Winners unveiled for Medicine Hat News, Medicine Hat Tigers annual scholarships
Matt van der Sloot is the Medicine Hat News Judy Hagel $2,000 Scholarship winner for 2017.
van der Sloot is in his second year at the University of Calgary Haskayne School of Business where he is an accounting major. He hopes to enter the school’s coop placement program next year and one day start his own business after graduating. van der Sloot got his start in business as a flyer boy with the News several years ago.
“When you run your own flyer route, you kind of run your own business,” he says. “And you have to make sure your customers are getting what they want in the morning.”
In recent years van der Sloot has been the Alberta Summer Games organizer for Cypress County, and is heavily involved with other sports-related events in the community.
“It’s not just about representing yourself,” says van der Sloot when asked to explain his passion, “and who you are involved with, but you are also kind of trying to motivate others to get out there to know people, and help the community. It’s giving back everything to the community you are getting out of it ... We are all on the team when we play sports, and the community can be seen as a big team working together. It helps to boost the morale of every individual member.”
van der Sloot is a former cellist with Medicine Hat’s Junior Strings Orchestra and is on the University of Calgary’s rowing team. He is grateful to the Medicine Hat News for choosing him as this year’s Judy Hagel Scholarship winner.
“I really want to use it as a motivational boost to help me finish up that degree, and take some postgrad studies,” he says.