'Play On': The Jenna Golembiewski Story

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Your moment will come.

Jenna Golembiewski's college softball career didn't begin the way she would have hoped.

During her freshman season, she appeared in roughly half of Miami's 58 games, starting just nine, and produced a .240 batting average.

Although the RedHawks' team was successful, winning the MAC regular-season and tournament titles and advancing to the NCAA regionals, Golembiewski wanted to do more to contribute.

"I remember being so defeated and just not knowing what to do, and my dad told me, 'Keep working. Your moment will come.' He'd tell me that all the time," Golembiewski said. "I'm like, 'Dad, no. It's not. I don't know how I can get myself out of this.

"But he kept telling me, 'Your moment will come. And when it comes, you're going to shine.' I just remember him saying that, over and over and over again."

Your moment will come.

"She didn't break into the lineup as a freshman, but over summer break, she kept working," head coach Kirin Kumar said. "She was never satisfied with what she was doing: Constantly working on what needed to be working on, constantly sending videos of what she was doing.

"When someone has the tools, if they're not willing to work, there's nothing you can do as a coach. She has all of the tools…and she works so hard.

"When Jenna came back that next year, her mindset was, 'I'm not going to think; I'm just going to do it.' And it showed out. We knew it was there; I just didn't know how long it was going to take to get there."

Your moment will come.

March 11, 2023 was the moment.

During game one of a doubleheader at Western Kentucky about a month into the 2023 season, although the sophomore outfielder was batting just .214, Kumar sent Golembiewski to the plate to pinch hit in a bases-loaded situation.

Jenna Golembiewski

"At first, she was going to put someone else in, and then WKU changed to a 'drop ball' pitcher. I remember 2K [Kumar] saying, 'Where's Jenna? She can hit a drop ball!'

"I felt like time froze," Golembiewski recalled. "Just seeing 2K with that confidence in me was, I think, the total switch. I remember that first at-bat: I hit a standing triple down the right field line. That's really when everything started.

"Knowing she had that confidence in me made me have more confidence in myself, and that just lasted the whole season."

Your moment will come.

When game two rolled around that afternoon, Golembiewski was in the starting lineup.

She hit a home run.

Since that day, the Woodstock, Ill. native has started each of Miami Softball's past 53 contests.

And by the end of her sophomore season, as the RedHawks once again captured the MAC regular-season and tournament championships and advanced to the program's first-ever NCAA regional final, Golembiewski wasn't just playing, just starting or just contributing.

With a .306 batting average, 25 extra-base hits, and the third-best single-season home run total in program history, Jenna Golembiewski was named the 2023 Mid-American Conference Player of the Year.

Your moment will come.

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Golembiewski has picked up right where she left off in 2024, homering in six of Miami's first 11 games as the RedHawks —who lead the nation in home runs per game— have jumped out to a 9-2 start. Jenna Golembiewski and her late mother, LeAnn

Jenna Golembiewski and her late mother, LeAnn

And each time Golembiewski hammers the ball over the fence and rounds the bases, she points to the sky.

That's her way of honoring her mother, LeAnn, who died in July 2019 at the age of 45 after battling breast cancer for several years.

"I was in seventh grade when I heard that my mom had cancer," Golembiewski said. "It never really hit me that she could pass away from this, because I knew how strong my mom was. I was like, 'This is just another obstacle that she's going to get over. She's going to beat this.' That was my mindset through the whole time…and it shows how strong she was to fight for that long."

LeAnn (Kazmer) Golembiewski was a standout athlete in her own right, competing in both basketball and track on the college level, first at Orange Coast College and then at UNLV. She ranked fifth all-time in scoring and second in rebounding at OCC, where she was named the school's Female Athlete of the Year in 1993-94. At UNLV, LeAnn was the Rebels' second-leading scorer and top rebounder as a senior and owns the program's sixth-best career field goal percentage (52.6%), while also winning the 1995 Big West high jump title as part of UNLV's track and field team.

"She was the type of person that, when she walked into the room, the room lit up," said Jenna Golembiewski. "She made everyone feel so good about themselves, whether it was just holding a door open for someone, or smiling at a stranger.

"People she knew, people she didn't know – it didn't matter: She had a way of making sure every person was heard and understood and loved, and I feel like that's something I bring into my life now."

