Former Lady Dawg is all business on and off soccer field

Madelinne Deitrick, a 2017 Burnet High School graduate, rolls out of bed pretty early to make her 8 a.m. class at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

After classes end at 1 p.m., she follows with lunch and studying before soccer practices at 5:30 p.m. or games on Wednesdays. If she’s lucky, Deitrick gets home at about 9:30 p.m., and she and her roommates cook dinner and do more schoolwork. She’s in bed around midnight, only to get up and do it over again the next morning.

And Saturdays, well, those could mean more practices and games, depending on the season.

It’s not an easy schedule and definitely isn’t for everyone.

“It’s really time management,” Deitrick said about balancing academics and athletics. “You have to learn it. Growing up being an athlete, you understand you have to manage your time wisely. You don’t get time off. You go to class and you go to soccer.”

Along with a good heaping of hard work, which is paying off for the former Lady Dawg on the soccer field as well as in the classroom.

Deitrick, a junior midfielder on the Lesley University women’s soccer team, is doing what she did for the Burnet Lady Dawgs: helping them make the playoffs.

Deitrick and the Lynx (14-3-2) won their third consecutive New England Collegiate Conference championship title and the automatic bid to the NCAA Division III women’s soccer tournament November 9.

She was a big part of that victory.

Deitrick scored the first goal of the match against Elms College on a header from a corner kick. It’s her fifth of the season. She leads her team in goals scored.

She also scored one of four penalty kicks to beat Elms College 4-3 in a shootout after both teams played to a 2-2 tie.

Deitrick was the tournament’s Most Valuable Player, and her sophomore roommates, Sophie Smurthwaite and Claire Hounslow, were named to the all-tournament team.

The Lynx are one of 64 teams in the tournament and will face Messiah College of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, the No. 1 team in Division III.

The match is set for 10 a.m. CST on Saturday, November 9, at Shoemaker Field in Grantham, Pennsylvania.

Deitrick is committed.

“I’ve been working hard and trying to be a leader,” she said.

She is a two-year starter and a part-time starter as a freshman. Last season, she struggled with injuries but was still named the conference tournament MVP.

“I felt like it was a time to step up,” she said about the recent win. “(Head coach Paul Vasconcelos) was proud of me.”

The business management major is taking 16 hours this semester and said the challenge is juggling the coursework and the preparations that come with it while also being a college athlete.

But she does it.

Her classwork is more than books and papers.

Being a business major means most of her grades come from presentations, and her appearance is just as important as her work. She is expected to wear business attire as if she is making a professional pitch. It’s not unusual, she added, to have professors tell her she has two days to prepare a 10-minute presentation to give to the class.

“They expect it to be top-notch,” she said.

She noted many student-athletes at Lesley are also business majors, so she has peers from whom she seeks advice and insight.

Deitrick admitted she doesn’t have a lot of free time.

“The little time you do have to spare, you spend wisely to get it done,” she said.

Lesley University is a small, private school with about 2,400 undergraduate students. The university started in 1909 as a school to train teachers but has expanded over the years and has a vibrant business program that encourages entrepreneurship.

Deitrick’s goal is to own her own boutique one day.

She credits her summer job as a hostess in a model home built by Carothers Executive Homes in Georgetown as the catalyst for wanting to own a business. She pursued the job when her dad, Steve Deitrick, pointed out her talent for sales and working with people. Her mother is Marianna McNamara.

“That job really sparked an interest in sales and continuing a career in business,” she said. “I’m going to start somewhere smaller and gain knowledge until I can really do it on my own and take the big girl job.”

As any athlete will tell you, it’s always good to have a goal, but it’s also important to put the hard work in to reach it.

Deitrick is accomplishing both at Lesley in the classroom and on the field.

jfierro@thepicayune.com