'Simulated Lynching' Supervised By Lacrosse Coach: Ex-Student

LAKE FOREST, IL — A violent, racist hazing incident was orchestrated by a Lake Forest High School social worker and former coach during his time working for Chicago Public Schools, according to a former student. Other alumni of the Northside College Preparatory High School lacrosse team corroborated the student's account of an incident of corporal punishment in response to his late arrival at practice.

Daniel Maigler, 42, has been a social worker at Lake Forest Community High School District 115 since 2008, according to an online resume. Before that, he worked briefly at Maryville Academy, Holy Trinity Catholic, Schaumburg, Barrington and Conant high schools, it said.

In 2002, Maigler was the lacrosse coach at Northside College Prep, a selective enrollment public school school of about 1,000 that opened in 1999 in the North Park neighborhood. It was his first job as a youth sports coach after graduating college, he recalled.

Brady Chalmers, then 17 and in his junior year of high school at the time, recalled the incident in a multi-part account of his experience with homelessness as a high school student. Chalmers, who grew up in the Rogers Park and Uptown neighborhoods, is now an author and political organizer.

In the first part of his account, Chalmers describes how he, his mother and his three younger siblings became homeless. He said he never revealed to any teachers, administrators or fellow students that he was homeless and sleeping on the couch of a family friend in the western suburbs at the time due to fear that the Department of Children and Family Services would split up his siblings and send them to foster care.

Chalmers' recollection of what he describes as a "racist physical assault" under the direction of "Coach Dan" Maigler is included in the second part of his "My Homeless Year" series of posts.

Maigler said he did not recall Chalmers by name or the incident he describes below.

Chalmers, now 34, said the incident began when he was late one day for practice. He said Maigler offered him the option of being kicked off the team or receiving a punishment determined by the team:

“We should whip him!” Someone shouted.
“What the [expletive]?” I say.
“No! No! We can’t whip him. Whip Lacrosse Balls at him!” Someone else chimed in.
“Yeah! Yeah! Have him turn around, and we’ll whip Lacrosse balls at his back!”
I am numb. Stunned. Struggling to process what I’m hearing. Then, Coach Dan speaks. Finally, I think — some order.
“You can’t use Lacrosse balls.” He chuckles. “They’ll leave marks and might actually injure him. Use tennis balls instead.”

As Chalmers described it, Maigler's intention not to leave marks indicates he recognized the incident constituted child abuse.

But Maigler said it would be inconceivable to suggest whipping lacrosse balls at a player. Likewise, he said he could not imagine threatening to throw anyone off the team at Northside College Prep, considering there were so few players the team would risk having to forfeit.

Chalmers, who recalls being one of only a few non-multiracial Black students at the school, said the group of teenage boys demanded he beg for more every time he was struck with balls.

He remembers a Black teammate called the punishment racist at the time, but Maigler warned he would be off the team if he did not abide by it, according to Chalmers' memory of the incident.

Chalmers said he told himself quitting would show his torturers they won. He initially remembered turning his back and holding the fence, allowing himself to be pelted from behind. But in an online comment, one of his former teammates remembers the incident with Chalmers tied up to the goal, with the other teens lined up like a firing squad.

"It was darker than my brain would allow me to remember," Chalmers told Patch.

Every student who was there for the incident, even those who took sadistic pleasure in the attack, should be considered a victim, Chalmers said. The responsibility falls squarely on Maigler's shoulders.

"The whole reason that there is an adult there is to prevent that from happening," Chalmers said.

"When you tie a Black kid up to a goalpost with his back exposed, in an indefensible position, and you whip anything at him — that's simulated whipping," he said. "When you make him say, 'Thank you, sir, may I have another,' after every single time he takes a hit, you can't call that anything other than racial terror. Now, you can call it hazing, and it is hazing, but it's racist hazing."

Maigler told Patch he would not have noticed any racial undertones in the punishment Chalmers described.

"See, that's an issue of privilege. As a white person, that never would have occurred to me, but that's privilege,” Maigler said Monday. “That's white privilege to just never have thought of that. I mean, I literally was in my backyard having my 8-year-old and my 5-year-old [throw] tennis balls at my back last weekend."

Maigler, who earned a base salary of over $112,000 in the most recent year where data is available, said he changed his discipline style following an incident in 2011 when the captain of the LFHS varsity team expressed unease about the way he was enforcing rules.

Lacrosse, he said, was supposed to be fun. Maigler said he took responsibility if any of his former players had experiences that prevented them from enjoying their time on one of his team.

"No matter what my intentions were, or what my goals were, if they were feeling left out or if they were feeling not part of the team or they were feeling like I didn't like them, then that's a failure as a coach," he said. "And I'm sure throughout all my career, I've coached 300 kids or something like that, there were some who had better experiences with me and some that had worse, but it's never OK."

Maigler said he stepped down as head coach of the Lake Forest High School lacrosse team in 2015 due to increased family time commitments. While he said he did not recall the incident Chalmers describes, the licensed social worker said he could imagine asking the team to come up with a form of physical punishment if a player were to reject push-ups as a form of discipline. He apologized for any resulting trauma.

"It doesn't matter what my intention was," Maigler said. "If that was your experience, then that's real and that matters, and I'm sorry that you had that experience."

Chalmers said there was only one incident of violent hazing during his time on the lacrosse team. He said he hoped it never happened to any other children while they were under Maigler's supervision.

"It could have just been me," he said. "I highly doubt that he orchestrated the simulated lynching of someone else. I don't know, I hope not. My hope is that this was a one-off."