Borrowed from a 1993 Paul Sullivan Tribune article written in a day-in-the-life manner.
As corrected earlier, no pizza delivery references in this one.
Has much changed?
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It is game day at Mt. Carmel. Like so many places where football is king, athletes and coaches alike prepare by tossing around fighting words like Frisbees.
Each team has its own unique approach to game day. This is how Mt. Carmel prepared last Saturday for Loyola.
Game day starts around 8 a.m., when players file into the school for taping. They will wander over to the nearby practice field and watch the first quarter of the Loyola-Mt. Carmel freshman game before heading to chapel service.
At 10:30, the first of several team meetings takes place in a first-floor classroom. The defensive unit heads in first while a student marches up to the blackboard and hangs up a banner.
"It takes a little more to be a Champion," reads the slogan for a sporting goods company.
For six minutes, no one in the room makes a sound, with only the rain on the windows breaking the silence. Then the defensive coaches make their entrances: line coach John Potocki in front followed by defensive coordinator Dave Lenti, the head coach's brother, and linebackers coach Pete Kammholz.
Lenti goes over defensive assignments and reminds players that Loyola is a team that likes trick plays, particularly on second down with short yardage.
The smallest details are brought up, such as the expected emotional reaction of the players when they board the team bus to begin the 30-mile trip up the Edens Expressway to Loyola.
"Don't burn a lot of energy on the bus getting all excited," Lenti warns. "After a while you'll see the Old Orchard Road exit and you know we're close, and then Lake Avenue. Then you start getting focused."
Toward the end of his remarks, Lenti launches the opening verbal assault on the North Shore, the area Loyola calls home.
"Their fans will be wearing Izods and turtlenecks, barbecueing and having a grand old time," Lenti says. "There is nothing better than going to someone else's house and taking it over."
The us-versus-them theme will be repeated in the next meeting, when Potocki gives a "demographics" lesson to the offense.
"If you study Chicago history," Potocki says, "you'll find that the people who got a little more money usually moved up north. Now, your ancestors lived on the South Side, and they worked hard all their lives. Nothing was ever given to them. That work ethic, that mental toughness and physical toughness, it's something that is ingrained in us."
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