Running in A Field of Her Own at 92 Years Old with Magdalena McCloskey (Episode #68)

Dr. Lynn Hellerstein of Vision Beyond Sight speaks with Magdalena McCloskey, educator, former nun, and player of the senior women’s softball club Colorado Peaches. Magdalena talks about her wonderful life at 92 years old and how she helped rebuild and now plays for the Colorado Peaches softball team, keeps herself in shape through boxing, got a master’s degree, and blended all those experiences of the interior and exterior, spirit and identity, and physical and non-physical toward wisdom, belongingness and age empowerment.

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• Answering the inner call of rebuilding the senior women’s softball club Colorado Peaches
• Who are the Colorado Peaches?
• Running for others
• Keeping in shape at 92 years old through
• Life realizations through boxing and softball
• How thrilling it is about being old
• The story of Martha, the softball player who had cancer
• The value of belonging
• “What do you wonder about?”
• Getting a master’s degree
• Contacting the Colorado Peaches
• Seeing the world as a tapestry

About Magdalena McCloskey:

Magdalena McCloskey is a former nun who at her senior years found her new calling in rebuilding and playing at the senior women’s softball club Colorado Peaches. The Colorado Peaches has been featured in different talk shows like the Kelly Clarkson show as it inspires people with belongingness and age empowerment through sports.

Magdalena was born in May, 1931 in Ottawa Illinois, to an Irish mother and French father. Her parents separated-divorced  when she was only 8 months and was then raised by her paternal grandmother and large extended family, aunts, uncles and French speaking community.

In the summer of 1941, she went to live with her mother and stepfather, in St. Louis, becoming a small town girl in a big city. She enrolled as a student, in Loretto Academy. After graduation, she entered the Novitiate in Kentucky and made final vows in 1953. Magdalena left the Congregation in 1968. She got married and eventually had two children and 5 grandchildren later.

Aside from creating a loving family, she and her husband designed and implemented an alternative Learning Program in School District 81, Spokane, Washington called Alternative Parent Participation Learning Experience (APPLE), in collaboration with educators and administrators.

Magdalena traveled to Russia twice in the 90’s to teach “Essential Peace-Making” gender workshops for Ted Turner in St. Petersburg. She also participated and assisted in the Landmark Program.

Magdalena avoided getting a master’s degree all her young life then finally got her MA Regis U when she was 83.

Connect with Magdalena McCloskey and the Colorado Peaches:

Website | Facebook | Instagram

“Playing softball, you learn so much about yourself. You know your reactions. You have to be attentive to everything. Not only where is the ball but where are your teammates and relationships to the ball. And also your identity is there, you know, you get upset with yourself. Altogether, all of us, we learn about those things and we learn how to shake things off, not to get down on ourselves, and most of all just to laugh and laugh at ourselves.” – Magdalena McCloskey

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