An Iowa man admitted in court Tuesday to sexually assaulting a western Wisconsin high school student-athlete in 2018 in Woodbury after meeting the teen while employed as a strength and conditioning coach at a training center contracted by the Hudson school district.
Chase Wayne Madison (Courtesy of the St. Croix County Sheriff’s Office)
A three-state investigation began in May after a 23-year-old woman told her doctor and then police that her former sports trainer, Chase Wayne Madison, assaulted her several times at his Woodbury apartment, starting when she was a 16-year-old sophomore at Hudson High School, according to charges filed in July.
When the allegations were raised, Madison was a University of Iowa assistant strength and conditioning coach. The college cut ties with him on Aug. 4.
Madison, 40, was arrested in late July in Iowa on a nationwide warrant on charges out of Washington and St. Croix counties. He’s been free on bond since early August, and entered guilty pleas in both counties Tuesday.
‘I had to be careful’
According to court documents, Madison was the head strength and conditioning coach for Catalyst Sports Medicine in Hudson from mid-September 2017 through late May 2019. At the time, the business had a contract with Hudson schools to provide its services for athletes in the high school’s Raider Elite training program.
The woman told investigators she injured herself while training and that Madison connected her with Catalyst to help her rehab. She said she went to Catalyst for rehab sessions with Madison every day or every other day.
At Catalyst, Madison kissed her in a supply closet on more than one occasion, she told police.
While alone at the high school, Madison kissed and fondled her in a shed near the outdoor training field, she said, and also took her hand and forced her to touch him while he was training with her.
“(Madison) told her it was ‘hot’ and that they can’t get caught,” the St. Croix County complaint said.
She said Madison gave her his personal phone number and the two began to communicate through text, calls and FaceTime. She reported Madison asked her to send him photos and videos of her that were sexual in nature, and she complied.
Eventually, Madison invited the teen to his home, where he sexually assaulted her on six or seven different days, she told police.
“(Madison) would tell her not to tell anyone about their relationship,” the complaint said.
In an interview with police in June, Madison said he groped the teen and went no further with his assault. He said she sent him nude photos of herself unsolicited and that he deleted them.
Madison left Catalyst in 2019 and became an assistant strength and conditioning coach at the University of Illinois. He took the same job at the University of Iowa in August 2022 and worked with the volleyball and men’s and women’s track programs, according to a bio on the college’s website.
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A police analysis of Madison’s phone last year uncovered nude photos of the woman when she was a teen, and an Instagram screenshot of her in a bikini that he sent to a friend in 2018.
“The conversation between (Madison) and the friend were sexual in nature discussing the athletes’ bodies, personalities and sexual preferences,” the Washington County complaint read.
Sexually explicit text messages that Madison sent the woman in 2023 and 2024 were also found on his cellphone.
“I still remember you kissing me in the room with the supplies and stereo,” the woman texted Madison in July 2024, to which he replied: “That was hot in the storage room. We should have done that more often,” according to the complaint. He later added, “I had to be careful.”
Two guilty pleas
Madison was once a student-athlete himself. He won state titles in shot put and discus while at Newton High School, located about 30 miles east of Des Moines, and was a member of the track and field teams at Iowa State University and later the University of Kentucky, according to his online college bios.
On Tuesday morning, with his victim looking on from the gallery of a St. Croix County Circuit courtroom, Madison pleaded guilty to felony child enticement with sexual contact.
A plea deal he reached with the prosecution includes the dismissal of two other felonies — sexual assault of a child by a person who works with children and exposing a child to harmful material — and cap a prison sentence at five years. He remains out of custody on bond ahead of his scheduled April 27 sentencing.
Madison then appeared in Washington County District Court via Zoom in the afternoon for what was scheduled as a pre-trial hearing. Instead, he pleaded guilty to the sole count of felony third-degree criminal sexual conduct while holding a position of authority. Sentencing is set for June 1.
Other school cases
The charges against Madison surfaced amid two highly publicized school cases out of St. Croix County.
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In May 2024, prosecutors filed charges against Madison Bergmann alleging she pursued a then-11-year-old student throughout much of the 2023-24 school year through daily texts and eventually kissed him on the mouth on several occasions in her classroom at Rivercrest Elementary School in Hudson, Wis.
Bergman, 26, of Lake Elmo, pleaded guilty to child enticement with sexual contact and was sentenced to six years in prison in December.
Abigail Michelle Faust, 25, also allegedly kissed a fifth-grade boy in 2024 in her classroom at Rivercrest Elementary. She also failed to report Bergmann’s sexual misconduct of her student, according to a criminal complaint charging her with three felonies.
Faust was also charged in August with various felonies in both St. Croix and Washington counties for allegedly sexually assaulting a Washington County 15-year-old boy while working as his family’s nanny.
Her cases are ongoing.
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