Training camp for the Chicago Bears started this week — which implies summer time is over, Chicago.
Well, for my household, anyway.
This is the tenth season my husband, Patrick Finley, has lined the Bears for the Chicago Sun-Times and his ninth coaching camp. If you’re conversant in native sportswriters, he’s the one who creates chicken-scratch drawings representing key moments when pictures aren’t allowed to be taken by the media throughout apply.
His first coaching camp expertise in 2013 (or, three head coaches in the past) was much like that of the gamers — days started early and continued beneath an unforgiving solar adopted by uncomfortable nights attempting to sleep on an extra-long twin mattress in a dormitory room at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais. While photographers captured gamers lugging rest room paper, large televisions and even therapeutic massage chairs into their momentary quarters, Pat introduced a newly bought mini-fridge for his area — similar to his freshman 12 months on the University of Missouri.
Through the a long time, the venue for Bears coaching camp has modified with the instances, even taking the workforce to Indiana and Wisconsin.
This is the second season the Bears have stayed house to apply at their just lately expanded and transformed headquarters in Lake Forest. Instead of dorm rooms, gamers dwell at house or in lodge rooms close to Halas Hall. While our son and I take pleasure in that Pat now comes house every evening throughout camp, I believe Pat misses the camaraderie that solely occurs when reporters — drained from a day capturing, enhancing and sending alongside their takes on all issues notable — are away from their households for days or perhaps weeks, however are searching for somebody to seize dinner or a beer with.
Those bonds solid throughout coaching camp proceed all through the season when the workforce’s sport and apply schedule takes priority over birthdays, anniversaries and holidays. That’s why it’s bittersweet to start one other cycle with out two members of this hodge-podge fraternity — Jeff Dickerson and John “Moon” Mullin.
Still, coaching camp additionally combines the thrill and chance of what might occur for the Bears this NFL season. And that’s why I needed to spotlight a few of that electrical energy, humor and optimism present in moments from camps a long time in the past and newer.
I hope these recollections from the Tribune’s archives rekindle the enjoyment that comes with new beginnings and recent begins — even if you happen to’re not a Bears fan or reporter.
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Thanks for studying. See you subsequent week! Bear down!
— Kori Rumore, visible reporter
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Photo gallery: Bears coaching camps by the years
Relive highlights of coaching camps from 1940 onward. See extra pictures right here.
1975: The first Bears coaching camp in Lake Forest
“It is 9:30. Truth time. The flashy car, newspaper clippings, praise from a college coach — all are no help now. Practice is a time for sweating intelligently, for the head to know what to do and the body to be able to do it. It is a time when jobs are won and lost,” longtime Tribune reporter Charles Leroux wrote concerning the first day of Bears coaching camp at Lake Forest College in 1975. Read extra right here.
Walter Payton: ‘Sweetness’ skips visitors, takes helicopter experience to camp
Payton paid $400 an hour for the hour and 20-minute experience to Platteville, Wis., and he had to purchase the spherical journey.
‘’It was the one means I might rise up right here quick sufficient with out getting a ticket,’ he mentioned.
Payton had been “involved in litigation in Chicago with his restaurants,” the Tribune reported, inflicting him to overlook the primary two days of camp. Read extra right here.
Jim McMahon: Gives himself a Mohawk
“I just kept trimming and trimming and it kept getting worse and worse,” he mentioned. Read extra right here.
William ‘Refrigerator’ Perry: Loved by London
The Bears broke camp to play within the inaugural American Bowl at London’s Wembley Stadium towards the Dallas Cowboys. Though the sport didn’t generate many headlines within the native papers, the Bears’ defensive deal with positive did.
“Reporters had considered and analyzed everything from his dietary habits to his love life,” the Tribune reported. Read extra right here.
Jay Cutler: Chills in a custom-made conversion van
A 12 months earlier, the Bears quarterback arrived in Bourbonnais driving a Cadillac Escalade. Read extra right here.
Photo gallery: What Bears gamers dropped at coaching camp
From TVs to bathroom paper to a guitar. See extra pictures right here.
Mike Glennon: Joins the cupping craze
“Cupping seems to have increased in popularity since American swimmer Michael Phelps’s body was all dotted up at the Summer Olympics in Brazil in 2016. Since about that time, the Bears have been using it too,” the Tribune reported in 2017. Read extra right here.
Tarik Cohen: Drives Batmobile-esque sports activities automobile to camp
In the Eighties, Jay Hilgenberg and Tom Thayer made the 180-mile trek from Chicago to Platteville on bikes.
Running again Tarik Cohen drove 90 miles from Vernon Hills to Bourbonnais in 2019 in his personal customized three-wheeled model often called a Slingshot.
“I only do the speed limit,” he insisted. Read extra right here.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com