MACON, Ga. — Central Georgia athletes grow up right in front of family, friends and fans. They become heroes on the field or court and then become heroes in our society. Former Tattnall Trojan and GMC Bulldog Kirsten Albright is one such hero, helping battle COVID-19 as a nurse in Alabama.
Albright is a Central Georgia kid through and through. She was a pitcher on the 2013 Tattnall Trojan softball team that won a state title.
"I think we made it to the Final Four every single year of my high school and we never could just quite get there and then finally my senior year we won the championship," Albright said. "I think that was probably one of the best wins I've ever felt."
After delivering championship glory to Macon, she signed a softball scholarship with Georgia Military College and in 2016 brought hardware to Milledgeville and the Bulldogs with a GCAA title. It was a team she said, that's more like family.
"We lived together. We would go to class together. We'd go to school, travel so you get super, super close to them and the coaches you get super close to as well," Albright said.
After two years at the junior college, Albright went to Piedmont College in Athens and earned her nursing degree. She didn't travel far from Central Georgia, taking a job at University of Alabama-Birmingham Hospital. After two years as a full time nurse, she's now helping to strike out the coronavirus.
Some of the biggest changes to her nursing routine was the constant use of personal protection equipment or PPE. Medical staff have to wear gloves, gowns, N95 masks and a face shield before meeting any COVID-19 patients and constantly switch them out.
As the situation evolves, Albright said they've constantly had to adapt on the fly to new policies and practices.
"It was hard at first to adapt, but now we've got the flow of things. We're pretty well adapted. We've got great doctors who are keeping track of what's going on, what's changing, new things we're learning so they're helping us stay up to date," she said.
Albright knows she was well prepared to enter the nursing field, but COVID-19 is nothing she thought she'd ever see.
"It's just kind of something that I think you'll look back on in years and be like, 'that was crazy,'" she said. "Right now, it feels like we're learning, we're going with it. We're just going with the flow kind of and I think looking back you're going to be like 'wow.'"
With so many patients isolated from family and friends, Albright says the biggest change in her job is knowing how good a friendly face can really be.
"I think it's just opened my eyes a lot to how much being at the bedside and having relationship with your patients really does help the process," Albright said.
Albright appreciates her time in Central Georgia as an athlete and said much of the skills she uses as a nurse come from her time playing softball including discipline, accountability and teamwork.