Athletic Director Darrin Madeley Copes with Undesirable Weather by caxynews

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With the recent influx of rain, Lake Forest Academy has struggled to accommodate its student-athletes.  The past few weeks of less than ideal weather have left the fields saturated with rain and have left them rather consistently unusable. This has added an unneeded amount of stress to the already stressful lives of LFA’s student-athletes. However, no one is as stressed as Darrin Madeley the Athletic director of LFA. Madeley has been kind enough to take the time out of his busy schedule and inform us what he has been doing during his long hours to provide for his students. A job he takes very seriously.

“Out of the three seasons, this is the most stressful for me,” Madeley said. “That is saying a lot when you consider that this is the only season I’m not coaching. And, so you know, the one thing I don’t wanna do is short change the kids or short change the coaches so, unfortunately, I seem to take it more personal when they can’t get on the field you know? That’s the hardest thing for me, even though it’s raining I still feel like it’s my fault, so that’s the toughest thing right now. Fortunately, the weather seems to be changing a little bit for us and hopefully, we can get on a nice roll here.”

Up until this point, how have you decided who gets what when there is a situation like that?

“Usually, it is who has got the game coming up, um, is the way we kind have,” Madeley said. “If girl’s lacrosse has a game — I am gonna focus on them right away if they have a game the next day, then boys lacrosse. And vice versa and same with soccer. If varsity has a game I am gonna make sure I can get them somewhere, which is why we have given them the bubble. It is usually kind of focused on, much less varsity/JV, just it is more focused on who’s got the next game and lets make sure we get them as many reps as possible.”

What would you say is the biggest issue, or um, roadblock you’ve had up until this point – the spring season?

“A true facility, a true sized soccer field, a true sized lacrosse field, a true sized baseball diamond,” Madeley said. “Like, just something where they can just get out there and go through game situations. Because, ideally I would like every kid to be done by five, five-thirty, on practice days. You know, we are backing them up a little too much.”

Have you been hearing any complaints from parents?

”No, cause I think they understand how bad the weather has been,” Madeley said. “For us to be getting cancellations from teams that play on turf — it kinda shows you that its just one of those really, really, bad couple of weeks. Our grounds guy said the other day that the amount of rain we did translates to roughly thirty-two inches of snow that we would have received over that same time. I know it is bad when the football field usually drains, and the lacrosse field, usually drains quick —  is still kind of spongy out.”

Madeley would go on to elaborate saying this is some of the worst weather he has seen while being the Athletic Director of Lake Forest Academy.

“Rain wise: the worst I have seen in twelve years, for rain,” Madeley said. “You know, we have had other years where all of a sudden, when you go into the spring and it is still cold. Which is actually better for us, because the ground can be played on. Then spring break would hit and those two weeks; the frost would come up and we would be fine, and you would be ready to go — even if it snowed it would melt quick. The problem is, with the rain it is that it has just saturated the grounds, and so to me this has been the toughest. I said to someone today I can’t believe it’s only the first week back from spring break because it’s been so, it’s been so stressful, just trying to find everybody a home.”

Madeley has tried his best to fulfill his duties as Athletic Director, and located the practice facilities needed for his student-athletes. However. the weather has done moe than just make his job difficult — it has made the commute difficult as well.

”Well, if you go, if you go back to our house, which is behind the building: the wetlands are on either side of it and there is so much water now that it was over top of it,” Madeley said. “So, we were driving through probably a half foot of water, to a foot of water.

This has been Kyle O’Shaughnessy, with Caxy News.