The decision to pursue a career in STEM was not made in a classroom. It was made on the streets of the Southside of Richmond, Virginia, where I watched people I love navigate a healthcare system that was never designed with them in mind. Chronic pain went unaddressed. Injuries went untreated. Families made decisions no one should have to make between medical care and daily survival. Those realities did not discourage me. They gave me direction. I am pursuing a degree in Exercise Science with the long-term goal of earning a Doctor of Physical Therapy degree from Shenandoah University. Exercise Science provides the scientific foundation I need to understand the human body at the highest level, and physical therapy gives me the practical means to serve people directly. This is not simply a career path. It is a commitment to a community that has gone underserved for far too long. As a first-generation college student and a young Black man from an underserved neighborhood, I am acutely aware of what it means to move through spaces that were not always built for people like me. But I also understand the responsibility that comes with access to higher education. The phrase "lift as we climb" speaks to exactly that responsibility. Every advancement I make in my academic and professional career carries with it an obligation to reach back and bring others with me. My vision is to establish a physical therapy and wellness center in a community like the Southside of Richmond, one that prioritizes accessibility and dignity above all else. Financial barriers will not determine who receives quality care in my practice. I intend to structure services in a way that serves patients regardless of their economic circumstances, ensuring that geography and income are no longer predictors of health outcomes. Every patient who walks through those doors will be treated as a whole person, not a case number. Athletics has also shaped this mission in a profound way. Throughout my football career, I witnessed teammates compete through serious injuries because they lacked access to proper care, informed guidance, or even basic resources for recovery. Young athletes in underserved communities deserve the same access to sports medicine and injury prevention that athletes in well-resourced areas take for granted. Part of my work will be dedicated to closing that gap through education, outreach, and direct service. Health education will be central to everything I build. Many of the disparities that exist in underserved communities are rooted not only in a lack of resources, but in a lack of access to information. I intend to develop community workshops and outreach initiatives that help individuals and families better understand their bodies, their healthcare rights, and the options available to them. Informed communities are empowered communities, and empowered communities are healthier ones. The Stephen L. Daniels Lift As We Climb Scholarship represents more than financial support. It represents a belief that increasing the presence of Black students in STEM is not just a matter of equity but a matter of progress for everyone. I am committed to honoring that belief through the work I do, the practice I build, and the lives I am privileged to impact. I intend to climb, and I intend to bring my community with me.

Being a first generation college student means there is no roadmap in my house for what I am about to do. Nobody in my immediate family has been through a doctoral program. Nobody can tell me exactly what to expect or how to navigate it. That is not a complaint. It is just the reality, and it means I am figuring things out as I go while trying to build something that changes what is normal in my family going forward. The challenges I have faced are not always the kind that make for a dramatic story. I grew up on the Southside of Richmond, where resources were limited and quality healthcare was not something most people around me had easy access to. I watched my grandmother deal with illness and not always receive the care she deserved. I watched teammates play through injuries in high school because nobody nearby had the training to properly evaluate what was going on. I worked part time through high school at a furniture manufacturing company while balancing football, volunteer work with a Special Olympics program, and keeping my academics together. None of that stopped me. It made the direction I was heading clearer. To the Future, what drives me is knowing exactly what I am going back to. I am not pursuing a Doctor of Physical Therapy degree because it is a stable career. I am pursuing it because I grew up watching a specific gap exist in my community and I decided I was going to spend my career addressing it. People on the Southside of Richmond deserve quality physical therapy care. They deserve someone who understands where they come from and is genuinely invested in their recovery. That is what I am working toward. My dream is to open a physical therapy practice rooted in an underserved community, built around real patient relationships and pricing that does not push people away before they ever walk through the door. I want my younger brothers, who are three and four years old right now, to grow up watching me build that and believing it is completely normal to build a career around giving back to the people around you. This scholarship would ease the financial weight of starting college and allow me to focus fully on becoming the practitioner and community resource I’m working toward. I’m not asking for a handout. I’m asking for the support I intend to pay forward to every patient I treat. This scholarship helps me get there in a real way. My parents are raising three young kids and there is no money available to put toward my tuition. I am entering Shenandoah University this fall largely on my own financially. Every dollar of scholarship support means less debt when I finish and more freedom to build the kind of practice I actually want to build rather than one driven purely by financial pressure. I am not asking for help because I am not willing to work for it. I have been working for it since high school. I am asking because the support matches the seriousness of what I am trying to do, and I do not plan to waste it.

