for the past 25 years. The following is the 26th recipient of the award.)

Past City/Suburban Hoops Report’s Coach of the Year

2021: Tom Kleinschmidt, DePaul Prep

2020: Tai Streets, Thornton

2019: Mike Oliver, Curie

2018: Mike Ellis, Evanston

2017: Mike Healy, Wheaton South

2016: Gene Heidkamp, Benet

2015: Phil Ralston, Geneva

2014: Tom Livatino, Loyola Academy

2013: Mike Taylor, Marian Catholic

2012: Robert Smith, Simeon

2011: Scott Miller, Glenbard East

2010: Gene Heidkamp, Benet

2009: Ron Ashlaw, Waukegan

2008: John Chappetto, Richards

2007: Pat Ambrose, Stevenson

2006: Gordie Kerkman, West Aurora

2005: David Weber, Glenbrook North

2004: Roy Condotti, Homewood-Flossmoor

2003: Bob Curran, Thornwood

2002: Rick Malnati, New Trier

2001: Conte Stamas, Lyons Twp.

2000: Dave Lohrke, Glenbard South

1999: Gene Pingatore, St. Joseph

1998: Mark Lindo, Naperville North

1997: Gordie Kerkman, West Aurora

1996: Rocky Hill, Thornton

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Too much beige in your life? Toss in some offbeat throw pillows.Read More

The third release by Gustavo Cortiñas, Desafío Candente (“Incandescent Defiance”), is an epic set of jazz and spoken word inspired by Las Venas Abiertas de Latinoamérica (“The Open Veins of Latin America”), an iconic series of historical essays by Uruguayan author and poet Eduardo Galeano. The Chicago-based drummer and composer invited more than 30 musicians and speakers from 11 countries to appear on the recording, in addition to his usual sextet: double bassist Kitt Lyles, pianist Joaquín García, reedist Artie Black, trumpeter Drew Hansen, trombonist Euan Edmonds, and guitarist Matt Gold.…Read More

This week’s featured gig poster was created for the Delta Bombers’ current tour by graphic designer Jason Lonon, aka Death-Ray Design.

Concerts are back, baby!…Read More