BY MALLORY MERDA ADAMS
It’s sometimes easy to forget things in the whirlwind that is sports journalism. Just ask the latest Mary Garber/APSE Scholarship winner, Madison Hricik.
“I had applied for it, and I had felt good about the application when I sent it in, but after I had gotten so busy with school that I had forgotten about it — which sounds so terrible,” she said with a laugh.
Hricik, the Iowa Hawkeyes men’s basketball and football beat reporter for The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, had applied for the scholarship the first time in her sophomore year of college in 2020 before sending one off again in her senior year.
“I was honestly surprised more than anything else [after winning the scholarship],” said Hricik, who earned her master’s degree from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse.
And finding the scholarship in the first place? It was thanks in large part to her dad. He was looking for things that may help her in her career as a woman in sports and stumbled upon the Association for Women in Sports Media.
“He had found AWSM and said, ‘I think this would be good to help you get your feet wet a little bit more.’ So I started there, and that is when I had found APSE,” she said.
The Mary Garber/APSE Scholarship is named in honor of Mary Garber, who became the first woman to serve as a sports editor of a U.S. newspaper in 1944. It is sponsored by APSE, which is committed to opening doors for women to work in sports media.
Hricik received a $1,000 scholarship, complimentary registration at the next AWSM conference and a complimentary one-year membership to the organization.
She’s excited to be able to be involved with AWSM, and now APSE, and eager to see what the future holds with the two organizations.
“Any time I can have that kind of recognition from so many wise people in the industry, it’s an honor to know that there are so many people reading my work and they see potential in what I can do. It’s just so cool,” she said. “More than anything else I hope to be able to build relationships with other people in this industry.
“Just to have that peer-review capability, but also just a mentor-mentee relationship – I want to grow, I want to learn.”
Hricik, who grew up in the Washington, D.C., area as an Alex Ovechkin fan, aspires to be an NHL beat reporter. But that doesn’t mean she won’t share that love with other sports and her current position.
“My goal and my ultimate dream is to be an NHL beat reporter and getting to cover hockey every day. That’s what my heart has been set on since Day 1,” Hricik said. “That’s the ultimate goal, but I also wouldn’t be doing college sports for the last seven years of my life if I didn’t also really enjoy it, too.”