Being a first generation college student means there is no roadmap in my house for what I am about to do. Nobody in my immediate family has been through a doctoral program. Nobody can tell me exactly what to expect or how to navigate it. That is not a complaint. It is just the reality, and it means I am figuring things out as I go while trying to build something that changes what is normal in my family going forward. The challenges I have faced are not always the kind that make for a dramatic story. I grew up on the Southside of Richmond, where resources were limited and quality healthcare was not something most people around me had easy access to. I watched my grandmother deal with illness and not always receive the care she deserved. I watched teammates play through injuries in high school because nobody nearby had the training to properly evaluate what was going on. I worked part time through high school at a furniture manufacturing company while balancing football, volunteer work with a Special Olympics program, and keeping my academics together. None of that stopped me. It made the direction I was heading clearer. What drives me is knowing exactly what I am going back to. I am not pursuing a Doctor of Physical Therapy degree because it is a stable career. I am pursuing it because I grew up watching a specific gap exist in my community and I decided I was going to spend my career addressing it. People on the Southside of Richmond deserve quality physical therapy care. They deserve someone who understands where they come from and is genuinely invested in their recovery. That is what I am working toward. My dream is to open a physical therapy practice rooted in an underserved community, built around real patient relationships and pricing that does not push people away before they ever walk through the door. I want my younger brothers, who are three and four years old right now, to grow up watching me build that and believing it is completely normal to build a career around giving back to the people around you. This scholarship helps me get there in a real way. My parents are raising two young kids and there is no money available to put toward my tuition. I am entering Shenandoah University this fall largely on my own financially. Every dollar of scholarship support means less debt when I finish and more freedom to build the kind of practice I actually want to build rather than one driven purely by financial pressure. I am not asking for help because I am not willing to work for it. I have been working for it since high school. I am asking because the support matches the seriousness of what I am trying to do, and I do not plan to waste it.

I grew up on the Southside of Richmond, Virginia. My father built businesses rooted in giving back to the community that raised him, and that is the standard I grew up under. Not accumulating things for yourself, but building something that actually helps the people around you. That value has followed me into everything I have done and it is the foundation of where I am trying to go. I graduated from Richmond High School for the Arts this past May. Getting through high school meant balancing football, part time work at a furniture manufacturing company, volunteer commitments, and keeping my academics in order all at the same time. There were stretches that were hard to manage. But I stayed focused because I understood that my education was the one thing nobody could take from me, and that kept me going when everything else felt like a lot. This fall I am heading to Shenandoah University to pursue a Doctor of Physical Therapy degree. I chose that path because of what I watched growing up. People in my neighborhood dealt with pain and injuries for years without proper treatment because quality care was not accessible where we lived. I watched it again playing defensive end in high school, where guys pushed through injuries because nobody nearby had the training to properly evaluate what was going on. My grandmother’s illness brought it even closer. Watching her not always receive the level of care she deserved made this feel personal in a way that has never left me. I want to be a physical therapist working in communities like the Southside of Richmond, where that gap has been real for a long time. I volunteered for multiple years with United Fitness, a Special Olympics cornhole program. I showed up every season, built real relationships with the athletes I worked with, and became someone they could count on. That experience shaped how I think about serving people. It is not about showing up once with good intentions. It is about being consistent and taking the people you are there for seriously every time. My strengths are my discipline and my ability to connect with people across different backgrounds and circumstances. Four years of football built an accountability in me that carries into everything else I do. My weakness is that I take on a lot at once, and I have to stay intentional about keeping my focus on what matters most. That is something I am aware of going into a demanding program. My vision is straightforward. Earn my doctoral degree, open a physical therapy practice in an underserved community, and spend my career providing care to people who have not always had access to it. I want my younger brothers, who are three and four years old, to grow up watching that and believing it is completely normal to build something that gives back to the people around you. This scholarship meets a real need. My parents are stretched financially raising two young kids and there is simply no money available to put toward my tuition. I am entering college largely on my own financially. This scholarship lets me stay focused on becoming the best clinician I can be rather than spending my energy trying to figure out how to fund it. The communities I want to serve eventually deserve my full attention, and this is what makes that possible.

I want to be a physical therapist working in communities like the Southside of Richmond, where quality care has always been hard to come by. Growing up there, I watched people deal with pain and injuries that never got properly treated because the right care was either too expensive or too far away. That was just life for a lot of people I knew. I am pursuing my Doctor of Physical Therapy degree at Shenandoah University because I want to change that, at least in the corner of the world I actually know. Two people shaped how seriously I take this. My grandmother was the first. Watching her deal with illness and not always get the level of care she deserved made healthcare feel personal to me before I ever thought about it as a career. She gave a lot to the people around her and I watched the system fall short of what she deserved. That never left me. My father was the second. He built businesses with the Southside in mind, putting something back into the community that raised him. Watching that taught me that where you end up does not have to be disconnected from where you came from. Football pointed me further in this direction. Playing defensive end in high school put me around injuries constantly. I watched guys push through things they should not have been pushing through because there was nobody nearby with the training to properly assess what was going on. That is a problem that starts young and gets worse over time. People carry chronic issues from injuries that were never properly treated, and a lot of that is preventable with the right care early on. I want to be the person providing that care, specifically for people in communities that do not have reliable access to it. What I want to build eventually is a physical therapy practice rooted in an underserved community. Sliding scale pricing, real relationships with patients, and enough outreach that people actually know what care is available to them and feel comfortable using it. Not something that just exists on paper. Something that people in the neighborhood actually trust and use regularly. My education is what makes any of that possible. The clinical training and coursework I will go through at Shenandoah University are what separate wanting to help people from actually being qualified to help them. I am not going to school to put letters behind my name. I am going because the people I want to serve deserve someone who actually knows what they are doing. That is what I am working toward and I do not plan to lose sight of it.

