Page 11 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 94, No. 3 Spring 2014

Rising with the morning fog that blankets
the ponds of St. Paul’s, Maddie Crutch-
field ’14 grabs two things before heading
out the door: her trusted lacrosse stick
and a ball.
Her ritual is a simple one – spend be-
tween 15 and 30 minutes each morning
working on the two components most
essential to the repertoire of any good
lacrosse player: catching and throwing.
“I try to have fun with it, to mix it up,”
says Crutchfield, noting that she is hard
on herself on purpose. “You can throw
it wherever you want, give yourself bad
passes so you have to adjust. It’s good for
your coordination and reflexes.”
It is this attention to detail, this self-
discipline that has elevated Crutchfield
from the ranks of good to great in lacrosse
terms. Throwing against the wall of the
Matthes Cage on those early mornings, even
after days of encountering the dimmest
of light and the bitterest of temperatures
en route to her destination, Crutchfield
focuses on her non-dominant left hand,
with the goal of helping it catch up to her
right. That extra work has made all the
difference and, to anyone watching, she
appears ambidextrous.
“I know that Maddie’s own discipline
of getting up before Chapel day in and
day out, year-round, to play wall ball
has made a profound difference in her
development,” says longtime SPS girls
lacrosse coach Heather Crutchfield, who
is also Maddie’s mother.
While there are many more elements
to her game – grit, speed, and game sense
among them – Crutchfield’s home-grown
skills have caught the attention of dozens
of college coaches in her four-year career
at St. Paul’s, resulting in scholarship offers
from nearly a dozen Division I schools
and interest from scores more, including
all eight of the Ivies. In the end, Crutchfield
settled on Duke University, which will
afford her the opportunity to play at the
highest level of college lacrosse, while taking
advantage of the many offerings of a large,
academically challenging university.
“Anyone who watches Maddie play
sees her talent,” says Duke women’s
lacrosse coach Kerstin Kimel. “But there
is a recipe for what turns a good high
school player into a great college player.
It includes a sincere and genuine love
of the game, which Maddie definitely
has, plus talent and a work ethic that
fuels the desire to do extra work on a
player’s own time. The best kids we have
coached at Duke spend their free time,
away from their classroom demands,
playing lacrosse. Maddie has all of those
qualities, and that separates her from
[some of her peers].”
Crutchfield’s free time as a child was
spent on the sidelines of her mother’s field
hockey and lacrosse practices at St. Paul’s
and following the athletic pursuits of her
siblings, Ashley ’08, T.J. ’09, and Connor
’13. Stef Sparks ’01, who went on to play
lacrosse for Duke and is now a volunteer
assistant at Georgetown, remembers
that Crutchfield “always had a stick in
her hand,” as she watched a generation
of St. Paul’s athletes set a standard to
which she aspired.
“It was a huge advantage and a big moti-
vation to look up to those high school
players and gain exposure to the high
school competition,” says Crutchfield, 19.
“Going to watch practice was the high-
light of my day. And, when game days
came, I thought it was the biggest sporting
event there could be.”
Along with the advantage of having a
coach for a mother came opportunities
for Crutchfield to be a part of the game,
even when she wasn’t playing.
“I remember Maddie coming out in the
freezing rain, shagging balls for us while
her sister played,” says Jack Taber, who
has coached the Upper-New England
national high school team with Heather
Crutchfield for the last 15 years. “In my
25 years of being directly involved with
observing players in New Hampshire, she
is one of the top two players I have seen.”
She always had a stick in her hand
on the sideline, always wanted to
be one of the big girls . . .
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