Greeley teen wins Boettcher, Daniels scholarships

At the honors banquet for the Greeley Dream Team on Wednesday night, Mark Morales stood with 17 other Greeley high school seniors, roses in their hands.

Each of these low-income or first-generation college students would present their rose to the people who helped them earn scholarships.

Morales, of Northridge High School, overachieved even among that group.

He won the prestigious Boettcher and Daniels scholarships, giving him a full-ride to any university in the United States. He carried his rose across the ballroom to his dad and brother, and they collapsed in each other’s arms and cried.

“I didn’t get the Boettcher,” Morales said. “We all got it together.”

Morales was born in Greeley but moved to Mexico with his mom when he was 8 while his dad and older siblings stayed in the U.S. His mom didn’t have U.S. citizenship and struggled with depression away from her homeland.

Morales’ mom worked long hours to support them, and yet they barely scraped by. So Morales did everything he could to ease his mom’s burden. He learned to cook, clean and sew, and he was her emotional support.

But above all, he dedicated himself to his studies.

“Every parent in Mexico fears their kids turning to drugs and violence,” Morales said. He wasn’t going to let that fear materialize for his mom.

But Morales didn’t have a future there. He returned to Greeley when he was in sixth grade.

Life back in the states wasn’t much easier. His dad, raising three kids by himself, worked long shifts at the JBS meatpacking plant then played extended sessions with his band to pick up extra cash.

Morales got a job of his own, keeping some money for himself and sending some back to his mom. “I try not to ask anything of my dad,” he said. “It’s enough that he gives me food and a roof over my head.”

He was a deeply curious kid, always asking “why,” always trying to take things apart to figure out how they worked, always building things from scratch with his hands.

Morales’ dad never pressured him to get an education, but he had two great examples in his older siblings.

His brother attended the University of Northern Colorado’s teaching school and became a science teacher at Weld Central High School. Morales called him his “first teacher”; he’d come home from class and explain calculus to Morales.

And Morales’ sister was a Daniels scholar. A couple of her classmates won the Boettcher. When Morales saw that, he promised himself he’d win both.

Morales threw himself into his studies. He started taking high school classes while he was still at Franklin Middle School.

Education became his refuge. And any time he struggled to get through his schoolwork, he thought about his dad working at the meatpacking plant, playing with his band and going back to work. If dad could do that, Morales thought, he could get through his homework.

He did it while taking concurrent enrollment classes and knocking out 28 college credits in high school. He climbed to the second rank in his high school class of more than 200 with a grade-point average higher than 4.0. He built steel-cutting lasers with Northridge’s CO2 Project.

With the Boettcher, which covers the tuition, books and cost of living at any four-year college or university in state, and the Daniels, which covers whatever expenses other scholarships don’t cover at any two- or four-year college in the U.S., Morales can attend any university in the country that accepts him.

He is on the wait list at Princeton, which is where he’ll go if he gets in. His backups are Trinity College in Connecticut and Colorado School of Mines. Morales said he will study mechanical engineering.

There are two things he wants to do: help his mom immigrate to the U.S. and mentor talented but economically disadvantaged students.