Some moments of helping someone don't look like much from the outside. No ceremony, no announcement. Just a decision made quietly between two people who trust each other. Haziekah and I have been teammates since we laced up cleats on the same field at our high school Richmond High School for the Arts. We read each other's tendencies before the snap, communicate without words, and push each other through these kinds of practices. That partnership didn't happen by accident. It was built over time, practice after practice, rep by rep, and one of the most important stretches of that building happened the summer before our senior year. Going into junior year's offseason, I knew we had to bring it harder on the field and to make ourselves known and what the next season required. To compete at a higher level, I needed structured gym time not just field work, but weight training, conditioning and recovery and preparation. I got a membership at the local gym in my city and started planning out the summer. Haziekah wanted the same thing. He had the drive and the discipline. What he didn't have was the money for a membership. We both come from low-income families. That's not a complaint, it's just the reality we've always worked within. But it meant that something as basic as a gym membership was an extra expense that may not happen for us. I had scraped together enough to cover mine. I thought about what it would mean if Haziekah couldn't be there training beside me, and I decided it wasn't something I was willing to accept. I paid for his membership for the summer months of the offseason. We trained together weekly that summer when we could. We pushed each other through sets when motivation dropped, held each other accountable when it would have been easier to skip. The gym became an extension of the field, a place where we competed against our own limits and reached new goals in the process. Haziekah got stronger. His footwork sharpened. His conditioning improved in ways that showed up immediately once practice started. But what changed more than his physical performance was his confidence. He walked into that next season knowing he had put in the work, and that knowledge changes how you play. I didn't help Haziekah because I expected something back. I helped him because he is my teammate, and that word means something to me. A team doesn't function when one person is held back by something that has nothing to do with effort or talent. He had both. The results didn't stay quiet. We both had strong senior seasons. We both signed to play football at Shenandoah University. We're going to share a dorm room when we get there. It's going to be a fun time! The partnership we built in that gym and on that field, is the foundation we're bringing with us and a little piece of home as well. Helping Haziekah wasn't a sacrifice. It was an investment in something we were building together. The lesson I took from it is simple: when you can remove an obstacle for someone who is ready to work, you do it. Everything else takes care of itself. Now I have a friend and teammate that is walking with me on this new journey and I am excited to have him ride along.

Faith is the foundation my life is built on. As a young man growing up in Richmond, Virginia, there were plenty of distractions available to me. Following Christ gave me a framework for filtering them out. When the easier path looked appealing, my faith reminded me that I was working toward something bigger than the moment I was standing in. That perspective has kept me focused through high school in a way that nothing else could have. My faith is not passive. It shows up in how I approach school, football, and the people around me. I believe God has a plan for my life, and I take that seriously. That belief doesn’t make me complacent. It makes me more committed, because I understand that the opportunities in front of me are not guaranteed and not accidental. Wasting them would be wasting something I was given on purpose. Academically, faith has pushed me to stay disciplined when motivation ran short. There were semesters where the workload was heavy and the results felt slow. My relationship with Christ is what kept me steady during those stretches. I prayed, I refocused, and I kept going. That consistency is what I’m carrying into Shenandoah University this fall as I begin working toward my Doctor of Physical Therapy degree. My coaches have shaped me just as much outside the classroom as inside it. Football culture at its best is about accountability, and my coaches held me to a standard every single day. They pushed me to get better when I thought I was already giving enough. They taught me that effort without intention is wasted, and that lesson applies to everything, not just the game. When I think about the kind of physical therapist and athletic trainer I want to be, I think about the coaches who refused to let me be less than what I was capable of. I want to be that for my future patients and athletes. My father is a Navy veteran who built community-oriented businesses after his service. Watching him work, sacrifice, and lead showed me that higher education was not optional if I wanted to do something meaningful with my life. He never had to say it directly. His example said it for him. My family’s belief in me has been a constant source of motivation, and I carry my younger siblings in the back of my mind as well. The standard I set now is one they will watch and measure themselves against. Higher education is how I get from where I am to where I am supposed to be. I am going to Shenandoah because it has one of the strongest physical therapy programs in Virginia, and I refuse to shortcut the preparation for the career I want. The communities I plan to serve, student athletes, working adults, and older residents in places like the Southside of Richmond, deserve a practitioner who was trained at the highest level available to him. Faith got me here. Discipline will carry me through. And the people who believed in me before I fully believed in myself gave me the foundation to do both. Twitter: @Calvindunn08

