5 students get caddying scholarships
Five Connecticut high school students have earned full rides to college through caddying.
The high school seniors, all of whom work at courses in Fairfield County, received the Metropolitan Golf Association Caddie Scholarship Fund (MGACSF) Evans Scholarship, a full housing and tuition college scholarship for golf caddies.
The scholarship program awards an estimated $125,000 over four years to student caddies
with excellent academics and a demonstrated financial need, the fund announced in a news release.
Stamford High School students Steven Lopez and Kaitlyn Smith will attend Rutgers University, a media contact for the organization confirmed to Hearst Connecticut. The two work at The Country
Club of New Canaan and Wee Burn Country Club in Darien, respectively.
Alesia Rexhepaj, who attends Fairfield Warde High School and works at Brooklawn Country Club in Fairfield, also received a scholarship to Rutgers.
Luis Cruz, a student at Kolbe Cathedral High School in Bridgeport and caddie at Brooklawn
Country Club, and Violet McCannAnthony, who attends Greenwich Country Day School and caddies at Greenwich Country Club, will both attend the University of Notre Dame.
“It is an incredible achievement for these deserving recipients to be named MGACSF Evans Scholars,” John Connor, president of the MGACSF Scholarship Fund, said in the release. “We are proud to be partnered with the Evans Scholars Foundation to continue providing need-based scholarships in our local community.”
The scholarship program is the result of a partnership between MGACSF and the Western Golf Association’s (WGA) Evans Scholars Foundation.
WGA and amateur golfer Charles “Chick” Evans Jr. created the Evans Scholars Foundation in 1930 to provide scholarships to caddies. The first two Evans Scholars enrolled at Northwestern University in 1930.
Currently, a recordhigh of 1,130 caddies attend 24 universities across the U.S., according to WGA’s website.
An estimated 340 caddies are expected to be awarded the Evans Scholarship this spring, the news release said.
The Evans Scholarship program is funded by thousands of private donors. All proceeds from the BMW Championship, the penultimate PGA TOUR Playoff event in the PGA TOUR’s FedExCup competition, are also allocated towards the program, according to the release.