From resurgent professional sports franchises to a state university announcing a major move to high school football playoff expansion and a record-setting high school quarterback, these are the sports stories that dominated the conversation in 2025.

Bears take big step forward

After a 2024 where almost everything went wrong for the Chicago Bears, they had a 2025 where almost everything went right. The franchise took a major step toward sustained success over the past year.

That started in January when ownership shopped at the top shelf and hired one of the best young offensive minds available as its head coach, Ben Johnson. He not only brought over his playbook full of trick plays. But he built a talented coaching staff and a new culture to Halas Hall.

Chicago made some major moves over the offseason to boost its offensive line and bring talented offensive players in the draft. But the air was let out of the balloon when the Bears got off to an 0-2 start, including a blowout loss to Johnson’s former team, the Detroit Lions.

Then the Bears started to show their ability to pull off the improbable in late-game situations. It started on a blocked field goal attempt in Week 4 against the Las Vegas Raiders. Then they won games in the final minutes against the Washington Commanders, Cincinnati Bengals, New York Giants, Minnesota Vikings and most recently the Green Bay Packers.

The Bears enter Week 17 with an 11-4 record and their first playoff berth since 2020 with an NFC North title and NFC No. 1 seed up for grabs.

Despite all the good cheer, there were some tough moments in 2025. The saddest came in February when team matriarch and owner Virginia Halas McCaskey died in February. She had been the team’s owner since 1983 after her father and team founder George Halas had died and one of the NFL’s last connections to its founding. She was 102.

The team also didn’t make progress in building its new stadium in 2025. The Bears seemed to settle on Arlington Heights as their sole focus for a site. But after the state didn’t approve legislation to negotiate property taxes, the Bears announced in December that they’re looking at all options for a site once again, including Northwest Indiana.

-- Michal Dwojak

Cubs return to playoffs, win playoff series

Like the Bears, the Cubs took Chicago fans on a memorable ride this summer back to the playoffs.

A lineup that was one of the majors best during the first half of the season, led by All-Star starters Pete Crow-Armstrong and Kyle Tucker, helped the Cubs get off to a 37-22 start, the best start since the 2016 World Series-winning team.

The red-hot Brewers eventually passed the Cubs in the NL Central, but the Cubs won 92 games to secure the top National League wild-card spot for the franchise’s first postseason appearance since 2020.

The Cubs took the best-of-three series with the San Diego Padres, their first playoff series win since 2017, and survived two NL Division Series elimination games against the Brewers at Wrigley Field before losing a decisive Game 5 in Milwaukee.

NIU football joins the Mountain West; NIU athletics (mostly) joins the Horizon

It’s the story that spans two years and will even go into a third.

The rumors in late 2024 were confirmed with so much pomp and circumstance in early 2025, and they’ll become a reality on a football field somewhere to be determined, likely in September 2026.

NIU football is leaving the Mid-American Conference, joining the Mountain West for football and the Horizon for most other sports.

The schedule still hasn’t been finalized, but the home and away games have been announced for football. The Huskies will be heading to Air Force, New Mexico, San Jose State and UNLV next season. They’ll host Hawaii, UTEP, Nevada and Wyoming.

With the landscape of college football becoming more and more challenging for small schools, NIU athletic director Sean Frazier said the move to the Mountain West sets the athletic department up to be competitive.

“If I gave up, we’d never be in the Mountain West,” Frazier said. “We’d never be in the Horizon. I would have packed it up, I would have gotten in the fetal position, and I would be underneath this desk, and the thing would be over.”

-- Eddie Carifio

IHSA expands football playoffs

The “drive for five” playoff wins has led to much upheaval for Illinois football programs, member schools frequently changing conference affiliations for competitive purposes and having schedule issues, some forced to schedule out of state opponents. A number of potential fixes for this, including district proposals, have been voted down in recent years.

In December, though, a proposal to expand the IHSA football playoffs by 128 teams was passed by a schoolwide membership vote, 377-252, with 96 abstentions.

The proposal, submitted by Monticello High School, will change the landscape of the IHSA football season in a number of ways.

First, the playoff field will expand by 128 teams, increasing the field of qualifiers from 256 teams to 384. The field has been at 256 teams since the 2001 season.

The regular season still will include nine games, but the beginning of the season will start one week earlier to accommodate the extra week of playoffs games that need to be scheduled.

