Madalyn Abramowicz, bottom right, poses with three of her friends during the softball team's spring break 2020 trip to North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. With Madalyn are Taylor Harper, top left; Keara Mollenauer, top right; and Rhunette Johnson, bottom left.
Madalyn Abramowicz
Freshman, Business
Pittsburgh, PA
Posted May 11, 2020
Howdy everyone! I hope you all are doing well. I am making the best of this quarantine time.
I want to focus on the fact that we have to take online classes. This is something I have never done, ever, unless you want to count computer class that we had to do in elementary and high school. I am trying to get used to this. Group projects are a lot harder to manage, but it is sort of working out. I don’t think I enjoy doing online classes from home, but it has to do for now.
I am really grateful for my two younger sisters (one is 17 and one is 12) who are stuck with me at home. We keep each other sane through this all. We have done tie dying, played games, and even had my dad teach us how to play poker. We all need to work on our poker faces, nonetheless.
My dad has been laid off during this time and is stuck with us three girls, although we enjoy helping him with the little projects we have to finish throughout the house. While my mom’s at work, we tend to annoy my dad a lot with being bored after schoolwork is done. We force him to go outside with us and play "Around the World" in the driveway.
I don’t know what I would do if I was stuck at home by myself. I truly am grateful for my sisters. We also have had family come and drive by to say hello, which is heartbreaking when you can’t hug them goodbye.
My sisters and I also have helped my uncle’s girlfriend record an arts and crafts project for the Carnegie Science Center that should be on Facebook soon. I highly recommend checking it out.
Everyone is in this together and hopefully we will soon be back to normal. I truly hope everyone is well. We’ve got this!
Posted April 23, 2020
Hello, everybody! I am Madalyn Abramowicz, a freshman at Penn State Beaver. I play softball for the campus, and, as most of us know, all spring sports have been cut short due to the coronavirus (COVID-19).
When we first heard about the outbreak, my team and I were in South Carolina for a spring break tournament. We were all starting to create bonds and really started to find that chemistry with one another on and off the field. We had been having a great week and, on the last night, we all were sitting in the Hard Rock Cafe for our last dinner together when we heard that our season was suspended.
When the news was brought to everyone’s attention, I had been sitting across from our only senior and I looked up as the tears started rolling down her face. I didn’t know what all was going through her head; all I did was grab her hand and smile.
After the news was out, that is all everyone could talk about. I wish we had been talking about other things or at least I wondered what we would have been talking about if this hadn’t been happening. We had to make arrangements for when we arrived back at campus, which wasn’t hard for me considering I only live 35 minutes away and just had to grab a few things from my dorm and then drive home. The only thing I was thinking about was making it back home to see my family, who I had missed so much during the entire trip. They had never missed a softball game, and they weren’t able to be there for my first college career softball game, even though I knew they were watching from home.
I had it easy to get back home, but for my other teammates it wasn’t so easy. Some had to stay back at the dorms, especially one of my good friends from New York who lives across the hall from me. The impact of this virus and being quarantined to our homes didn’t hit me until I walked out of my dorm room and knocked on my friend’s door and hugged her and said goodbye and see you soon, because at the time we had thought that we would be back in a few weeks. We both cried and I then had to drive home. On my way home I had realized I would not play another softball game with a few of the girls on the team and it hit hard, and I wish we would have had one more game together.
This experience is something I never thought I’d have to go through, but it has opened my eyes for next season to not take a practice lightly or take an off day because the next day isn’t promised. There is no next level after college softball for most of us, and it should not be taken for granted.