Maddie Horn is a 21-year-old senior outfielder for the Pioneers softball team. Horn is a pre-medical pre-professional major from Hegins, PA, which is located about four hours outside of downtown Pittsburgh.

This year for the Pioneers, Horn has averaged a 0.323 batting percentage, with 20 hits in 62 at-bats this season. This season, she has recently tied her collegiate career-high for RBIs, 14, which she set during the 2018-19 season. This is while Horn and the rest of the Pioneers are only 18 games into their season. Since their stint of games in Florida earlier in the season, Horn has paid special attention to this aspect of her game.

“Since Florida, I have been working on situational hitting,” Horn said. “With the speed we have on the bases, I know that if there is a runner on second or third, I can put the ball in right field that runner will likely score.”

Horn is on track to surpass that personal season record and is doing more work to help her team be successful as well.

“Another aspect I have been trying to improve upon is my slap hitting,” she said. “While this is not my go-to when I hit, being able to lay down a drag bunt is extremely important. As an example, I drag-bunted my first at-bat against Midway in the second game, and that was able to advance the runner. All of this revolves around situational hitting, and I know that if I can be a good situation hitter, the team will score runs we need.”

Horn has spent all four years of her collegiate career playing for the Pioneers, and she has made the most of it on multiple levels.

“My time as an athlete at Point Park has been the best I could have ever asked for. I wanted to come to a school where I could play the game I love and further my education. Some of my favorite parts so far have been the long bus rides, friendships made and playing great competition within our conference,” Horn said.

With everything comes challenges, and Horn knows student-athletes are no exception to that.

“A challenge every student-athlete faces is time management,” she said. “Athletic competition/practice and classes can be hard to manage at times, but with proper preparation and communication, there are no problems.”

Looking forward in the season, she has high hopes for her team and sees constant improvement in her peers.

“As we get deeper into the season, I see a lot of growth on the team. We are getting more comfortable playing together and making the harder plays. Our hitting has really come a long way, and when we hit together, we are scoring a lot of runs,” Horn said. 

Moving into the games to come, Horn and her teammates have established clear goals for what they want to accomplish as a team.

“As a team, we want to continue to string together our hits. A major goal of ours right now is to leave fewer runners on base. Achieving this and playing stellar defense will give us the results that we want,” Horn said. “At this point, we have only played four conference games, and with every game, we see improvement.”

As an exiting senior, she had some words of advice for any incoming freshman committed or interested in playing softball for the Pioneers.

“Point Park gives them the opportunity to be the best they can if they are willing to work for it,” Horn said. “There is always the opportunity to explore more, practice more, go to the cages on your own, and those things will only happen if you choose to do it! You only get four years to play here, so I hope that they would take every opportunity and chance they have and make the best of it. No one ever looks back and wishes that they had pushed themselves less.”