Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
OJR seniors tie for win in Shandy Hill Essay Contest
For the first time in the 24-year history of the Shandy Hill Essay and Scholarship Contest, two students from the same school have both been named winners.
This year’s winners are Sarah Kopec, daughter of Michael and Pamala Kopec of Spring City, and Matthew Saylor, son of Paul and Kathleen Saylor of Chester Springs.
In 2004, one student from Pottstown High School and one from the former St. Pius X High School each won, but this is the first time both winners have come from the same school.
This year the Greater Pottstown Foundation received a total of 21 essays from students attending the four schools.
The essays are submitted without the names of the students, or their school, and scored by the foundation through a scoring formula.
In four of the last five years, the formula has selected Owen J. Roberts High School students as the winners. Last year’s winner was a student at The Hill School.
The scoring formula that the foundation board uses resulted in both students earning the highest score this year.
As a result, a four-year $30,000 scholarship to be used over four years will be awarded to both Kopec and Saylor.
Each year the Greater Pottstown Foundation sponsors the Shandy Hill Essay Contest for senior students from The Hill School, and Owen J. Roberts, Pottsgrove and Pottstown high schools.
The essay contest and award honor Shandy Hill, the foundation’s founder, and the original editor of The Pottstown Mercury from 1931 until he retired in 1967.
Hill was an ardent believer in supporting educational opportunities for students within the Pottstown community. The Greater Pottstown Foundation strives to continue that objective through various education-related grants and student scholarship awards.
Each year senior students from the four area schools, compete in the writing of an original essay that focuses on some aspect of life in the Greater Pottstown Area.
The foundation seeks the writer’s original and personal interpretation of how any aspect of life is affected by living in this area as opposed to somewhere else. In any year that a winning essay is chosen, the writer is granted a $30,000 college scholarship to be used over four years.
Sarah Kopec
Kopec’s essay was in the form of a letter entitled “Dearest American Soldier.” The greeting is a synecdoche representing anyone currently serving, or who has served, in any the country’s armed forces.
In the letter, Sarah addresses the agony, grief and trauma that are often experienced by our great heroes who have fought for our country. She also addresses the difficulties that many experience after coming back home, such as PTSD, latent feelings of grief and/ or depression, as well as the hardships, faced resulting from the endurance of physical injuries.
She wrote that these conditions often lead to the inability to successfully fit back into society and the inability to maintain gainful employment. Such conditions also lead to homelessness, in numbers far greater than many would imagine.
In her essay, Sarah acknowledges the many programs and memorials within the Greater Pottstown Area that honor and help veterans of the armed forces, like the Southeast Veteran’s Center, other local veterans volunteer outreach programs, special events dedicated to honoring veterans and raising funds for various support programs, and Pottstown’s Memorial Park with its Walk of Honor that recognizes those having served in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and more.
Kopec attributes these positive attributes of local veteran programs to the unity and inclusive spirit of the people who reside in the Greater Pottstown Community. However, at the same time, she writes that so much more needs to be done to help support our veteran heroes. To that end, Sarah herself is personally active in veteran support groups and has attended events and meetings in various communities around the Pottstown area.
Graphic art is a talent and a hobby of Kopec’s, so when a local Vietnam veteran recently asked if she could help implement a veteran’s memorial in Royersford, she dug right in.
Kopec went so far as to learn some digital design techniques so that, working with a professional architect, she was able to design a realistic schematic for the project, including landscaping, pathways, flags, lighting, and the memorial itself.
The project has been approved by the borough council with current plans to locate the proposed memorial along 1st Avenue, near the Schuylkill River bridge connecting Royersford and Spring City. Fundraising for the project is currently well underway.
Kopec has been accepted at Messiah University, in Mechanicsburg, where she intends to undertake dual majors in business administration, and nutrition and dietetics, including a minor in health and exercise science.
She also intends to participate in the University’s National Championship Women’s Soccer team.
Matthew Saylor
Mathew Saylor wrote an essay in the form of a threeact play entitled “Our Together Home — a Pottstown play.”
Act 1 introduces the main character, who is in fact, the author himself. He is portrayed as a boy taking the audience on a guided tour of Pottstown “through a lens most may not look through — theater.”
The boy says that “Pottstown is home to many, but a home for all.” That point is illustrated throughout the play by several examples of how the author perceives Pottstown as an inclusive community with opportunity for all residents who want to avail themselves of it, regardless of their ethnicity, economic background, or other differences they may exhibit.
Act 2 begins with a look at Steel River Playhouse on East High Street, during the summer. The marquee outside reads “Summer Camps for All Ages.”
The boy, now 10, is attending a summer camp with other children of elementary school age from various backgrounds and communities within the Greater Pottstown area. This is where he learned the skills of the theater — how to perform, and how to sing.
Two years later, at age 12, having had many opportunities to act in summer camp productions, he now has landed a part in his first real mainstage show, “The Miracle Worker” (the Hellen Keller story), where he really felt that he came into his own as an actor. There were opportunities for many Pottstown folks to participate in that play.
The Steel River Playhouse has a tradition of offering opportunities to local people, regardless of their talent level, instead of going outside the area to recruit participants for their shows. They offer support and encouragement to all who want to participate. (Because of his successes at Steel River at such a young age, Saylor will also be invited to participate in “A Christmas Story — the Musical”, an adaptation of the 1983 movie with the same name, at Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia just a few months later.)
Four years later, the boy is again at Steel River. He now has his first main lead role as Jack Kelly in the Disney musical “Newsies.”
The narration goes on to show other opportunities for Mathew, and other local students, in venues other than Steel River.
Saylor has played various roles in both community theater and high school productions over the years, earning lead parts in several. When he was a high school junior, the Hill School recruited him to play a lead role in their 2019
production of “Hair Spray.”
Saylor wrote that he was impressed that they reached out to a student at a nearby local school, rather than paying for talent elsewhere. The welcoming and encouraging attitude at The Hill, toward a local publicschool student, also impressed him — especially how they treated him “with kindness, compassion, and encouragement … and as a part of the Hill family.”
In Act 3, “the boy” shows the future. Now an established Broadway actor, he is shown winning a Tony Award for “Best Actor in a Musical.”
During his acceptance speech, he attributes whatever ability he may have to his having been raised in Pottstown, a small ethnically and economically diverse rural community where inclusiveness, acceptance, opportunity, and encouragement are available to everyone, especially in theater, if one simply accepts the opportunity.
Saylor will be attending Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, this fall, where he currently plans to undertake a major in mathematics and a minor in performing and media arts. Asked about his unusually diverse study choices, Saylor replied that he enjoys both areas of study and that he wants to keep all his opportunities open.