My goal is to become a licensed physical therapist and certified athletic trainer, with a practice focused on underserved communities, student athletes in under-resourced schools, working adults, and older residents who lack access to quality rehabilitation care. I chose Shenandoah University specifically because its Doctor of Physical Therapy program is one of the strongest in Virginia, and I want the best clinical foundation possible for the work I plan to do. The academic path Shenandoah’s DPT program is a doctoral track, which means my road runs through an undergraduate pre-PT curriculum before I apply to the graduate program. My plan is to complete the required coursework in anatomy, physiology, biology, kinesiology, and statistics while maintaining a competitive GPA for DPT admission. I will pursue clinical observation hours early, starting freshman year, so I’m not scrambling to meet requirements at the last minute. I also plan to sit for the BOC exam to earn my athletic training certification, which will make me employable in sports medicine settings while I complete my doctorate. Timeline Years 1 and 2 are foundational. I’ll complete prerequisites, log observation hours, and get involved in Shenandoah’s athletic and health science programs. Year 3 is when I apply to the DPT program. The doctoral program itself runs three years, putting me at licensure around year six. That timeline is demanding but straightforward if I stay on track academically. Budget and finances My out-of-pocket responsibility is approximately $27,000 after financial aid. That covers tuition, housing, and basic living expenses across my undergraduate years. I’m addressing that gap through a combination of merit scholarships, need-based aid applications, and federal student loans where necessary. Every scholarship I earn reduces the loan burden I carry into graduate school, which matters because the DPT program adds additional costs on top of undergraduate expenses. Graduate school will require its own financial planning. DPT programs typically run $80,000 to $120,000 total depending on the institution. My strategy is to minimize undergraduate debt now so I have more borrowing capacity and less monthly pressure when I reach that stage. I’m also researching loan forgiveness programs tied to working in underserved or rural communities, which aligns directly with where I want to practice. Resources The resources I need are academic, clinical, and financial. Academically, I need access to strong faculty mentorship and laboratory coursework, both of which Shenandoah provides. Clinically, I need consistent observation and hands-on hours, which I’ll build through Shenandoah’s clinical partnerships and by seeking positions as a student athletic trainer with the university’s sports programs. Financially, I need scholarships like this one to close the gap between what aid covers and what I actually owe. The bigger picture I grew up in Richmond seeing what happens when communities don’t have accessible healthcare. My grandmother’s final years reinforced that. People without resources still get hurt, still age, still need rehabilitation. They just often go without it. My plan isn’t only to earn a degree. It is to build a career that puts skilled, affordable care in front of people who would otherwise never receive it. That is the goal every financial decision, every course, and every clinical hour is working toward.

My grandmother never sugarcoated anything. When life was hard, she said so. When I was wrong, she told me. When I needed to push through something, she pushed with me. I did not understand how much that shaped me until she passed in August 2021. We were close in the way that only happens when someone decides you are worth their full attention. She listened without half-listening. She remembered what I told her last time and brought it up the next, not to lecture, but because she actually cared. Growing up on the Southside of Richmond, where the world outside my front door did not always work in my favor, she was who I came home to. Not just physically. She made the hard parts of life feel survivable. When she got sick, I did not know what to do with the helplessness. Watching someone that strong get worn down by cancer is its own kind of education. I sat with her through appointments, through bad days, through days that were somehow worse because they started out fine. I watched the people who cared for her, the physical therapists, the nurses, treat her with both skill and dignity. Something clicked. That was the work I wanted to do. Not out of sentiment, but out of recognition. Those people gave her quality of life when her body was fighting against her. That is a real thing to do with your life. So I declared physical therapy as my major. I want to work with underserved communities, people who often get less access to the care that makes a genuine difference in recovery. My grandmother did not come from money. She built her life through stubborn effort and investment in the people around her. A career aimed at helping people who look like her, who live where she lived, is the right way to carry that forward. She also changed how I move through the world. Before she passed, I held back. I stayed comfortable. She kept telling me that the risk of staying closed off was bigger than the risk of opening up. She meant it about life in general. It turned out to apply to everything. On the football team, I stopped waiting for connection to come to me and started building it. I thought about what she modeled, the way she walked into a room and treated people like they mattered before they had done anything to earn it. I started doing that. In the classroom, I engaged instead of observed. I introduced myself. I asked questions out loud. The relationships I have built in sports and in school feel real in a way I do not think they would have if I had stayed behind the wall I used to keep up. She taught me that life is not something that happens while you wait for the right moment. She lived that. I am still learning to do it. But every time I step toward someone instead of away, every time I choose the harder path, I am following her.

