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| saturday july 18 | sunday july 19 2015
the north shore weekend
SPORTS
Mad about Madi Strong commitment to conditioning lifted MacRitchie in two sports BY BILL MCLEAN, sports@northshoreweekend.com
I
t is Madi MacRitchie’s first serious day in a weight room, in the summer of 2013, the summer before her junior year at New Trier High School. Strength and conditioning coordinator Jim Davis tells MacRitchie, a field hockey and lacrosse player, to lift a bar, just a bar, weight plates to be added later. MacRitchie lifts the bar. It is heavier than she thought it would be. “I remember thinking, ‘How am I going to stick with this?’ ”says MacRitchie, now a 2015 NTHS graduate and ’14 state field hockey champion. “Hard. That day was hard.” MacRitchie sticks with the lifting sessions, regularly joining field hockey and lacrosse teammates during the seasons and in the offseasons. Davis is a constant, a motivator, an inspiration. He also supervises sprint drills outside and crab walks inside, welcome breaks from the reps in the weight room. The athletes chat and bond in the sprint lines and laugh heartily and loudly during the crab walks. “[Davis] was great, the way he got so many of us to come to lifting,” the 5-foot-6 MacRitchie, a Winnetka resident, says. “And he made it fun. He told all of us how much lifting and working would help us on the field, and he was right. We’d work out during our lunch periods.” Davis coaches a powerlifting team at the school. He recruited, unsuccessfully, MacRitchie to compete for the team, to travel with the team. Commitments to field hockey and lacrosse were her excuses. Davis understood. “Madi trained incredibly hard at the school,” Davis says. “She was consistent and dedicated. She wanted to improve as an athlete, to be the best athlete possible. Once you decide you want to be the best at something, you have to jump in, go all in. Madi did that, and she did that
Madi MacRitchie celebrates with fans after New Trier High School won the state field hockey tournament. PHOTOGRAPHY BY joel lerner
in an environment that’s also academically challenging. “Our goal in conditioning is, ‘Keep the faith, always keep the faith.’ Beyond that, it’s learn and demonstrate a sound work ethic and commit to your teammates. Madi did all of that.” MacRitchie did not get significant playing time as a varsity member of the field hockey and lacrosse teams in her junior year. The field hockey team finished state runner-up in ’13, the lax team third at state in the spring of ’14. MacRitchie’s impact
could be felt — and heard — from sidelines. It surprised nobody when MacRitchie received the field hockey team’s Spirit Award. She kept lifting and running and crab walking in the summer before her senior year, determined to provide noise with her field hockey and lacrosse sticks. She started at right midfield for the field hockey team, flicking assists for a 22-2-1 team that edged reigning state champion Lake Forest High School 2-1 in overtime for the state title on
Nov. 1. The team’s three favorite numbers ended up being 1, 5 and 7. Kitty Kenyon scored the clincher. “With 15.7 seconds left in overtime,” MacRitchie recalls. MacRitchie took the lacrosse fields as an attack/middie, mostly as an attack, for NT this past spring. She ranked third among teammates in ground balls (23) and fourth in goals (22). MacRitchie also contributed 15 ground ball controls and six assists. NT (20-3) beat Glenbrook South 8-6 in the game for
third place at the state tournament on June 5. “I saw Madi play in a [lacrosse] game near the end of the season, and when she ran hard during an attack on goal, I had a flashback to a moment she had in the weight room,” Davis says. “She was aggressive on that play, absolutely aggressive, full tilt, full speed. Field hockey, lacrosse, time in the weight room … it didn’t matter where Madi was. She approached everything in the same way, aggressively, and it showed. It definitely showed.”
MacRitchie played the violin for nine years and performed for New Trier’s symphony. She lifted a bar in weight rooms and stroked a bow in concert halls. It was a thrill for her, becoming close friends with athletes and musicians. A member of the Rush University Medical Center Junior Board, MacRitchie entertained young patients, made them smile, made their days. Balance. Madi MacRitchie personified balance. MacRitchie’s career in organized sports ended when New Trier’s lacrosse season ended last month. She will take liberal arts classes at the University of Michigan as a f reshman in 2015-16 and then apply to the university’s business school. Her good friend, classmate and lacrosse teammate, Grace Hemmer, intends to play Big Ten lacrosse at UM. “I’ll be the No. 1 University of Michigan lacrosse fan, no doubt,” MacRitchie says. “I’ll be at all of the home games. I might do intramurals. Since I won’t play a sport in college, I will devote most of my time to academics. I am interested, really interested, in seeing where that takes me. “I hope to find my niche.” Count on it. She is finding time, this summer, to serve as a lifeguard and a lifeguard manger at Winnetka beaches, run with her mother, Jennifer, and take spin classes — taught by Marli Gitles (NTHS, ’15) — at Spynergy in Winnetka. One of Jim Davis’ charges has no intention of slowing down. That MacRitchie vs. bar battle, in a weight room nearly two years ago? The one almost won by the bar? It started something. It lifted somebody. “Madi’s strength, which she absolutely earned, combined with her speed, all relative to her body weight … she had to be among the best athletes at New Trier this year,” Davis says.