Athletes love sports, and each other

A typical student athlete at Utah State puts in nearly twenty hours a week working on their sport.

Factor in a full load of classes, homework and all the travel involved during the season, it can be hard to make time for love.

Derek Larsen, a sophomore linebacker for the Aggies, found the time to make it work. What’s most impressive about Larsen’s situation though, is his fiancee, Maddie Day, is also a student athlete.

Day is a junior defensive specialist for Utah State’s volleyball team. She is from North Logan and attended Sky View High School, the rival school for Larsen’s Logan High.

Day’s father, Kevin Day, was Larsen’s assistant basketball coach in high school.

“He was my coach, but I never met her,” Larsen said. “We would go to his house as a team and everything but I never remember seeing her.”

Day graduated in 2013, came to Utah State and redshirted her first season in the program. Larsen graduated in 2011, served a church mission, and then enrolled at USU where he also redshirted his first season in 2014.

Once both were back in Logan at Utah State, it took mutual friends for the two to meet.

“She was my first date in college,” Larsen said. “I met her through one of my best friends. He wanted to ask her out, but for some reason he didn’t. I asked him if he was going to take her out, because if he wasn’t I was going to. Two weeks later we went on a date.”

After two years of what the couple described as on-and-off dating, they got engaged on Jan. 30 and are planning on getting married on May 13.

“The only time we saw each other during the season was maybe 30 minutes every night,” Day said. “That’s if we were both here. Our travel schedules were really opposite. If I was home he was gone. If he was home I was gone. We didn’t see each other very much.”

Day said the volleyball schedule during the season the team lifts together twice a week for a little more than an hour. Then, every day they don’t have a game, there’s practice. Usually her only day off is Sunday. The offseason isn’t much different. She has workouts three times a week and practice every day.

“During the season it’s always a lot more hectic,” Larsen said. “Early in the morning we’re watching film, then we go to class, then practice until, like, 6:30 every night, add in lifting, then homework. So yeah, about 30 minutes at night.”

“And that 30 minutes is usually taken up by homework,” Day said, laughing.

Gamedays prove to be the most difficult and time consuming. However, they can also be the most rewarding.

“It’s hard because you have class still,” Day said. “For volleyball, if the game starts at 7 p.m. we still have to be at the Estes Center at 3:30 for game prep. I didn’t usually see him until after the games. But we usually went out and got food after.”

“That’s what we always did after games,” Larsen said. “Whether it was my game or her game, we would go out to eat. Texas Roadhouse, that’s nice to eat after the game. El Toro is good too.”

Even though finding the time to manage a relationship can be difficult, Larsen said it’s also helpful that both are athletes.

“I know she knows what I’m going through and I know what she’s going through,” Larsen said. “We have busy schedules, we’re both fall sports. We at least understand what the other is going through so it’s nice.”

Both are going to be working around the schedules for awhile. Larsen has three more years of football and Day will be playing volleyball for another season.

— kalen.s.taylor@gmail.com

Twitter: @kalen_taylor