Service is not something I schedule around the rest of my life. It is how I operate. At school, I take on leadership wherever it is needed — in the classroom, in student organizations, and on the football field. Leadership, to me, is a form of service. When I step into a role, I am accountable to the people around me. My teammates depend on me to show up prepared, focused, and willing to do the hard work that earns their trust. That responsibility does not feel like a burden. It feels like purpose. The clearest expression of that purpose is my work with the special needs program at my school. I volunteer there because I want to, not because it looks good on a form. Working alongside students who face real barriers every day has taught me more about patience, presence, and human dignity than any classroom lesson. These students do not need pity. They need people who show up consistently and treat them as full human beings. I try to be that person. Spending time in that program reshaped how I think about what helping someone actually means. My path into athletic training and physical therapy grew from the same instinct. Athletes get hurt. The body breaks down under pressure. What happens next — how a person recovers, how they rebuild strength and confidence after injury — depends heavily on the quality of care they receive. I have watched teammates go through that process. I have seen what attentive, skilled support does for a person's recovery, and I have seen what the absence of it looks like. That experience pointed me directly toward this field. Athletic training and physical therapy sit at a specific intersection: sports performance, rehabilitation, and long-term physical health. When I complete my education, I will work in that space with intention. My goal is not only to work with elite athletes. I want to bring these services into my community, where access to quality rehabilitation care is often limited. Too many people — student athletes, working adults, elderly residents — manage injuries without adequate support because the resources are not available or not affordable. That gap is where I want to work. Community service in healthcare is not abstract for me. It means showing up to a clinic in a neighborhood that does not have enough providers. It means volunteering time, building trust, and providing care that treats people as more than a billing code. The same presence I bring to the football field and to the special needs program, I will bring there. My education is the tool. The intention behind it is not to build a career that looks impressive from the outside. It is to develop the technical skill and clinical knowledge to be genuinely useful to the people in front of me — whether that is a quarterback recovering from a torn ACL or a fifty-year-old factory worker trying to get back to full mobility after a knee injury. That is what service looks like in my life. Specific. Consistent. Present.

I grew up on the Southside of Richmond, Virginia. Low-income neighborhood, crumbling buildings, drug use on corners, streets that rarely saw a cleaning. That was the backdrop. But for most of my childhood, I didn't see any of that clearly because my parents made our world feel whole. Our block was well-kept. Yards mowed, porches swept, neighbors who knew my name. My parents created a version of normal that felt full rather than lacking. We went to the playground down the street, ran with friends and came home to a house that felt like enough. I wasn't sheltered from where I lived, I just wasn't defined by it yet.That shift happened gradually, mostly through school. My schools were inner-city schools. The buildings showed their age, peeling walls, outdated equipment, classrooms that needed more than a coat of paint. What those schools had, though, was staff who showed up and teachers who cared about their students. I noticed the care before I noticed the cracks. But the cracks were there. And when I started playing football, I ran into them head-on. Football was a decision. I was old enough to understand what the streets could become for young men in my neighborhood. I'd seen it everyday living in the inner city and didn't want to be a part of it. I wanted to set an example for my younger brothers. Football was the opposite of that. It demanded my time, focus and body. It gave you somewhere to be and something to protect. The problem was the program had almost nothing. No proper gear. Equipment that had been used past its useful life. A team trying to compete with schools that had full athletic budgets, new uniforms, weight rooms. We were showing up ready to work and borrowing what we needed to do it. That gap was discouraging in a way that's hard to explain unless you've felt it wanting something badly, doing everything right to pursue it, and still running into a wall built by circumstances you didn't create. It would have been easy to give up and quit. I didn't quit. What I did instead was get methodical about the problem. Discipline came first. I controlled what I could, my efforts at practice, my conditioning, my attitude. No one was going to hand me a reason to stay, so I built my own reasons. I showed up when it would have been easier not to. I even recruited a couple of my friends to play as well to make it even more fun. Then I looked for resources outside the school. I asked questions. Reached out to programs, coaches, community contacts. Some leads went nowhere. Some didn't. You learn quickly that asking costs nothing and silence costs more. I also got a part-time job. That decision came from watching my parents and understanding something basic: if you need something and the system isn't going to provide it, you find another way to pay for it. I contributed money toward things that were needed. Also having a job will help me get to the next level in college as well. None of that fixed the larger problem. My school still had less than it should have. The neighborhood didn't change because I got disciplined. What changed was my relationship to the obstacles. I stopped waiting for someone to remove it and started working around it. The Southside made me practical in a way no classroom could. You learn early and quickly that resources are uneven, and that you have to stay focused to make it through. My parents showed me a version of that every day on our clean, well-kept block, surrounded by a neighborhood that told a harder story.I learned to hold both truths at once.

My father served in the Navy during a time when the world was anything but still. He was part of major global events that most people only read about deployed, present, and accountable when it counted most. I was a small baby when he came home from deployment. As I grew as a little kid, I didn't grasp the weight of what he was really doing. He was just “Dad” to me. But I watched how he carried himself, and that discipline and sense of urgency never left him when he came home. After his service, he built two businesses from scratch. He's a professional barber and runs a landscaping company that serves local residents who can't afford to maintain their properties. Neither business is just a way to make money. Both are ways of showing up for people. In the barbershop, he builds relationships and takes care of his community one client at a time. With the landscaping work, he fills a gap for people who need help and have nowhere else to turn. He took what the military gave him structure, reliability, and a service to others and uses that in his everyday life. Watching that shaped how I think about work and education. My father never separated doing well from doing good. His barbershop is successful because people trust him. His landscaping work helps families who would otherwise go without. He built both businesses around the same question: who needs this, and can I be the one to provide it? He not only is doing something to service the community, he is doing what he loves everyday and enjoys it. That makes it worth the while. That question guides me too. I'm pursuing a career as an athletic trainer and physical therapist because it puts me directly in service of someone else's recovery. It's work that is immediate and personal. You are in the room with someone, helping them get back to something they lost. There's no abstraction in that. You either help the person in front of you or you don't. The military gave my father a foundation, and he built on it in a way I can see and touch. He didn't talk about service as a concept. He practiced it. Every client in that chair, every yard he tends for a neighbor who can't do it themselves, that's the same ethic he carried out of uniform, just expressed differently. I want to carry that same ethic into healthcare. The training is long and the field is demanding, but my father stood watch during world events most people only saw on the news and some you cant even talk about. Showing up when it's hard is something he taught me without ever making a lesson out of it. That is something that I will be proud to carry over into the healthcare field and provide for my community.

