Hanson Stadium Reopens

By John Montgomery

Hanson Park Stadium, more commonly known as Hanson Stadium, will never be compared to famous venues such as the Rose Bowl, Wrigley Field, Chicago Stadium or Fenway Park. But it has been a staple for sporting events since it was built in 1939, at Fullerton and Central, on Chicago’s Northwest Side.

It has been home to varsity football teams from Weber, St. Patrick, Prosser, Foreman, Steinmetz and Kelvyn Park High Schools, semi-pro football and Chicago Public League track and field championships. Built to accommodate crowds of 2,200 people, it generally hosted seven football games a week. After a thorough four-year renovation, which included new seating, locker rooms, scoreboard and press box, Hanson is back in business with the beginning of the 2025 football season.

“Hanson was their home,” said former Weber associate athletic director Mary Mitchell, recalling outstanding Red Horde teams that played there until the nearby school closed in 1999.

“Every Sunday we played at Hanson Stadium,” said former Weber football manager Gil Sanks. “The place was packed and we had tremendous teams (Prep Bowl champions) in 1961 and 1964.”

Hanson also hosted events for the Pan American Games, the Special Olympics, many city and state high school football playoff games and was the original home of the Public-Catholic All-Star Football Game.

“We are very excited,” said former Chicago Public League sports director Dave Rosengard, who spearheaded efforts to upgrade facilities at several city parks besides Hanson.

“Playing at Hanson was like playing in a college stadium,” said former St. Patrick and Notre Dame football player Dan Santucci, who also played in the NFL and now is principal at St. Patrick.

Hanson brings back fond memories to me, too. The first high school football game I ever covered for the Sun-Times was in 1984 at Hanson Stadium. It was a matchup between Bogan and Tilden. From 1984 to 2010, I covered games at Hanson for the Sun-Times and Tribune. It was fun covering two of the most competitive rivalries in the Chicago area, Gordon Tech vs. Weber and St. Patrick vs. Notre Dame.

“Hanson Stadium meant a lot to the Northwest Side schools,” said former Prosser basketball coach and athletic director John McEleney. “The beauty of Hanson was that it was not just for football.” Add soccer and girls’ flag football to the list of events that experience the new turf at Hanson. Steinmetz, which now plays football on its own field, will meet Kelvyn Park for the inaugural soccer game at Hanson.

It will be football when Foreman hosts Kelly for the first game of the 2025 season and Prosser returns by entertaining basketball powerhouse Proviso. 

The new Hanson Stadium will undoubtedly create memories for today’s young athletes.

CPL’s Hanson Stadium. Photo credit Chicago Public Schools.

John Montgomery Joins as Contributor

I am pleased and honored to announce that prep sports reporter John Montgomery is coming out of retirement and will be contributing stories to jacklydon.com during the upcoming high school sports season.

John began writing sports articles very young in 1978. He had stints at the Leader Newspapers, Learner Newspapers, Chicago Sun Times, Southtown Economist, Chicago Tribune and Chicago Bulldog Media. He has been layed up in recent years with some health issues but is coming off the DL and getting back in the game with jacklydon.com.

John is a 2004 inductee into the Chicago Public League Hall of Fame and a 2005 inductee into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association’s Hall of Fame. Few people have as much experience reporting in Chicago area high school sports.

His first contribution will be a story on the reopening of Hanson Stadium beginning this football season. Look for that later today.

jacklydon.com Website Review by Jared Polin

I have been watching his You Tube channel for years now. I respect his talent and his opinions. It’s not like he did me a personal favor. He does for anyone who asks (and pays him a modest sum). Early this year, Jared Polin, a You Tuber, photographer, content creator, etc., reviewed my website on video and let me have it.

My website has been basically the same since I started it about four and a half years ago, December 2017. I started publishing my photos and stories in the Center Square Journal about ten years ago. That local new website became Chicago Bulldog Media. I posted my photos on its website and Facebook page but unfortunately that paper went under too. Then the PublicLeague.com. It went under too. Then IL Preps Insider. Luke Druze gave that up a year or so ago. I don’t have good luck with publishers. I tend to kill them off.

Now I write for Inside Publications and mostly publish my photos on this website. Inside has been around for a while. It is a proper print publication and will undoubtedly survive, even with me on board.

My website has been the same for far too long. I played around with changes several times but I always liked what I had better. Late last year I saw that Jared Polin was offering critiques of photos and websites so I signed up. He actually did this critique about eight months ago. In typical fashion, I am just now getting around to posting it and changing the website now.

The video is posted here. I thought I would leave the website as is so my readers could look at it after watching the video and judge for themselves. My plan is to changer the website not look after the video is released. so you can decide for yourselves is the changes were beneficial. Let me know what you think. Let me know what you think of Jared’s critique and let me know what you think of the changes I will make.

Should I continuing writing?

Sun-Times writer Mike Clark came to the DePaul Prep stadium opener to cover the Marian Catholic game for his main job as preps editor for the Northwest Indiana Times. It’s always great to see Mike. He is such a great guy and so much fun to talk to about prep sports. Just so much knowledge.

He asked me how I liked writing.

“Sports writing is hard,” I told him.

I like to think of myself as a competent writer. Most of what I do is technical writing. I concentrate on clarity and brevity. That should translate to sports writing I thought. I was not looking to win any Pulizer prizes. Just say what happened and publish a photo. Four or five weeks into writing pieces for Inside Publications, such as they are, I am not so sure it’s a good idea. My writing hasn’t been good. And by that I mean, it’s “bad.”

Ten years ago, I started covering sports and politics for Patrick Boylan’s Center Square Journal. It was hard and time consuming. I gave it up to concentrate on photography. I love the photography. I have gotten pretty good at it. It’s opened doors for me.

I knew all this when I approached Inside about writing a prep sports column. My thinking was I don’t have to write well. Who really cares? I didn’t want to be so proud that if I can’t do it as well as real sports writers, I won’t do it at all. There is so little coverage of high school sports that people will just be glad to have more. The Inside publisher loved the idea. He didn’t seem concerned with my amateur status.

As I was talking to Mike outside the DePaul Prep stadium, he clearly had read my articles although he graciously never said as much.

“You are telling a story. Nobody wants to hear too much of the game action,” he said. “Just figure out what the story is and write about it.”

Mike is so right. His gentle advise affirmed my thinking. He inspired me to keep going. He pointed me in the right direction on how to be a good sports writer.

Thanks Mike.