Madison football coach Lenny Schultz hugs senior Dan Schwab after the 2012 Virginia AAA Northern Region Division 5 quarterfinal. Schultz died in a traffic accident Saturday near Springfield, Va. He was 52. Madison football coach Lenny Schultz was killed Saturday in a traffic accident on the Inner Loop of the Beltway near Springfield, Virginia State Police said. Schultz was 52 years old.
Schultz and Albert Schultz IV, his nephew, were attempting to “re-secure” a boat on a trailer towed by a pickup truck at the interchange known as the “Mixing Bowl,” in Fairfax County, according to police. The driver, the coach’s brother, had pulled the truck off the road into a median area when a box truck struck the boat and one of the victims. The crash occurred at approximately 3:50 p.m., according to police.
The impact of the collision left Albert Schultz injured and in critical condition, the police said. The pickup driver had remained in the truck and was not injured. The driver of the box truck was also uninjured.
Schultz was a special education teacher at the Vienna school, from which he graduated in 1983 and was later inducted into the athletic hall of fame as a football player and wrestler.
He took over as the Warhawks’ football coach in 2011 when Madison was coming off a 1-9 season. It was his first job as a varsity coach, and school administrators asked longtime baseball coach and football assistant Mark Gjormand to serve as associate head coach to help in the transition.
Gjormand, reached by phone Saturday night, said he did not have to do much at all to help out.
“He built the program. We built our friendship together,” Gjormand said.
The two spoke on Friday about each others’ families and the start of football season. Gjormand’s daughter had just graduated from Madison. Schultz had remarried between Christmas and New Year’s.
“I’ve never seen him happier,” Gjormand said.
Schultz turned Madison into a perennial football contender. The Warhawks went 11-2 in 2016 and lost to eventual Virginia 6A state champion Westfield in a region semifinal. In 2015, Madison lost to Chantilly in the first round of the region playoffs and posted a 9-2 record.
Current and former players will meet with school administrators Sunday, Gjormand said.
Nick Conforti, a wide receiver who graduated from Madison earlier this month, said he would remember Schultz as “one of the few coaches who loved every player more than himself.”
Conforti said Schultz was a mentor and motivator.
“He wanted to make sure everyone had a good experience, even if it was hard,” Conforti said. “He was a really good, genuine guy.”