Deerfield Academy’s Jessica Lapachinski and Heather Wakeman traveled to Worcester, Massachusetts early on Friday, November 18th to give their presentation on “Athletic Trip Planning and Risk management” at the New England Preparatory School Athletic Council’s annual meeting held at the DCU Center. This annual meeting of NEPSAC school athletic directors from all across the New England and New York State areas represents over 170 schools. This Deerfield duo was asked by athletic director Bob Howe to come before the athletic director group and share the good work our school has done in providing an organized and well-structured outline for athletic trip planning. Heather works in the Center for Service and Global Citizenship and has been involved similarly with how Deerfield sets policy and oversees the approval process for overnight off-campus travel on all school sponsored trips. Jessica, who works in the Athletic Department, oversees all the off-campus athletic trips which include tournaments and all pre-season trip planning. “The collaborative effort between our two departments on this project has been outstanding!” commented Bob Howe.
“Since my arrival to the Deerfield campus a few months ago I’ve been pleased with the direction Jessica has taken off-campus overnight athletic team travel. We received great support from the Center for Service and Global Citizenship as they have been instrumental with our department’s forward progress and together the school has come up with a much improved travel policy. Risk management is a large concern for athletic directors and schools whenever their teams leave campus for extended periods of time. I was pleased that our school, with the good work done by Jessica and Heather, could offer this information at the annual athletic directors’ meeting.” Their 45-minute presentation received great feedback on the information they brought to the conference.