Giovanni Vitrano Memorial Scholarship

I believe my life’s purpose is to use my experience and passion for soccer to reach children with the love of Christ. At 13, my family went to Sri Lanka to visit and serve with missionary friends. I felt God wanted me to plan and lead soccer camps for children there. While teaching soccer, we told them about Jesus. We successfully ran camps in 3 different villages reaching hundreds of kids. This trip really opened my eyes to other cultures and impoverished communities. I discovered I only needed to show up, smile, and engage people personally to make an impact. Soccer and love transcended language, religious, and cultural barriers. The value felt and joy they expressed was priceless. My goal is to continue this outreach. I’ll be playing collegiate soccer in Texas, pursuing a Children’s Ministry degree with minors in Coaching and Sports Management. Although I have a small athletic scholarship, in order to achieve my goals of graduating debt free, I need more scholarships to cover remaining costs. I don’t want debt to hinder my purpose. Soccer has done so much for my life and has been a key element in shaping me into the person I am today. It teaches perseverance through hard situations and emotions to reach goals (and that’s where the fun happens!). Early on, I learned discipline, technical awareness, and practical skills. Over time, I discovered firsthand that extra work makes you better, and even though drills may hurt, pain was temporary while growth continued. Sports teaches that things don’t always go as planned. At times I was frustrated by losing or my own performance. Those feelings are normal, so experiencing them helped me learn to cope with setbacks and look for positives in the midst of them. You need humility in victory and also graciousness in defeat. Disappointment can crush or motivate you; I choose the latter. So now, playing on the Men’s Tallahassee Soccer Club, my ability to persevere through physical discomfort and emotional disappointments has made me stronger mentally and physically – earning me playing time at 16yo. Through soccer, I’ve learned teamwork and communication. Winning requires effective communication and willingness to work together. While employed at Chick-Fil-A these lessons stood out. My job was in the food prep/cooking areas. Large volumes of food and short turn-around times required us to work fast, hard, and together to meet goals. My success depended on someone else just as theirs depended on me. Many people I worked with struggled because they didn’t have prior experience in these situations. Due to my years playing and leading soccer teams I thrived, adapting easily to the pace and changes required, catching the attention of supervisors. I began to see the value of the life lessons from the pitch, and am blessed to have had the opportunity to learn them. Yet, one of the biggest lessons is that a team should be a family. That’s what it meant to Gio. I had the honor of playing with him on the Leon Varsity team. Though I was the youngest player, Gio was the first person to make me feel welcome, making me feel like part of the Leon Soccer family right away. He brought joy to the sidelines, emphasizing relationships along with competition. After graduating, he came around frequently because he loved our team like extended family. He taught me to always see my teammates like this, too. These lessons I’ve learned in soccer will assist me every day in college and with my life purpose; I will use them to grow in my relationships, outreach, and career.

Giovanni Vitrano Memorial Scholarship Essay Submitted by Madeline Anne Chadé Kopka Growing up, every kid tries sports. Whether it is gymnastics, swimming, cross country, or soccer, almost all kids try them. Lucky for me, my first sport was soccer. I fell in love with the game immediately and have never stopped loving it. Playing soccer growing up was an escape from everyday life. It was an escape from homework and from any anxiety I faced at school--even personal problems. Although I ended up trying dance and other sports, soccer was the one I stuck with and that truly had a big impact on my life. I started playing soccer when I was three, playing around with other little kids my age just trying to get a foot on the ball. And now I am off to play college soccer in Washington, DC, at Trinity Washington University. Since I was little, playing college soccer has been my dream. But sometimes dreams only come true because of hard work: soccer has not always been easy. I was not always the most fit player, or the most agile. There were times when I struggled with anxiety, with acute asthma, and various injuries. But soccer taught me to stick with it, and the years of hard work paid off when I was invited by the Florida Athletic Coaches Association to play in the state senior All-Star Game and when, last month, I was named All-Big Bend Player of the Year for 2022. Then, luckily for me, a school reached out to me that fits my goals and ambitions. Not only does Trinity Washington University have what I want academically, it also has a very good soccer team. Academically I am pursuing a career in politics, majoring in global affairs. My life goals are to hopefully be a politician one day and serve the Tallahassee Community in the Florida State House, where I can apply all the lessons that playing soccer has taught me. The biggest lesson is understanding that there are going to be challenges in everything you do, even the thing you love best. For example, there's still the compulsion to compare yourself to other players. There are still the struggles of thinking you're not good enough to do certain things. But soccer has taught me how to be grateful, and to fight for things that I believe in and love. And it makes me work harder on any ideas and feelings that I believe in. Like imagine you are down 0-1 and there are ten minutes left in the match. You are going to work as hard as you can to get that one goal. I feel like all kids have that one story where you are even up one goal and there are two minutes left and you have to fight as hard as possible to win, and then you finally come out victorious after two of the longest minutes in the world. If I am fortunate enough to be awarded a Giovanni Vitrano Memorial Scholarship, in college I will continue to use soccer like I always have—as an escape from everyday pressures and a way to have fun. But even more important, playing college soccer will continue helping me recognize the importance of the game's lessons, that it is the hard experiences that you face that are life changing, and that make you a better person all together. Developing the true discipline required to play a sport in college might be harder than anything I have faced yet, but I am excited for and blessed to have this new challenge.

Hello, I am Alejandro Alonso, a senior at Gadsden County high school. I have attended Gadsden County and played on the Varsity Soccer team there for all 4 years of high school. I was also part of the Florida Elite Tallahassee soccer club for some years. I have always loved soccer and still continue to play it at my local Sunday league (Level Up Futbol) in Havana, FL. My plan after high school is to major in Criminology at Florida State University. I have been accepted and will begin this summer 2022 attending the CARE Summer Bridge program. I will soon be the second in my family to graduate high school and the first to go to college. I am only able to further my education at this prestigious college because my hard work in the classroom, my grades, and my test scores were the ones that led to my acceptance but soccer was the work behind the hard work if that makes any sense. This sport has shaped me into the young man I am today, it has been doing it ever since I was 11 years old. Soccer. It is not just a 90-minute game, you do not just practice or play, it is more than that. Soccer is a sport where you are challenged physically and mentally, where you learn skills that help you on and off the field, and where you meet lifelong friends. I have played soccer since the age of 11, yes that is pretty late because most start off far younger but it does not matter. I have played at a high level before with many players who have been playing for longer than I have. Soccer is for anyone. Before I even kicked a ball, I learned a life lesson “how to make friends”. I moved to a neighborhood where everyone played soccer with all the adults and kids; I have always struggled to make friends, and one day kids were playing around with a soccer ball, they invited me and my brothers to join them and the rest is history. That day I made lifelong friends and fell in love with soccer or should I say me and my brothers did. Soccer brought me and my brothers closer together than we already were, I am lucky to have gotten to play in the same club, middle school, high school, and even local Sunday league soccer with both of them; now that it is coming to an end I see how far we have come and how great it has been. My bond with my brothers and family has grown stronger with soccer, when we had games all of us would be together enjoying the game and catching up on life. This sport can teach you how to value the people you have in life, seeing your siblings on the same team, your family supporting you on the sidelines those memories stay with you forever. Even the difficult moments on the field where you argue with an opponent or teammate, and conflicts where you cannot lose your temper all teach you how to be able to handle issues on your own. Soccer has taught me all of this in about 8 years of playing it and it still continues to teach me every day. If you have played this beautiful game you know what I am talking about, if you have not I recommend you do, it can change your life just as it changed mine.