Pro Soccer Team Denies Utah Prep Academy's Origin Story

"Any claimed connections are false," says Real Salt Lake.

Utah Prep Academy via Google Earth (fair use)

Major League Soccer team Real Salt Lake wants to tell the prospective students and families of the new Utah Prep Academy that Real Salt Lake and its former basketball program never associated with the school—despite Utah Prep Academy’s claim that it descends from the team’s Real Salt Lake Academy.

That is not all that those students and families may wish to learn about Utah Prep and its sole surviving athletic program.

A history of children’s deaths

Today Adam Cheney is Utah Prep Academy’s headmaster. In August 2023, he was the clinical director of Diamond Ranch Academy (D.R.A.).

D.R.A. was a for-profit residential school widely considered part of the “troubled-teen industry.” For decades, parents, former students (who call themselves “survivors”), journalists and advocates have leveled abuse allegations against the industry and lobbied to shutter its programs. As far back as 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives convened hearings on the industry and commissioned the Government Accountability Office (G.A.O.) to investigate.

“We found torture and abuse of youth across the United States,” the G.A.O.’s managing director of forensic audits and special investigations told the House Committee on Education and Labor in 2008, when presenting findings on the industry.

D.R.A. was located on the same grounds where Utah Prep now operates, until state officials effectively closed D.R.A. last year amid wrongful-death litigation and adverse publicity.

Taylor Goodridge, 17, was the last of three children to die at D.R.A. Her tribe paid D.R.A. $12,000 a month based on its promises to help her.

Taylor Goodridge (courtesy of Amber Wigtion)

Goodridge, a volleyball athlete, had been vomiting for a week. Her blood pressure was low, her heart rate and temperature high. D.R.A. failed to take Goodridge to a hospital until it was too late. She died five days before Christmas 2022.

“This was a tragic death of an otherwise healthy adolescent that likely could have been avoided,” wrote the state Division of Professional Licensing in allowing litigation to proceed against D.R.A. “The panel members expressed hope that the State will investigate Diamond Ranch Academy” and “also expressed concerns over the entire industry with residential treatment facilities for adolescents.”

Between D.R.A. and Utah Prep, RAFA Academy came and went.

Months after Utah forced D.R.A. to close, a website launched for a new industry program on D.R.A.’s grounds. It was named RAFA Academy.

Journalists and advocates quickly noted that RAFA employed or planned to employ former D.R.A. staffers. Cheney, for example, was listed as RAFA’s “Executive Director” and “Clinical Director.”

RAFA Academy’s organization chart, as provided to state officials (fair-reporting privilege)

RAFA, at least at first, listed D.R.A.’s phone number as its own. Its mission statement matched D.R.A.’s word-for-word.

RAFA Academy’s ties to D.R.A. were not its only potential problem. The Rafa Nadal Academy, a tennis school in Spain named for the 22-time Grand Slam tennis champion, registered a U.S. trademark in 2015.

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (public document)

MartyG Reports inquired with Rafa Nadal Academy’s U.S. trademark attorneys as to possible infringement. Shortly thereafter, RAFA Academy’s website disappeared and its domain registration appeared suspended.

Notwithstanding its pedigree, RAFA also told the state that its licensing application was for “A new program (not previously licensed),” and not “A change in ownership.”

Part of RAFA Academy’s state licensing application (fair-reporting privilege)

State licensors seemed unamused. Shortly after MartyG Reports inquired, Utah’s Division of Licensing and Background Checks notified one of its investigators.

MartyG Reports received this response from the Utah Division of Licensing and Background Checks (government correspondence)

Eight days later, Jason Simmons withdrew RAFA’s license application, citing discussions with state officials.

The email “to official withdraw” RAFA Academy’s state-licensing application (fair-reporting privilege)

Simmons, at that point, was listed as RAFA Academy’s “Human Resources Director.” He had held the same position at D.R.A. And he does again today at Utah Prep Academy.

The latest incarnation?

Just like RAFA Academy arose atop D.R.A’s campus, Utah Prep Academy arose atop RAFA.

And just like its forebears, Utah Prep Academy has been long on claims and short on delivery. It promised to build an arena and a local Marriot, where scouts would pilgrimage like Mecca. Instead it racked up debt and reportedly failed to pay invoices.

Planned programs in golf, tennis, volleyball, baseball and rugby had been cut by December 2, leaving only its basketball program.

Nor would Ivy admissions officers or this writer’s fellow Exonians likely recognize much from their own secondary-school experiences upon inspection of Utah Prep Academy, a self-proclaimed prep school that sports a dot-com.

Utah Prep Academy also bills its headmaster as a “psychotherapist.” According to state licensors, he holds no M.D., Ph.D. or PsyD. They record him as a licensed clinical social worker.

Utah’s professional licensure of Adam Cheney (government document)

Utah Prep Academy makes perhaps its sketchiest claim in its biography of Assistant Coach Jason Mandaquit. There, Utah Prep Academy claims to descend not from D.R.A. and RAFA, but from “RSL Academy.” Indeed, according to its website, Utah Prep Academy was “previously known as RSL Academy” and R.S.L. Academy is “now Utah Prep Academy.”

Photo from Utah Prep Academy’s website (fair use)

Real Salt Lake is Utah’s Major League Soccer team. R.S.L. Academy is its soccer school. Years ago R.S.L. Academy also had a basketball program.

“Never a connection”

Real Salt Lake’s Senior Communications Director Trey Fitz-Gerald told MartyG Reports, “any claimed connections” between Utah Prep Academy and Real Salt Lake “are false,” and that the two share “no formal or informal ties whatsoever.”

That said, Utah Prep Academy may now employ former Real Salt Lake Basketball Academy staffers. But, according to Fitz-Gerald, “Any Utah Prep Academy personnel who may claim now or in the past to have connections with R.S.L. [or its] Academy saw those connections terminated and/or dissolved during the first six months of 2022, when the basketball side of the R.S.L. Academy was shuttered.”

When asked if there was a relationship between Utah Prep Academy and the R.S.L. Basketball Academy when the R.S.L. Basketball Academy was operating, Fitz-Gerald told MartyG Reports there was “never a connection.”

Utah Prep Academy’s Headmaster Adam Cheney did not immediately respond to an email seeking information and comment.