I am seventeen years old, working a job to help pay for college, finishing my senior year, studying for AP exams, and training for college football. I committed to Shenandoah University and will join the team this fall. I cannot show up unprepared, so I do not. Most of my peers are focused on one thing at a time. I do not have that option. A typical week means going to school, going to work, and still finding time to train. Right now, with two AP exams coming up, I am adding serious studying on top of everything else. There is no version of my schedule that has a lot of slack in it. I wake up early, I stay up late, and I make it work because I do not have the option of letting something slip. The training alone is a full commitment. As a defensive end and linebacker, I have to build and maintain the kind of strength and explosiveness the position demands. I lift multiple times a week, work on my pass rush technique, and focus on the conditioning it takes to compete at a college level. I am not just staying in shape. I am building a body and a skill set that can hold up against players who have been training for this their entire lives. That is the standard I am holding myself to. Nutrition is part of that work too. At this level it is not optional. I am intentional about protein intake, meal timing, and making sure my body can actually recover between sessions. That means planning meals around a work schedule and a school schedule, which takes more effort than most people realize. There are days I am prepping food, finishing homework, and getting ready for work in the same two hour window. I have learned to be efficient out of necessity. What keeps everything moving is the understanding that no one is going to manage this for me. I am a first-generation college student. My family supports me, but the financial gap is mine to close. I started working this past March specifically to help cover the cost of college. I made a choice to take that seriously instead of waiting for the situation to get easier. I picked up the job, I keep my grades up, and I keep training. What this is teaching me is that I can handle pressure without folding. I am learning to prioritize fast, waste less time, and stay focused on what actually matters. You do not learn that in a classroom. You learn it when you have to show up exhausted and perform anyway, whether that is on the field, at work, or in front of an exam. I am going into exercise science because I want to work in physical rehabilitation or sports medicine. Being an athlete shows me every day how much physical health affects everything else in a person’s life, their confidence, their ability to function, their sense of who they are. I want to spend my career helping people recover and get back to doing what matters to them. The discipline I am building right now, managing my body, my time, and my responsibilities all at once, is exactly what drew me to this field. I am not walking into college looking for an easy path. I already know what it takes to carry multiple responsibilities at once and keep moving forward. This scholarship would reduce the financial weight I am carrying right now, and that would let me put more energy into becoming the student, the athlete, and eventually the professional I am working to be.

“Coach” is what I call him, He never let me quit. Not in two-a-days when the heat was brutal, not in the fourth quarter when we were down, not when my efforts felt pointless. Coach Hutch didn’t motivate through big speeches. He stayed on the field with me and expected more. When looking at my high school football seasons, I can see that what he did was more than enough. What made him different was what he shared off the field. He talked about his own mistakes openly. Decisions he regretted, things he had to rebuild, lessons that came too late or cost too much. Most adults either hide that stuff or clean it up before they tell it to anyone, especially teenagers. He didn’t. He told me the truth about his life and trusted me to do something with it. With that I felt that I understood my coach more and that he was really there to support me on and off the field. While others were taking a break or resting on the bus rides after games, We would have great conversations, talk about the game, the future and how my every day decisions affect me on and off the field as well. I thoroughly enjoyed those conversations and I didn't feel judged or shamed for my mistakes or takes on things that I felt strongly about. That changed how I listen to people who have been through more than me. I paid closer attention to peoples experiences and how it got them to that point in their life. What went wrong, when, and why. Coach Hutch made his past useful instead of something to be embarrassed about, and that takes more courage than people give it credit for. Though I have not been in as many experiences as my coach, my experiences are still valid and they tell my story. A first generation college student in my family. Coming from a low income family and a community that is not the best but is trying to thrive again. By going to a disproportionate school that does not get that much funding, I know that I have accomplished a lot in my time in high school. All of my experiences have affected me and made me the person I am today. I am a leader in my classroom and on the field. I am setting the example for my three younger brothers and showing them they can succeed as well. The football side of it mattered too. Hard practices taught me that being uncomfortable does not mean you stop. You feel it and keep going. That carried over into everything else. A rough semester, a conversation I did not want to have, a situation I wanted to walk away from. The habit of pushing through came from his practices. You keep your head up and keep going. He was trying to build better men while also coaching football. He built a better me. He knew that I did not fully understand it until I was out of it and looking back.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Now I am so grateful that I got to experience it.

