Cece, our first scholarship recipient, with our KnockOuts

KO4G SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENTS

Cece attends Animo Venice High School, a charter school, and is a member of the Boys and Girls Club of Venice.  Her single mother struggles to put herself through school while also supporting Cece. Cece is an extremely hard worker and an excellent student, consistently making the high honor roll.  She takes AP biology, AP English and Language and honors physics.  Her GPA is a 3.5 %.  She was a nationally ranked synchronized swimmer, placing 6th in the country at age group national’s when she was 14 years old.  She is the co-captain of the cheerleading squad at Animo Venice High School and a TA for the assistant athletic director.  She is very well respected by students and staff alike.  In the summer of 2006, she was appointed to junior staff at the Boys and Girls Club and this past summer, the Boys and Girls Club sponsored her so she could attend a month of creative writing classes at Stanford University.  She has worked very hard to earn good grades in the hopes of attending college. She is thrilled that with a scholarship from KO4G, that dream may become a reality for her. 

Below is one of Cece’s answers to the essay questions that are a part of our application process.  We are confident it will be overwhelmingly evident, from reading her response, why we chose her as our first KO4G scholarship recipient. 

 How would you benefit from boxing training and a scholarship to further your education?

The effects that boxing training and a college scholarship would have on my life are immeasurable, but the immediate ones would be a positive paradigm regarding my personal self and my future. The interest in me as a candidate is enough to make me realize that my future and I are something special and valuable, and that I need to honor all of those who have faith in me by having faith in myself.

Boxing is a sport that I have always admired. My grandfather was actually a golden glove boxer during the Vietnam War, and it was one of the many things that made him so respectable to me. Like many other teenagers, I have struggled with my body image, and constantly stayed active to maintain comfort in my body, but with all the stress that growing up entails it has proven very difficult. Boxing is a sport that encourages personal strength, willpower, and determination: all traits that if I had the chance to have polished would not only increase my respect for myself, my body, and others, but help me become a better student and employee with a more disciplined mentality from being pushed out of my comfort zone, to my limits of success.

School has always been something that is very important to me, and something that I have worked very hard at. The importance of school was instilled in me by my mother. I was raised in a single mother household, and though we often struggled, I was always well cared for, and my mom managed to put herself through school. She started at West Los Angeles Community College to get her AA then transferred to Loyola Marymount University, and now she is at UCLA getting her doctorate on a full scholarship. I am so proud of her, and hope to follow in her footsteps taking my education above and beyond where statistics expected me to. My family is not in a position to pay for my full education, though, and scholarships will be the key to achieving my goal. I am honored to be considered for this scholarship, and know that I will do great things with it.

Vanessa will be a ninth grader at King Drew-Magnet Medical High School in Compton this fall.  She applied to a medical magnet because she hopes to be a pharmacist one day.  She loves medicine but doesn't like blood so she looked into other opportunities and feels being a pharmacist will satisfy her desires without making her queasy! Her favorite and strongest subject is English, for which she was recently placed in the Honors class.  She is an avid reader and lists Lois Lowry's, "The Giver," as one of her best-loved books.  She read it in five days and was impressed with how different it was.  Vanessa just finished her third summer of sailing through a program at UCLA and this year she was promoted to the Advanced Sailing Class.  She has experience with catamarans, kayaks, capris and optis. Vanessa is excited to be a part of KNOCKOUTS FOR GIRLS as she believes in female empowerment, having been raised by her mother and grandmother, two woman whom she admires greatly. 

Krystal and her twin sister are being raised by their paternal grandmother.  They have a step sister who is seven months old and lives with their father and step mother.  Krystal loves most sports and lists Physical Education as her favorite subject at Culver City High School.  She excels in athletics and enjoys playing basketball at the Boys and Girls Club of Venice.  She is also gifted in music and sings alto in the school choir.  When she grows up, she  plans to become a veterinarian because she loves animals.  She has many hobbies but collecting marbles, of which she has over four hundred, is her favorite.