“Born into hockey and raised through her Gustie profs, she’s the current graduate assistant in Gustavus Sports Information.”
It started when Communications Studies professor Pamela Conners said to her, “I think you’re holding yourself back.” Abrego had planned on becoming a teacher, but she loved Conners’ class Public Discourse far more than she loved her elementary school job shadow experience. Then came professor Sarah Wolter ’02 and her class, Screens. “I kept picking athletic commercials to analyze,” Abrego says. Then Abrego had an idea—a Gustavus sports podcast. Without having ever played Gustavus sports, or produced a podcast, or even met Tom Brown, director of Gustavus Athletics, “I put on my big girl pants and knocked on his door,” she says. The result was Behind the Bench, the first campus sports podcast, which Abrego recorded through the audio on a camera placed on a music stand.
More firsts followed. She became the first woman intern for the professional hockey league Da Beauty League, where she grew the Instagram account and interviewed professional players. She became one of the first two women broadcast
interns at Fox Sports North to cover Northwoods League Baseball in both taped and live segments. She hated the appearance, performance, and lifestyle constraints for on-camera women reporters, not to mention the gross men who trolled her on the Internet, some with photos of their daughters in their feeds. But she loved the video editing, graphics, writing, and social media aspects. Today, among her other duties as Gustavus graduate assistant in sports information, she works with Gustie teams to develop their social media, and she’s pioneered “Women’s Coach Wednesday” profiles on the Gustavus website.
Equity and inclusion in sports are central to her work, especially in hockey. “It’s all about connections. But what if you don’t have them?” she asks. As a first-generation college student from a town of 600 people, and as a biracial woman devoted to the predominantly white sport of hockey, these are career- defining questions. “No one should have to deal with sexism or racism as they play their sport,” Abrego says, stating what should be obvious.
Gustavus, she says, is a great place to begin a career as a woman in sports. “The MIAC does a really good job with equity. I’m so lucky at Gustavus to have so many extremely strong women professors and coaches as mentors.”