Photo Courtesy of ISU Smugmug
Madison Cicierski
ISU Sports Information
Dear Miss 2015 Madi Cicierski,
You are about to embark on a long, transformational journey of college athletics. You have worked hard through your high school career, in both athletics and academics, to prepare yourself for the next step. Your next step will be improving yourself and serving your community through physical education by attending Idaho State University. ISU will not only offer you more time to compete in the sport you love and lead to completion of two degrees and a minor, but it will also bring you a new home, a new community, new passions, inconceivable personal growth, a career, a furry best friend, a husband and a lifetime worth of gratitude gained through valuable experiences and relationships.
Freshman year will bring your first set of challenges as a member of the collegiate student-athlete life. The track and field program will be in need of change, and you will have to learn to adapt to those changes. You will be the youngest athlete on the throwing team, and by the start of the outdoor season, you will be the only female thrower for ISU. You will not have an official coach. You will have to rely on yourself and your older male teammates for coaching, motivation and support. Being away from your family, friends and life in Montana will allow you to focus on embracing who you are and who you will become, while never forgetting where you came from. Your goals to perform your best, break records, score points, exceed everyone’s expectations and dispel their doubts, including your own, will crush you. But, you will build yourself up from the burden of lofty goals for a few celebratory moments only to be crushed again. However, you will work hard, grow, and persevere.
Sophomore year will bring you a new coach, new teammates and a new motivation to work harder, dig deeper and succeed. But you will have more lessons to learn. You will sustain injuries that bar you from competition and force you to take a “redshirt” year. Again, you will be alone, rehabbing and working towards getting back to 100% to perform next season. Having a redshirt year will be a blessing and a curse. You will miss competing, working out and throwing. Yet, you will find your calling in the outdoor education program by instructing and beginning your path towards being an influencer in the community through passions that go far beyond the track. Through this redshirt year of healing, you will develop an understanding of injuries, isolation, motivation and self-help. Due to the new coach’s belief of being too small to be a thrower, you will also have to gain weight, which will challenge your self-confidence and body image for the better. You will learn to love yourself no matter how you look or feel.
Junior year will bring you teammates finally, health, the ability to compete and the title of the top thrower for ISU at last. You will be challenged as a leader, teammate and competitor. You will have another new coach with another different throwing style. You will have fun at practices and will improve during competitions. Failures will bring you not just tears but a true friend and a new perspective of track. Success will bring you lessons in technique, trust in progress and happiness. Weight room records will be broken, and you will be placed in the ISU Top Ten All-Performance list for two of your four events: hammer and weight throw.
Senior year will bring you a development of new strengths. The process of losing weight to perform better in discus and javelin will create a long, difficult indoor season for the weight throw. Your confidence and patience will be tested when trusting yourself and your abilities but will pay off incredibly in the outdoor season. You will throw your best discus and javelin throws of your career, and you will make the Top Ten list for the discus throw. You will experience the success only to have another back injury in the middle of the season. This injury will set you back, but you persevere through to the end. Even though you will not place or achieve your goals, this injury will spark your love for the sport and increase your drive and determination for your last season. Senior year will bring graduation, celebration of your Summa Cum Laude achievement, discovery of your beloved job of being an outdoor instructor and continuation of your education in the Athletic Administration Master’s Program.
Graduate year will bring you the best year of your life and your last year as an athlete for ISU. You will be injury free, keep a 4.0 GPA in graduate school, create a new outdoor program that supports women’s health and compete at your highest level to date. You will score at the Big Sky Indoor Conference meet at Holt Arena. You will be a leader, have confidence, love your life, be proud of yourself, be thankful and will take in every moment of the year before it is in the past. Outdoor season shows the most promise for you with the ISU discus record in sight… until a global pandemic that will be a part of history occurs. The world will shut down, events and seasons will be cancelled and society and life as you know it will be changed. You will plan for the next year, the sixth year of track. You will be grateful for another year of track, for the continuation of your dreams and you will have increased motivation. You will love what college athletics has provided you, and you will forever have appreciation for ISU, the community, athletics and the opportunities you have been given.
As you sit here, reading this letter, wondering what you can do to change your experience, to make it even better because you are a preparer and are competitive, just stop thinking. You will not regret any of your failures or successes, for they will make you into a compassionate leader, an educated service member, a proud Bengal, a loving partner, a successful daughter and a grateful human being. I cannot tell you what your sixth year will bring, but I can promise you that you are more prepared than you have ever been through all the challenges, you have developed empowerment, adaptability, acceptance, compassion and inspiration to better yourself, your loved ones and your community.
Be grateful for your opportunities that college athletics provide. They are like no other and cannot be replaced or repeated.
Sincerely,
2020 Madison Cicierski