As a high school athlete and a person of color going to a school in an underserved area in my city, my high school wasn't one that was talked about a lot for all of the good things they have going on. My high school had no shortage of athletic talent. What it lacked was structure for the students who couldn't afford the fees, practice equipment, or travel costs that made sports possible. Many of those students were Black and other students of color from low-income households like myself. Some kids showed up to tryouts in borrowed cleats and left before the season started because their families couldn't cover the fees or gear. I watched this happen repeatedly, and I decided to do something about it. One day while riding the bus home, I thought about starting a community sports mentorship program at my school. I had an idea and no background or budget to follow but I had a plan. The goal and need was clear. I had to connect with my teachers and mentors at my school and underserved student athletes to reduce the financial burden keeping them off the field, and to continuously provide that kind of mentorship even when the seasons ended. Getting it off the ground meant taking accountability and doing the research that no one else wanted to do or had the capacity to. I reached out to my coaches and counselors and principal, marketing the program in conversations that I was a little nervous to have. I worked with school administration to get access to facilities and equipment. I contacted community organizations and businesses about equipment donations and even monetary donations and coordinated gear drives so that the cost of cleats or a uniform wasn't the reason a student had to sit out. None of this followed a business plan or script. I started to get great feedback from coaches and people actually wanted to be a part of something that was going to make a difference. Mentors were matched with students not just for athletic guidance but for help navigating the systems around sports, how to approach college recruiting, how to talk to coaches, how to build a profile and the brands that would get them noticed. Even how to achieve and thrive academically in the classroom and outside of the classroom. For students from low-income families, that kind of knowledge isn't assumed. It has to be taught, shown and it has to come from someone who shows up consistently. Running this program also meant confronting the reality that BPIOC student athletes are underserved not just economically but in terms of who gets to define their potential. The students in this program were repeatedly treated as raw talent without a future outside of whatever immediate use their school could get from them. My goal was to change that framing to make sure they had mentors and resources that treated their long-term goals and futures as worth investing in. I am not from a background that gave me a clear path. I built this program because I was also figuring out how to make my own way, and I understood what it felt like to look around and not see a structure designed for someone like me. That's not a disadvantage I'm framing as inspiration — it's the practical reason I knew what was missing. I had to build what was needed, so I was already practiced at it. It has connected student athletes with mentors, expanded the equipment access available to students, and created a structure that will exist after I graduate.

Like the famous saying “Rome is not built in a day” neither is legacy. It is built in your mind, with your words and actions. My legacy will be built from my daily choices, who I show up for and my character and the impression that I leave behind. My plan is straightforward: I would love to open an athletic training and physical therapy business rooted in the community. It will not just be a business aimed at the already comfortable, but one deliberately built for underserved kids and adults who rarely get access to quality training or rehabilitation. I have seen first hand in my own sports career with having injuries how training and rehabilitation can go a long way and help with everyday function and having top tier performance. My goal is to make that possible for all! Give people the same tools that wealthier communities take for granted, and watch what they do with them. Athletic training changes lives in a way that goes beyond the physical. When a kid learns discipline through movement, learns to push past discomfort, learns that their body is capable, that knowledge follows them in everything that they do, everyday task, classwork, sports and beyond the classroom into adulthood. The same applies to adults recovering from injury, rebuilding confidence, reclaiming their strength, being able to play catch with their kids or even go back into the work force. A business built around that kind of transformation does not stop with the individual. It ripples outward into families and neighborhoods. That is the kind of legacy I want to build and I want people to see. Not a monument, but a mechanism. I want to produce a long lasting name for myself and my community that keeps giving long after the doors close or I have passed on. I shine my light by being myself without apology, and by making space for others to do the same. As a low-income student and a result of a lower income community, I’ve been told to take it easy, pick up a trade or join the military. None of that set right with my heart. lead by example at home showing my younger brothers and leading my example. I also show my shine on the football field when completing plays and being myself. Even in the classroom, I am myself, making people's lives and enjoying their day, being a good friend and choosing to be happy. Being in a low income community, and seeing a lot of things that could go wrong I take the lead. I take ownership. I do not deflect, I do not minimize and I own it. That kind of accountability is rare, and people notice it. They trust it. Trust is how you lead, and leadership is how you multiply your impact and I want to do that in my community and beyond. Shining your light is showing up fully with my cup full to the best I can get it. A decision to show up fully, to lift others as you rise, and to treat the people around you as worthy of your best effort. Every person I help succeed becomes evidence that this approach works. That evidence is the legacy. I do not need my name on a building. I need the work to matter. If the kids I train go on to train others, if the adults I rehabilitate return to lives they thought were behind them, if the business outlasts me and keeps serving people who need it is enough. That is Calvin Dunn’s Legacy.

