Saint Monica Prep college students Macayla Story, Johnnie García and Nicolás Vallejo acquired life-changing scholarships due to golf.
Story vividly remembers the second she acquired the acceptance letter. She was in Palm Springs when her mom known as to inform her that a big envelope had arrived. The envelope contained a letter informing her she can be receiving the $125,000 Chick Evans Scholarship, a program supported by the Western Golf Assn. that may enable her to attend a college with out having to fret about housing prices or tuition for 4 years.
“When I came back, I opened it with her by my side. I showed her the letter and she started crying. It was an incredible moment,” Story informed L.A. Instances en Español.
Story traveled to Chicago to work as a caddie for 2 months at Skokie Nation Membership, and Garcia and Vallejo did this system regionally with Los Angeles Nation Membership. All they had been assured was pay for his or her work and an opportunity to use for the profitable scholarships.
Macayla Story, heart in white T-shirt, was one of many winners of a $125,000 scholarship that may enable her to go to school with out worrying about tuition or housing bills.
(Trevor Jackson)
The three college students went by way of an interview course of together with different candidates in February. The scholarship winners had been introduced in April. They had been acknowledged by the most important privately funded scholarship program within the nation. The scholarships are awarded to scholar caddies who display educational excellence, monetary want, dedication on the golf course and exemplary character.
Raised by a single mom, Story all the time knew that financing faculty can be a problem. The scholarship represents not solely an educational alternative, but in addition an enormous aid for her household.
Story’s entry into the world of golf was, as she places it, “by accident.” She knew nothing concerning the sport when she enrolled in the summertime program.
“I was very shy; I didn’t know if I was going to make friends or what I was supposed to do as a caddie,” she recollects. However over time, she not solely adjusted, however grew personally and professionally. “As a teenager in Los Angeles, it’s very easy to get lost in cellphone screens all summer. But being in the field helped me socialize, be outdoors, talk to adults. It made me grow up.”
Los Angeles Nation Membership, which hosted the 2023 U.S. Open, hosted Garcia and Vallejo. They turned the membership’s first scholarship recipients in its first yr collaborating within the scholarship program.
The caddie expertise additionally started with uncertainty for Garcia, nevertheless it quickly turned a problem that he took critically.
“At first, I didn’t know anything about golf. I just wanted to do well because I understood that there was a real possibility of going to college without my family having to go into debt,” mentioned Garcia, 18.
Throughout three summers, Garcia labored 5 days per week, accumulating greater than 100 rounds as a caddie, one of many situations for making use of for the Evans Scholarship. “It was heavy, but I learned to be responsible, to be on time, to have initiative. You learn to read people, to understand what they need without them saying it.”
Garcia, whose father is Mexican and mom is from Belize, comes from a household that has labored exhausting to supply him with alternatives.
“My mom works with foster kids. She helps assign cases to them. She basically helps them find a suitable home for them, because I know what a family means to me and I know she loves what she does. And my dad basically works with FedEx. He drives to Burbank every day for the whole time there, just working,” Garcia mentioned proudly.
Vallejo additionally devoted three summers to the caddie program, getting up early, enduring the warmth and carrying heavy baggage, all the time with a hard and fast thought in thoughts.
“I knew the scholarship existed, but not that I was going to get it. I just focused on doing my best,” recalled Vallejo, who’s a second-generation scholar of Mexican descent.
“My mom was a homemaker and my dad worked in a grocery store. We didn’t have much, but they were always there,” Vallejo recounted. “They always worked hard enough to send me to private school, to give me a good education and for me to have everything I wanted, everything I could have. So I would say our financial situation could be a lot worse. … This money is going to help a lot in the long run.”
Saint Monica Prep Principal James Spellman celebrates the scholarships as an indication that the college’s academic mannequin is working.
“These students represent the best of our community: resilience, hard work and real aspirations to excel. Many of our students are from families facing economic hardship, but with the right support, they achieve great things,” Spellman mentioned.
Spellman notes that the college has had a detailed relationship with the Caddie Academy for a few years, relationship again to when this system determined to broaden into the Los Angeles space.
“At first, for many parents, golf was an unknown world. But when they saw that their children could earn a summer income and have access to a scholarship like this, they were convinced,” he mentioned. “Beyond the money, the students acquire skills that will serve them all their lives: responsibility, leadership, communication skills. It’s a well-rounded education.”
The Chick Evans Scholarship has been awarded to greater than 12,000 caddies since its inception. There are greater than 1,190 scholarship college students at 24 universities throughout the nation. For 3 Angelenos, the journey started with a backpack on their shoulders, strolling within the solar, carrying different folks’s golf golf equipment. Now they’ll think about attending schools that might have in any other case been out of attain.
“Originally the student had to go to Chicago for the summer and the beauty of that is they work and make $3,000 to $4,000 as caddies, and they come back with it to help their families,” Spellman mentioned. “These students here, all three of them are very similar, but they’re very different. And they’re great ambassadors, not only for the school, but for the program because they’re athletic, they’re outgoing, they have good grades. They weren’t golfers before, so they really took advantage of the opportunity and stuck with it. They did well in the classroom and that was a big part of it too.”
This text first appeared in Spanish through L.A. Instances en Español.
