Illene Badgett’s journey of a lifetime began one day when she was rummaging through her dad’s stuff in the garage.  

A young girl at the time, she found what she could only describe as a funky tennis racket. 

She asked her dad, Bentley, what it was and he told her it was his old lacrosse stick. 

Bentley explained the sport he played in middle school, high school and college to Badgett and the next day bought two small sticks and showed her the game for the first time. 

Now, Badgett can’t get enough of lacrosse. 

“I love it. The sport is amazing,” she said. “There’s nothing really like it. The feeling of the ball going in and out of your stick, the feeling of the ball coming out of the shooting strings, the sound of the ball hitting the back of the net, hitting your teammate’s stick. The sound of the whistle, not the fouls of course, but at the start of the game.”

For the second-straight season, the Air Academy sophomore led the Kadets in scoring, netting 55 goals this season alongside 18 assists. She helped lead Air Academy to its first winning season since 2022 and was an honorable mention all-state for the Colorado High School Activities Association’. 

She is The Gazette Preps girls lacrosse Peak Performer of the Year. 

“It’s one of the most amazing feelings,” Bentley said of his daughter’s growth in the sport. “It’s almost indescribable when you see a person go from being unable to do something to being able to do something, that shift that happens in their eyes. When that ball hits their stick and their face lights up, and then years later, they’re scooping better. Then, the time they hit the back of the net and they’re jumping in the air and they’re looking over at the sideline. … It’s like watching your child take their first steps over and over again throughout their entire lacrosse career.” 

If her excitement over the minute details of the game wasn’t a dead giveaway, Badgett’s passion for lacrosse shines. 

She became the perfect player to help spearhead an effort by the Kadets’ staff to build a program that’s seen five coaches in four years, per coach Alyssa Clifton. 

The first-year Kadets coach entered the season facing challenges on two fronts. Not only did she have to turn a program around, but she also had a major personal change. 

“I moved to the Springs the summer of 2024 and I joined as the Liberty head coach,” she said. “Liberty had to fold this past year and thankfully, I also am the girls program director for the Bolts club lacrosse program here, and so a lot of my girls actually play at Air Academy and that’s how I was introduced to that position there. I came in as the head coach with the little caveat that I was due to have a baby in mid-April.”

Clifton missed three weeks of the season when she had the baby.  She brought on two strong assistants in Kim Campbell and Phoebe Estrada to run the team while she was gone, but it takes player leaders to truly turn a program around. 

Enter Badgett, whose passion for the sport stood out to her coach and others even as an underclassman. 

“Players with the mentality that Illene has are few and far between,” Clifton said. “She eats, sleeps and breathes lacrosse.”

Before the season began, Badgett was bought in. She recruited two players, including freshman Cameron Frazee, who ended up scoring 20 goals. 

“At the beginning of the season, she really acted and played like a freshman but then she had a lot of good leaders around her. Not just me, a lot of the captains, other players that weren’t captains,” Badgett said. “She really grew throughout the season.”

Team unity was at the heart of the Kadets’ rise. Clifton made sure the girls understood its importance early on, Badgett said. 

“I can say we have had a lot of problems in the past with not playing as team so something that worked this year is we had a different coach,” she said. “She really drilled into us that we need to play as a team and we did play as a team and it worked.”

One of the ways Badgett reinforced that message was through assists. She worked on feeding her teammates and using her drive to find open players for quality chances. She said the majority of her 18 assists went to Frazee. 

Badgett is quiet off the field but found her voice on it, according to Clifton. Several times this season, Badgett provided the energy boost that turned the tide of a game. She also constantly won possession through communication and her ability to place the ball in precise spots off draws.  

Badgett knew her team was special following the third game, a 20-4 win over Rampart. She said 13 of the 20 goals the Kadets scored were assisted. The contest sparked an 8-2 run for the Kadets.

For Clifton, all goals are welcome, but not all are created equal. She loves goals that come after three players have had the ball in their sticks. 

“When we’re working offensively, our system is to not only have someone driving with the ball but your drive is multifaceted,” Clifton said. “You’re looking for your own path to goal if you can get your own solid shot off, but if you have your teammates cutting like they’re supposed to be doing in our system, you may not have a drive to goal but you may have a drive that opens up a feed opportunity and so Illene is one of the girls who can see that and wants to feed. For someone being a top scorer on our team, she almost wants the assist more than she wants her own goals. … Her teammates feeling that support, feeling the love from their other teammates, having someone who wants them to be successful as much as they want themselves to be successful, that just builds into that team chemistry.”

The result was a connected Air Academy team that was easy to root for and turned heads. Badgett’s play stood out, even to parents whose kids don’t attend the school who were impressed by the way Air Academy turned its fortunes around and grew the game in the process.

But the Kadets’ young leader remained grounded despite the praise. 

“It’s not just me, it’s the whole unit, all the leaders just growing the game,” she said. “Sure, single players do help that out with just showing other players what they can do, what they can become, how hard they work because in the end, someone always wants it more than you. Someone’s always going to work harder and so when girls that maybe don’t work as hard or want to be better look up to someone who works hard, puts in the time, it really inspires them to put in the work and it really grows the sport as a whole.”