Not a moment to lose for Vermillion’s Lavin

The spare minutes in Maddie Lavin’s life don’t come often and they don’t stay long. That’s the way she likes it, though, so there’s no reason to feel sorry for her.

Lavin, a Vermillion native and a swimmer for the University of South Dakota swim team, is making final preparations for the Coyotes’ Summit League Swimming and Diving Championships, which begin Thursday in Fargo.

That Lavin can call herself a swimmer is true, but still debatable because it only tells a portion of her story. 

You hear about good high school athletes in little towns who play a lot of sports, but it almost never happens at the Division I college level. Even two sports are rare. 

But there she is, a Coyote cross country runner, swimmer, triathlete and a distance runner on the track team. If she was getting a full-ride for each of those roster spots she’d be taking classes for free until she was in her 40s.

As it is, she settles for making the most of the college experience. That’s by her definition. Others might say she’s insane. 

“There are some challenging moments for sure when I’m like ‘Oh my gosh, this is a little overwhelming,’” the junior said. “But at the end of the day it’s the most gratifying thing to do all of these sports. I have four different sets of teammates that I can call families.”

That includes her own actual family that lives in the same town. So that’s five families. The beauty is that her mother and father are part of those other families, too. Plus she’s known USD swimming coach Jason Mahowald since she was a youngster. 

“He’s literally my second dad,” Lavin said. “That’s true whether he wants it to be or not.”

Lavin is the school record-holder in the 200 meter butterfly and has the school’s third-best time in the 100 butterfly. Going into the meet in Fargo, she has the Summit’s top time in the 200 fly and the fourth-best time in the 100 fly.

“She gets better every race,” Mahowald said. “She didn’t have a ton of racing experience when coming into the program – just age-group meets in South Dakota where we don’t have high school swimming. We tinker with things and make adjustments and she keeps getting better.”

Mahowald said Lavin could be even better “if she listened to me a little more.” Then he laughed. “She’s like one of my own kids. She babysat my kids growing up, she’s been around our family since Day 1 when we moved to Vermillion.”

They have quite a history. Jason’s wife, Melanie, was her first swimming coach when Lavin was about 5.

By middle school Lavin was well on her way to being a gifted swimmer, but also championship multi-tasker. So when Jason told her to take a few days off from running in preparation for the state meet, he expected she’d abide.

It led to a rare dark moment between the two.

“Jason said I should be resting, so no running with the state meet coming up,” Lavin said. “But cross country season was coming up, too. A friend called and said she was going for a little jog and I’m like ‘That sounds like fun, let’s do it.’”

This was within hours of the words with her coach.

Another friend was riding her bike along with the two runners. They got to talking about this and that and forgot to pay attention to the route they were taking.

At one point Lavin remembered she’d told the swim coach she wasn’t going to run that day.  She also remembered – too late, it turns out – they were running right by Mahowald’s house.

“He was in his front yard,” Lavin said. “When I figured that out, I ran as fast as I could thinking maybe he wouldn’t see me.”

He did see her.

“We laugh about it now,” Mahowald said. “But I was a little perturbed at the time. I mean, the next time you go for a run after I tell you not to, maybe don’t run by my house when I’m outside in the yard?”

The laughs come easy for Lavin. How else could one devote that much time to four different sports and survive it? She was recruited as a runner and a swimmer for the Coyotes with Mahowald, cross country coach Dan Fitzsimmons and track coach Lucky Huber working in collaboration. If she wanted to take on three sports at a Division I school – it wasn’t until later that triathlon was part of the picture – that was fine with them. They would cooperate and communicate.

“They all convinced me I didn’t have to pick a sport,” Lavin said. “Without Lucky and Fitz there’s no way I’d be doing all this now. They make it fun and, honestly, a pretty easy process for me because they pretty much just let me do my thing. They trust me and they trust each other. They know no matter what I’ll come in and work hard and try to do as much as I can to help every team with the time I’m given.”

It’s always ultimately going to come back to time. That’s the way it is for people who do a lot of racing, for one thing. It’s also true of student-athletes with a lot on their plate. Whether you decide there is an art to time management, or it’s just a matter of discipline, is open to debate. What’s not debatable is that getting the most out of the hours of a day is an absolute necessity. 

“You don’t binge Netflix as often as you’d like,” Lavin said, providing the short answer to a long question. 

But then she continued.

“You just have to know when too much is too much,” she said. “I’m still going to graduate in four years even though I switched majors, which is awesome. On the athletic side of things, you realize you shouldn’t necessarily do more just because you have the time. At the end of the day, recovery is key and a lot of times, less is more. I’ve learned that doing the most isn’t always the best. I just need to put in quality time. Set aside time for practices and make sure you’re putting in the most effort you can while you’re there.”

And go ahead and smell the roses once in a while. As long as it doesn’t get out of hand.

“You have to have fun and enjoy what you’re doing,” she said. “If you’re not enjoying things, you shouldn’t be doing them. There are times when it’s definitely a grind, but having these people, my teammates, around me is such a bonus. I can’t ask for a better support group.”