Personal finance, Oh what is that you say! I had to learn that quickly and I'm glad I did. Since becoming a graduating senior in high school, I had to learn quickly what personal finances are and how they will affect me in my adult life. Thankfully I have great parents that gave me a good long literature and tutorial of what that looks like. We went over bank accounts, savings, budgeting, investing as well as entrepreneurship. I also took a financial education course at school that taught me a lot of information and how to handle my finances. I am grateful that those resources are available to use. Having financial education in my back pocket is something I will use everyday. With being a senior, getting ready for graduation, prom, and college applications and expenses, I have set out a goal to help me earn and save money for all of my milestone events. I found out that I needed more funds to accomplish my goals and prepare and get to college. So I had to have hard conversations with my parents and myself as to what I needed and what I really wanted to do with my life. With having financial conversations, I have completed a financial education course as well as opened a bank account of my own. I have started a part time job after school that will help me with saving funds for college this fall. When I accomplish my goals this senior year, I plan to continue to ensure I am using my financial knowledge while I am in college and into adulthood. I plan on continuing to save and budget my funds, and getting additional employment if needed to stay in a good financial status. I also plan to take my knowledge and ensure that my younger brothers understand finances as well and to help them go through high school as well as help them with their college needs. After graduating college, I plan to be a great player in the NFL and with those earnings, I will be able to help my family and community. I come from an under served community and I plan to also offer some of those same financial courses at high schools, and in the community. By doing that I will be able to help others accomplish their goals of being debt free, or making homeownership obtainable. That is on my bucket list of goals to accomplish.

The first time I understood what a physical therapist actually does, I was the one on the table. Junior year, my patellar tendon gave out. Football has been the spine of my life since sophomore year. It was the thing that got me up early and kept me disciplined, and kept me focused on my school work and football. Then out of nowhere I was watching practice from the sideline like a hurt puppy with my tail in between my legs and my head down. Useless and stuck. Just waiting for someone to tell me what came next and how to recover. What came next was a physical therapist who treated me like I had a brain and not just another number.He did not just work on my knee. He studied how I walked, how I compensated, how my whole body reorganized itself around the damage. He explained every decision. By the time I was cleared to play again, I did not just feel better. I understood what had happened to me, and why the work we did fixed it. I had a light bulb moment that day and it stuck with me the way the injury itself did and I have not looked back. I had been great at school and made good grades and had school involvement as well, but school had always felt like something I was moving through and was just a part of life and growing up. Watching my therapist work flipped that. He had a doctorate. Years of learning the science and applying it to his everyday practice. That depth was the difference between someone who treats a symptom and someone who treats a person. I wanted to be just like that, to have a passion for people as well as the career. With that I am heading to Shenandoah University to study exercise science and physical therapy. I want to work with athletes and patients in recovery, people who feel like that lonely puppy on the sidelines with no help. I would like to help the people that feel stuck and feel like they have no way out. Also, I hope to influence my family and friends to continue with taking care of their health as well. The best influence would be to use my experience to help anr guide my young brothers that are looking up to me and will be making big decisions one day for their own future.

Boldly, Unapologetically Me A time when I was unapologetically me was my sophomore year, the pressure was everywhere. Kids I had known for years were making choices that did not fit into what I wanted for myself and where I wanted to go. Drugs, trouble, and lots of bad habits dressed up as fun. I felt it. I was not immune to it. But I knew what I was building, and where I wanted to go and it was not to be a regular guy just trying to fit in.I was not willing to tear it down for the sake of fitting in. Football was a big part of that clarity. I had just started playing and getting the hang of the sport and making a name for myself. With finding my footing in the sport, I could already feel it shaping who I was. It gave me something to protect. Showing up to practice unfocused, undisciplined, or compromised was not an option I was willing to live with. My body was my investment. My reputation on and off of that field was mine to build or ruin. So I made a choice. I stopped trying to straddle two different worlds and committed to the one that actually meant something to me. I pulled my circle closer, the ones who wanted more, and I led by example. I got a couple of my friends to join the team with me and now they are on a new path as well. Not with speeches, but with consistency. Being myself was not always the popular choice sophomore year. But it was the only one I could live with, and it is the reason I am still standing on the right side of every decision I made. Fast forward to my senior year, I am making strides and so are my friends. We are on a new path to college and a great football career. Kindness in Action” I live on a small suburban block and there is an elderwoman on my street who tends to her yard alone. She has a big yard for an elderly lady and it used to be taken care of by her and her husband, but he has since passed away. One afternoon, I noticed her struggling with overgrown grass and a yard that had gotten away from her. I walked over and asked if she needed help. She said yes without hesitation and a smile. I put on my yard gear, grabbed my dads lawn mower and yard supplies. I spent the next few hours cutting her grass, pulling weeds, and clearing her flower beds. The work was not complicated, but it took time and effort she no longer had the capacity to give. When I finished, she looked at her yard with such delight and gratitude. She thanked me more times than I could count for all of my hard work. She really enjoyed the company. She told me stories about her and her husband and how he lived to take care of the year and their house and how they have lived there for over 30 years and watched the neighborhood grow. Helping her also brought me so much joy as well and a full heart. I did not help her expecting recognition. I helped because the need was obvious and I was capable of meeting it. But her words reminded me that kindness is not always about grand gestures. Sometimes it is just showing up when someone is invisible to everyone else.She deserved a clean yard.