Jenna Golembiewski with her father Gus and brother AJ

Jenna Golembiewski with her father Gus and brother AJ

Growing up in an athletic family (father, Gus, played college football, while brother A.J. currently pitches for the University of Illinois Springfield's baseball team), it didn't take long for Jenna to follow in the other Golembiewskis' footsteps, even as a young girl.

"Both of my parents were coaches, so I was just around athletics all the time. Always in a gym, always on a field, always on a track: I've been surrounded by sports my entire life," she said.

"Being under those big three athletes in my life really pushed me to where I am today."

Jenna went on to excel as a three-sport standout at Marian Central Catholic High (Ill.), playing volleyball, basketball and softball. One of her most memorable moments was leading her hoops team to the 2020 regional championship, an accomplishment that was extra-special and emotional because of who had done it before her. "We were the school's first team to win that after my mom passed away," Jenna explained. "The last team to do it had been the team my mom coached, about seven years earlier.

"Knowing that her team did it, and now I get to do that too? That was awesome."

Jenna was no stranger to success at the high school level, having already advanced to the softball regionals and earned All-State honors as a sophomore in the spring of 2019. However, while she experienced quite a few highs in her athletic pursuits, there were incredible lows as well. Jenna Golembiewski and her family

Her school softball career ended abruptly after her sophomore season because there were no longer enough players at MCCHS to field a team. Less than a year later, the COVID pandemic basically brought the world to a screeching halt.

And in between, Jenna lost her mother.

"Each person takes adversity differently," Kumar said recently. "And for her, I can't imagine…I don't pretend to know what she's gone through."

While doing her best to navigate all of the ups and downs, Golembiewski was also trying at the same time to find the place that would be her home for the next chapter of her life. She committed to join the Red and White in November 2019 and signed her letter of intent 12 months later.

"During that recruiting process, I think Miami was really the only school that truly knew what was going on," said Golembiewski, now a Kinesiology/Pre-Med major at the university. "I feel like that's part of why I chose this school, because it was so close-knit and family oriented."

Jenna's dad Gus said that everything his daughter went through off the field during those last three years of high school —and how she handled it— was a key reason why he remained so confident she'd turn the corner on the diamond in 2023 after a slow start as a RedHawk.

Jenna and Gus Golembiewski

"Jenna's an extremely hard worker, and she's an exceptional athlete," Gus Golembiewski said. "Her freshman year at Miami was really the first sports adversity she's ever faced. Sports teaches you so much about life, and life teaches you so much about sports.

"I told her, 'You've just got to keep working. Life isn't fair.'

"You look at what happened to that girl: She lost her mom as a 16-year-old after her sophomore year. Then she basically lost the rest of her high school experience because of the COVID lockdowns in Illinois. So I said, 'This is something that you've just got to fight through…you've [already] gone through all these ups and downs. When you get back to the peak, it's going to be much more gratifying than if something was just handed to you, or if you got something without any adversity.'

"She's a fighter. She's a grinder. And I knew that if she kept working hard, her day would come…

"To me, to be able to watch her transformation, I basically saw her growing up."

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Every year since Jenna's mom passed away, the LeAnn Golembiewski Memorial Scholarship Fund has been awarded to a Marian Central Catholic student-athlete who 'exhibits excellence in the classroom, the playing field and the community.' The fund's website says preference is 'given to students who have experienced hardships.'

In 2021, that honor went to Jenna Golembiewski.

She had to apply just like everyone else.

"I wrote my paper on living through my mom," Golembiewski said.

Fast forward to today, and she is still doing exactly that.

"In our family, going back to the idea of being so rooted in sports and athletics, we just play on," she added.

"And we play on for her."

Find more Front Row Features at: MiamiRedHawks.com/FrontRowFeatures

Watch on ESPN+ Friday, March 1 at 3 p.m. ET as Jenna Golembiewski and the RedHawks take on three-time defending national champion No. 1 Oklahoma in the first game ever at the Sooners' new stadium and attempt to snap OU's record 67-game winning streak. Later this weekend, Miami Softball travels to Tulsa as part of a five-game swing in the state of Oklahoma. The RedHawks will play in front of (as well as visit) members of the nearby Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, becoming Miami Athletics' first team to travel to Miami, Okla. since the establishment of the partnership with the Myaamia Center.

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Jenna Golembiewski

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