“We are hopeful that this football playoff expansion will provide intended relief to our schools by stabilizing conference movement and eliminating the difficulty of scheduling football games that many of our schools face each year,” IHSA Executive Director Craig Anderson said in a statement announcing the decision.

“It may create some short-term complications for some schools, conferences and coaches, but we remain optimistic it will create long-term stability in football and beyond.”

Football in December

Regardless of location or the number of classifications, Illinois high school football has a long tradition of hosting its championship games Thanksgiving weekend, the final weekend of November.

Mother Nature changed all that in 2025.

The forecast for a major snowstorm that eventually dumped over 8 inches of snow on the Chicago area caused Illinois State University, host of the state football finals, to announce the closing of its campus.

The IHSA subsequently announced that it was postponing the Class 5A-Class 8A championship games scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 29.

The Class 5A and Class 6A finals were moved to Tuesday, Dec. 2 back at Illinois State and Class 7A and Class 8A finals to Wednesday, Dec. 3 at Northern Illinois University due to a scheduling conflict at Illinois State – the first IHSA football playoff games to be played in December.

Jonas Williams breaks state passing records

Jonas Williams wasted no time announcing his arrival on the high school football scene.

As a freshman quarterback at Bolingbrook three years ago, Williams threw for 407 yards and seven touchdowns in his first high school game.

Williams transferred to Lincoln-Way East after his sophomore season. He originally made his college commitment to Oregon, decommitted and then chose USC.

His last season was record-setting.

Williams set state records for career passing yards (11,347) and career passing touchdowns (147). The latter mark is 20 touchdowns more than the second-most in state history.

Williams this season threw for 2,488 yards and 35 TDs, despite missing two games with an ankle injury.

“When I broke the career touchdown record,” Williams said, “that was something I will remember. The entire team ran out on the field to congratulate me.

“I didn’t feel a lot of pressure during the season to break that record. I knew that if I just played like I know how to play, that it would eventually happen.”

Girls flag football explodes in popularity

Girls flag football became an official IHSA sport for the 2024-25 school year.

In the fall of 2024, hundreds of first-year players from 156 schools competed in the inaugural season of girls flag football in Illinois – up from the 22 in 2021, when Crystal Lake’s Gustavo Silva, the Chicago Bears’ director of football development, kicked off a pilot program in Chicago.

More than 200 schools were expected to have teams the fall of 2025, IHSA assistant executive director Tracie Henry said. Silva’s big goal for the 2026-27 school year is 300.

He believes the sky is the limit.

“I think we can hit [boys tackle] football numbers,” Silva said. “Ultimately, my guess is it will land somewhere around four classes. There are [about] 800 schools in the state of Illinois. If you have 15 girls in your school, you can have a flag team. That’s my approach, at least.”

Nick Hildreth, Willowbrook’s boys tackle football coach and assistant coach for flag, along with head coach Rachel Karos has seen firsthand how far the sport can take girls.

Willowbrook captured the first Chicago Bears Girls Flag State championship in 2022. The Warriors then competed at the NFL Flag Football Championships in Nevada after winning a qualifier in Canton, Ohio.

Willowbrook advanced to the first IHSA-sanctioned state tournament held at its Villa Park campus in 2024. In 2025, the Warriors took third place in the state.

Girls wrestling takes off

The NCAA added women’s wrestling as its 91st championship sport, with the first NCAA women’s wrestling championships to be held in 2026 for a sport that’s been at the college level for three decades.

The growth of girls wrestling has spread to the high school level, including Illinois. In Illinois, it’s been sanctioned since 2021-22, becoming the 28th state to do so.

The numbers reflect that girls high school wrestling is perhaps the fastest-growing sport in Illinois.

In the 2023-24 season, there were an estimated 2,400 girl wrestlers in the state, more than double the number in its inaugural sanctioned season. Entering this school year, 350 schools have either a girls wrestling team or at least one girl wrestler competing.

It reflects a nationwide trend.

The National Federation of State High School Associations in August released its released its high school sports participation study for 2024-25 academic year, and it reflected positively on the sport of wrestling.

Girls wrestling topped 74,000 participants for the first time, jumping 15% from a year ago and adding nearly 1,000 schools with a girls wrestling program.