Winners Named at June 2 Times-Dispatch/Sports Backers Awards Dinner
Richmond, VA – The Richmond Region’s finest high school scholar-athletes will be on display and rewarded for their hard work on Monday night, June 2, when the 23rd annual Times-Dispatch/Sports Backers Scholar-Athlete Awards Dinner takes place at The Jefferson Hotel. This year the program is awarding over $65,000 in college scholarships to 20 outstanding high school student-athletes, as well as awards to the male and female CJW Sports Medicine Comeback Athletes of the Year and Williams Mullen Team of the Year awards. Finalists for the Times-Dispatch/Sports Backers Scholar-Athlete Scholarship Program include:
Female Scholar-Athletes Male Scholar-Athletes
| Dodi Allocca | Collegiate | Harris Dandridge | King William | |
| Daisy Banta | Maggie Walker | Alex Fleckenstein | Maggie Walker | |
| Molly Breidenbaugh | Trinity Episcopal | Donovan Dowling | Varina | |
| Payton Cook | Deep Run | Henry Fauls | St. Christopher’s | |
| Amy Dunham | Patrick Henry | Nathaniel Hall | Atlee | |
| Chelsea Matthews | Lee-Davis | Camm Johnson | Trinity Episcopal | |
| Erin Menges | St. Catherine’s | Tommy Mulroy | Midlothian | |
| Molly Novak | Cosby | Danny Polk | Hanover | |
| Katherine Sperry | Glen Allen | Shyam Venkatasubramanian | Henrico | |
| Isabelle Stern | Henrico | Richard Lee Warren | Lee-Davis |
The finalists will attend the dinner not knowing who the male and female Scholar-Athletes of the Year will be. The two winners will each receive a $7,500 scholarship. A male and female runner-up will receive $5,000 each, while the remaining finalists will each receive a $2,500 grant. Finalists were chosen from a pool that included one male and one female nominee from each high school in the area. This is the twenty-third year of the program, which has now awarded a total of $790,000 to 435 outstanding student-athletes from the Richmond area.
Accomplished runner and writer Zoe Romano will be the featured speaker for the event. In 2013, Romano, a Richmond resident, became the first person to run the entire 2,000-mile Tour de France course, raising over $200,000 for the World Pediatric Project in the process. Romano was also the first female to run unsupported across the United States in 2011, and she continues to run while sharing her inspirational story through writing, speaking, and in documentary films. A limited number of tickets for the Times-Dispatch/Sports Backers Scholar-Athlete Awards Dinner are available for $100 each. The deadline to order tickets is Tuesday, May 27 or when the event sells out, whichever comes first. For ticket information call Faith Hecht at the Sports Backers at 804-285-9495 x250 or email at faith@sportsbackers.org.
