National women's football team's Eva Madarang creating face masks for 'new normal'

MANILA, Philippines — A lot of sports have been on hiatus following the onslaught of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

And athletes who are stuck at home with their seasons suspended are finding different ways to keep themselves occupied amid the prolonged break.

For Philippine women's national football team stiker Eva Madarang, producing stylish face masks that can be used in the world's "new normal" has become her go-to activity.

Based in California but playing for UK club Doncaster Belles, Madarang started sewing face masks as a hobby but soon became a business venture as more and more people grew interested in her work.

"The whole [football] season got cancelled and I was like, I'm at home doing nothing... So I was like, you know I know how to sew so I'm gonna start sewing masks," Madarang said during the recent episode of Tiebreaker Vods' So She Did.

"Then I made like a couple and I was like this is actually pretty cool, people started asking me where do you get them," she added.

Madarang said that for the past month and a half, she had already sold over 250 masks during her time off from the pitch.

But apart from working towards providing stylish and affordable face masks, Madarang also immersed herself in social justice, joining the Black Lives Matter movement in California.

The PWNFT striker recalled her experience during a protest in Los Angeles.

 

 

 

 

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Today I attended an Asian Americans for Black Lives Matter peaceful protest in front of the City Hall in Los Angeles. I was extremely surprised to see so many people with Filipino decent and signs supporting such a movement! It warmed my heart to see the amount and the diversity of people longing change. NO JUSTICE NO PEACE. #blacklivesmatter #BLMLA #justiceforgeorgefloyd #nojusticenopeace

A post shared by Eva Madarang (@evamadarang) on Jun 5, 2020 at 7:33pm PDT

"I live like, 30, 45 minutes from LA so one day, me and my brother were like let's just go to a protest and see what happens," Madarang said.

"The one I went to actually was an Asians and Pacific Islanders support Black Lives Matter... It was something like so cool to me... That's so powerful right now and for change in our country and for many other countries around the world," she added.

Madarang is one of the Fil-Foreign athletes that beefed up the Malditas in their 30th Southeast Asian Games stint in Manila last year.

Madarang scored a goal in a 5-0 rout of Malaysia in the preliminaries of the Southeast Asian Games women's football tourney.