Lake Forest Academy - Athletics

Athletics

The Academy was formerly a member of the Chicago Independent School League and competed against eight other independent schools in Chicago's suburbs in some sports. The school has recently withdrawn from this conference and will be playing an independent schedule in all sports next year (2009–10). The following sports are offered:

Students at LFA may also partake in non-team P.E. activities such as bowling, curling, salsa dance, jogging, lacrosse, water polo, weightlifting, and yoga, as well as a winter/spring musical.

LFA has a very strong athletic tradition that began in 1859 when Elmer E. Ellsworth, a close friend of Abraham Lincoln who already had become well known in the leading eastern cities by organizing military units called Zouaves, was hired to drill the students. Ellsworth was called to Washington by Lincoln who made him a colonel. He was the first officer to give his life for the Union cause in the Civil War. The Academy's drill team had been a pet of Colonel Ellsworth's, so that after the Civil War, when President Lincoln's body was brought through Chicago from Washington to Springfield, it acted as escort and guard of honor from Chicago to the State Capitol.

Because of the Ellsworth experiment, a gymnasium was erected in 1864 and physical training was strongly stressed. In 1876, the LFA baseball team played against Albert Spalding's Chicago White Stockings (later renamed the Cubs) professional team. LFA lost; the score was 31 to 1. In 1888, football was introduced by math and physics instructor William H. ("Little Bill") Williams. He later coached and was president of the University Athletic Association; and he has been called the father of the Western Collegiate Football Association, subsequently named "The Big Ten." The Academy's football tradition was carried on by such legendary coaches as Clarence Herschberger and especially Ralph Jones whose teams during the 1920s stood among the finest in the entire country. He had been the University of Illinois' head basketball coach and its freshman baseball and football coach. For eight years he had achieved great success in the Big Ten and had written the acknowledged standard work on scientific basketball playing. Under his stewardship of LFA's football program during the 1920s, it became more and more difficult for the school to arrange games with secondary schools, and soon nearly the entire schedule was composed of college freshman teams and junior colleges. In the early 1930s when an ex-player of Jones' bought the Chicago Bears, he asked Jones to coach them. He did so with distinction,which included the first NFL championship.

Lake Forest Academy is notable for not being a full member of the Illinois High School Association, the body which governs most sports and competitive activities in Illinois. According to a September 2009 interview with the school's athletic director: "... LFA's athletic philosophy and active recruitment of international students conflicts with the IHSA and that the Caxys are not eligible to compete for state championships in any sport. And LFA was not about to change its private-school philosophy required athletics for every student)to conform to IHSA standards." Kevin Versen Director of Athletics