Lake Forest Academy - Forest Lake, IL
Lake Forest Academy is a small private college prep high school located in Lake Forest, Illinois on part of what was once the J. Ogden Armour Estate, which in its heyday covered approximately 1200 acres of property north of Chicago. Our school has 370 students from all over the world as well as from several states of the union. And each student is required to participate in interscholastic activities, most in our full schedule of athletic events.
We have 2 soccer fields on campus, a baseball field, softball field as well as our field hockey field which compliment our football field. And in the fall of 2006 we hope to begin using our JV baseball field and practice areas. We will be growing in about 5 acres of turf this spring and summer with the plan to utilize this area for our football team practice area this fall. Along with our full schedule of athletic events, because we have dormitories available for our boarding students, the campus and athletic fields are rented out for training camps and day camps of all sorts during the summer, which makes it a challenge to maintain our grounds.
We will host four lacrosse camps this summer along with soccer, field hockey, and our hockey camps use our fields and track for outdoor conditioning and to make things even more interesting, we will have approximately 300 young day campers on campus each day from Mid-June to the beginning of August.
We manage right around 90 acres of turf, we have a beautiful formal garden area that was originally the handiwork of Jens Jensen, and we manage about 50,000 sq ft of floral display along with 2 large lakes and some beautiful old wooded areas.
All this is accomplished by my staff of three full time staff, along with one seasonal staff member who spends their spring and summer with the grounds staff and the fall and winter assisting in our indoor ice rink. At flower planting time we are supplemented with four additional staff that comes over from a nearby college campus to assist us in getting ready for graduation.
Of course not having an automatic irrigation system on the football field is a minor challenge, but our Kifco water reel does keep us growing when dry. And like everyone else, we could use a bit more money for fertilizer, pesticides and seed, but we stretch our budget as far as possible.
I am proud to by part of the LFA family for the last year and a half, I am extremely proud of the hard work put forth by my staff and would welcome anyone in the area to stop by and visit our little slice of heaven.
Mike Schiller, CSFM
Grounds, Trans.and Sports Field Manager
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