Landry Maragos stands at Minot’s South Softball Complex Aug. 19. She turned her interest in sports into a way to give back to her community. Jill Schramm/MDN

As an athlete, Landry Maragos contributes to ensuring her team’s success, but it is her contributions off the field and court that stand out.

Maragos not only volunteers her time to help out causes she’s passionate about but decided to encourage others to do the same in organizing Athletes Inspiring Action (AIX) this past year.

“As an athlete, especially in varsity sports, we get so much. We get free bags. We get free meals on the road, free shirts,” she said. “We receive and receive and receive but you don’t give. We play, but they have to pay to come watch us play. We’re not giving back necessarily. So I started AIX just to give back – just to give back to the community that shows us so much support.”

AIX members have written letters to troops, rung Salvation Army bells at Christmas and made and delivered Valentines to nursing home residents.

Maragos also volunteers with the adaptive sports program Prairie Grit, the softball program for special needs athletes called Dream Catchers and other organizations in the community. She played cello in a Community Rocks! concert to raise money for Prairie Grit.

Her efforts on and off the field were recognized July 30 when she was presented the Community Athlete of the Season award at a Prairie Grit event at which she was volunteering. Maragos received a Scheels $250 gift card, as did the Minot High softball team. The team also received $1,000 from United Community Bank.

Maragos’ softball coach Gerard Cederstrom nominated her for the award.

“She’s just a great kid, inspiration and role model,” Cederstrom said in his nomination. “She tells people ‘go out in your community, there’s time to do it.'”

More than 100 athletes from Minot, Velva, Surrey and Des Lacs-Burlington have heeded her call by getting involved with AIX.

AIX team leaders serve as their school ambassadors, and through that leadership, Maragos hopes to see AIX continue in the high schools. She has moved on to Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, which has a similar organization for her to get involved in.

A 2020 graduate of Minot High School, Maragos is majoring in biology and minoring in music with a career goal to become a surgeon. She also is playing softball for Concordia.

She played softball this past summer with other players from the region on the Minot Storm team. Maragos plays outfield, primarily centerfield. Her other athletic endeavors have included volleyball and basketball.

“All my life I’ve been so competitive,” Maragos said. The daughter of Shanel Effertz and Mike Maragos, she was the youngest of four siblings so learned she needed to separate herself from the crowd a little bit to find her place.

“Sports is how I did that,” she said.

As a young athlete, her goal was always to be the best, she said.

“Now that I’m older, I don’t even look at that aspect quite as much,” she said. “I need to work on skills. Everyone needs to work on skills, but it’s communication. It’s being able to play for your teammate next to you or help pick them up when they’re down. It’s being able to be held accountable and hold others to be accountable as well.”

Team sports has taught her to work with other people, and she believes that is a skill that would benefit her in the medical field. It saddened her that COVID-19 interfered with the opportunity to help build the kind of team culture she wanted to help build for the younger athletes as a high school senior. Before the pandemic, she saw a difference being made through AIX, particularly when dozens of athletes produced more than 400 valentines for nursing home residents.

“I think all the athletes that were doing it really, really enjoyed that, which is good because that’s how I feel,” she said. “I love helping people. And just to see the expressions on their faces, knowing that a simple thing that you did made their day. Then I got to see all of my friends and athletes going out and they’re feeling the same thing that I’m feeling, and that’s contagious. It’s very contagious.”