FEATURES | THE NORTHPORT RECORD, MAY 11, 2006

The Fate of a Walk-On

After a chance meeting, Majewski catches on at C.W. Post

By Michael R. Sisak / The Northport Record

Lauren Majewski wanted back in.

Eight-and-a-half months after the last at-bat of a propitious four-year high school career at Commack High School, the C.W. Post freshman longed to play softball again. As friends and former teammates prepared for their first college seasons, Lauren braced for her first spring without the sport in seven years.

Softball had become as much a part of her springs as her other sporting love, basketball, had in her winters and the music of the Irish rock band U2, which she saw three times in concert last year, had in her always. But now, because of a self-imposed commitment to academics (she earned a 3.8 grade-point-average in her first semester) and part-time employment at the local public library (she worked 10 hours a week to earn spending money and defray the cost of the daily drive to college), softball was gone.

Fate brought it back.

Lauren met Matt Makarius, a friend and former C.W. Post baseball player, at the campus gymnasium after an 8 a.m. class on a Wednesday morning in the middle of February. They exercised there together at the same time each week, varying their routine to include a run on the indoor track, a trip to the weight room, a game of pick-up basketball or, when Lauren remembered to bring her glove from home, a catch.

Lauren brought the glove on February 15 and the two former ballplayers tossed a softball around across their makeshift diamond — the glazed hardwood that serves as the home court for the school's men's and women's basketball teams. After a few minutes, C.W. Post softball coach Jamie Apicella passed by.

"I kind of got taken aback a little bit and I stopped and watched her throw," Apicella, a C.W. Post alumnus and a former minor-league baseball player, recalled recently. "I was watching her arm action and I knew from her arm strength and arm angle that she could throw with our girls."

Apicella watched a little more. Then he walked in and started asking questions.

"You used to play ball?"

It was their first face-to-face meeting. Their previous conversion, over the summer, played out in an exchange of e-mails.

"What happened? You stopped playing?"

Lauren explained to the coach about how she had given up softball to focus on school and work — things that, at the time, seemed to matter more. She told him how much she regretted that decision. She told him how she had asked a friend to help her join a summer team for women 23-and-under and how she had started running and lifting weights nearly every day in hopes trying out for the C.W. Post team in the fall.

"What do you think about playing now?"

Apicella didn't press for an answer, but told Lauren to stop at his office at 1 p.m. so they could discuss the idea further. From there he invited her to practice, but she had only brought her glove to school and had no change of clothes. Apicella gave her a team t-shirt and a pair of practice shorts and thrust her into the fray.

"I was as nervous as anything," Lauren said, recalling that first day during a recent conversation. "I walked in and the girls looked so intimidating. Half of them were like twice my size."

Lauren, a slender but solid 5-foot-6 physical education major, overcame her brief panic and put on a performance that kept Apicella and his assistant coach, Michelle Bettles, confident in his earlier assessment. The coaches met with Lauren in Apicella's office around 4:15 p.m.

"Michelle, do you see any reason why Lauren shouldn't be on this team," Apicella asked Bettles.

She didn't have one.

"It was a period of what, five hours, and I'm on a Division II college softball team," Lauren said, still with a sense of amazement some three months later.

Lauren spread her good news through cell phone calls and instant messages.

"It was just very exciting to hear," Ophir Sadeh, the head coach at Commack, said. "It seems like a lot of things happen to her where she's at the right place at the right time. The same thing happened to her in high school and now it happened in college."

Sadeh was an assistant at Commack when former coach Steve Iannone, now an assistant at Smithtown West, recruited Lauren to play in the outfield as a freshman after he had a catch with her during a gym class.

"She's a very talented girl, she has a lot going for her," Iannone said. "I knew she had ability as soon as I saw her and I only felt that she would help the [Commack] team and make it stronger. She definitely strengthened our outfield."

Lauren's athletic ability and fortunate timing helped strengthen the C.W. Post roster after it had been shortened by the departure of three prospective players. She has added depth to the outfield and, despite limited playing time, has learned lots about softball at the college level. She also reunited with two former Commack teammates — first baseman Graziella Minicci of Molloy College and catcher Jordanna Borska of the University of New Haven, both rival schools from the New York College Athletic Conference. She will experience her first college championship atmosphere beginning today, when the Pioneers (18-0 in the NYCAC, 42-10 overall) start play in the northeast regional of the NCAA Division II Tournament in Smithfield, R.I.

"She's really learning what college softball is all about," Apicella said. "She's coming along after missing the fall season."

Apicella walked into the gym at a precarious time in Lauren's life. Two weeks before he watched her throw and asked her onto the team, her grandfather Walter Majewski passed away at age 79 after a long battle with heart disease.

Lauren, her brother Michael, now 15, and her parents Ken and Doreen lived upstairs from Walter and Ann, the family matriarch, in the same apartment in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn until their move to Commack on the first day of school in 1999. Lauren affectionately referred to Walter as "Dziadzi" (pronounced Ja-G), the Polish term for grandfather, and cherished his oft-repeated edict, "tomorrow's another day." He was buried on February 6, two days after Lauren's 19th birthday.

"She was on an emotional roller coaster the week before this all happened," Doreen said. "[Softball] was kind of a blessing in disguise, to get her mind off things."

Lauren, the late-arriving stranger on the team, did not know any of her teammates before she joined the team. She kept her normally ebullient personality in reserve for the first few practices — until junior pitcher Danielle Stallone gave her a quick introduction to the velocity of college pitching. By the time Lauren arrived, the Pioneers had already evolved their workouts to include batting practice against live pitching. Lauren stepped in against Stallone and took the second pitch of her at-bat on the left elbow. Lauren bent over in pain, then looked at Stallone and said sarcastically, "This is how you welcome me to the team?"

In the weeks and months since, Lauren's personality — a frenetically executed mix of jokes, gags and impersonations — has flourished and she has become closer with all the girls who had been so intimidating on day one. Sometimes they call her, "the girl we found in the gym."

"It took her a little while, she was quiet in the beginning," Apicella said. "[Now] she's a jokester and the girls really enjoy that part about her."

Lauren has come a long way since that February morning in the gymnasium. But her journey to the C.W. Post team began long before that. She played t-ball while in the first grade at St. Anthony-St. Alphonsus Primary School in Greenpoint, but eventually chose playing the guitar and basketball over the continuation of her Little League career. She picked up softball again while in the seventh grade, playing on a team at Commack Middle School. She made the varsity team at the high school as a freshman, played for three years in the outfield and then moved to second base and shortstop as a senior. In her final high school season, she earned all-conference honors with a .359 batting average, 14 runs scored, 14 runs batted in and 4 stolen bases.

Dziadzi was often too sick to see Lauren play in high school. His death, two weeks before the chance meeting with Apicella, caused Lauren to wonder if there might have been some kind of divine, or grandfatherly, intervention.

"How many times is this going to happen to somebody?" Lauren said. "What are the chances of being spotted by the softball coach, being at the right time and being at the right place like that? It's got to be some kind of sign that it's meant to be."