Unfinished business: Spring sports cancellation robs SJCA senior Maggie Mangene of her only softball season
Editor’s note: This is the third installment in a series chronicling some of the biggest missed storylines of the 2020 spring high school sports season in Centre County.
Maggie Mangene spent years trying to form, and play for, a softball team at St. Joseph’s Catholic Academy. She began her endeavor her freshman year and trudged forward for three years, even when her efforts were fruitless.
In November, her dream became a reality.
Five months later, it was gone.
The spring sports season, and Mangene’s only season with the Saint Joe’s softball team, was canceled by the PIAA to help halt the spread of the novel coronavirus.
A flood of emotions overtook the high school senior when she saw the news, but for all that she felt, she described it simply: She was heartbroken.
“It wasn’t just because I put in all this work and had this idea for our first season,” she said. “It was because I knew I wouldn’t get to have the season that I guaranteed these girls if they helped me out.”
Her pursuit of a softball team started to become a reality when Saint Joseph’s athletic director Justin Rodkey was hired last summer. Rodkey put the team’s addition on his list of goals and began the work to form a program. After the efforts were put in and the plan was finalized Rodkey announced the formation of the school’s softball program, and its first team was set to take the field this spring in Mangene’s senior year, giving her the opportunity she worked three year to earn.
“This means the world to me,” Mangene told the Centre Daily Times in November. “I can’t express it. I’ve wanted this since freshman year and I’ve tried every year, but there was always something. This year, having the people to do it was really big. Officially being able to have it means the world to me because it shows my hard work has paid off and Dr. Rodkey’s work has paid off. I definitely couldn’t have done this without him. We couldn’t have done this without him.”
Mangene’s excitement in November mirrored her disappointment in April. She was already working with her new teammates and the team’s head coach, Bill Myers, for two weeks when the season was initially postponed.
The high school senior spent the next few weeks trying to prepare herself for a potential cancellation. She had plenty of people telling her the season was unlikely, and she knew the odds grew slimmer by the day.
But what that moment came, when the season was canceled April 9, Mangene found out what she knew all along: No amount of preparation could prepare for this.
Her heart was broken as she sat on a call with senior teammates, Teghan Prospero and Abby Bulick, who found out together with an email. The three fell silent as they tried to comprehend the news.
“We all just froze,” Mangene said. “I couldn’t help but feel sorry because it’s not just my season I didn’t get. It’s their season, too.”
One of Mangene’s next conversations came with Myers, who wanted to let his team’s senior leader know that she would always be remembered by the St. Joe’s softball program.
“I just tried to explain to her what she has meant to this program,” Myers said. “I just wanted her to know that she still had an impact.”
She may never have taken the field for the Wolfpack, but her legacy would last forever as the team’s mastermind who worked her dream into existence.
That, more than anything, is what Mangene will carry with her as she moves on with her life.
“It makes me proud,” she said. “It’s nice to know that I have my own legacy at St. Joe’s and in the community.”
Sure, the team was inexperienced with only four players that had competitive softball experience, and yes, the team was unlikely to win many games in its first year of existence.
But that isn’t what mattered to Mangene. She wanted to play the sport she so desperately loved with the St. Joe’s logo draped on her new jersey. Win or lose, she was ready to create memories in her final semester of high school.
And while they may not have been the most competitive team in the state, it wouldn’t have been for a lack of effort.
“These girls took this very seriously and they took a lot of pride in what they did,” Myers said. “They wanted to keep working at it. I couldn’t have asked for any more from these girls. I know it would have been a really fun season.”
Instead of those memories, Mangene dropped off her uniform shortly before her virtual graduation. She walked into St. Joe’s for the final time as a student, left to ponder what she could have done with her teammates in her first and only season as a Wolfpack softball player.
That’s when reality struck.
“I had all of my softball gear in my car,” she said. “When we took all of our school stuff back, I had to grab all the St. Joe’s softball stuff and put it away. That was when I really felt it was over.”
Mangene put the gear away, wondering what could have been in a season that now only exists in her mind.
Then she left, with her uniform resting inside the confines of the building, scarcely worn.
This story was originally published May 24, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
