Welcome to Chicago, er…Lake Forest: Halas Hall, Bears Training Camp Host

By Kevin Schroeder
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Updated: January 15, 2020

The Bears announced Tuesday that training camp will be at Halas Hall starting in 2020. The Bears spent the last 18 seasons at Olivet Nazarene in Bourbonnais, and leave just a year after the state of Illinois finally finished work on I-57. Getting through Bourbonnais remained a major pain, as the city failed to come up with a way to make traffic move even remotely smoothly. One would think that would have been a priority considering the boon that was for a town that has little to nothing going on the other 11 months of the year, but I digress. Going forward, camp will be at the recently-renovated team facility, which features the latest technology in in training and strength and conditioning and does not feature college dorm rooms. This will be a popular decision with the players; Cordarrelle Patterson has already tweeted out his approval:

Halas hall ❤️

— cordarrelle patterson (@ceeflashpee84) January 14, 2020

Less happy with the decision are some of the team’s fans, because after all, they’re the ones that are really important here, not the guys who smash into each other for a living. Nothing has been said about tickets for camp at Halas Hall, other than that they will be limited. What that limit will be has yet to be determined; the team has said a decision won’t be made until after the regular season schedule is announced, but that didn’t stop some of the team’s less intelligent fans from crapping their pants on Twitter anyway. The team has four practice fields available and built a rather sizable parking lot as part of the recent renovation, so it’s possible that not much may change. For what it’s worth, the next tweet on Patterson’s feed was this retweet:

Hopefully fans will still get the interaction with players like they had in Bourbonnais—-like my son meeting the man the myth the legend!!!!! pic.twitter.com/y8ZiWA9kBr

— Cerut20 (@Cerut20) January 14, 2020

Fan outreach was a major point of emphasis in Bourbonnais, to the point that the team had a petting zoo for the younger fans. No, I’m not kidding, and no, I don’t know why. And the petting zoo was far from the only attraction for the kids. I don’t expect the fan-friendliness to all of a sudden go away. This space’s far-too-early prediction is that things are somewhat clunky this year as the team works out the logistics and then after that, things will be fine. Regardless, it is important to remember that these decisions should be made with the players in mind and if things are slightly less accommodating for the fans, then c’est la vie. You, as a fan, are allowed to be slightly bummed if camp isn’t as fun or fan friendly as it has been in years past, but anyone throwing a fit on the internet should be forced to spend a month living in an ONU dorm room.

Twitter: @KSchroeder_312