Valencia County athletes secure NMAA scholarships

Three Valencia County high school students — one each from Belen, Los Lunas and Valencia — have been awarded New Mexico Activities Association Foundation Scholarships.

Nearly 350 students from across New Mexico submitted applications in 26 categories, with 66 total recipients, totaling $79,000.

Receiving $1,000 scholarships are Jadarose Wright, BHS; Daniel Altobello, VHS; and from LLHS, Madison Aragon.

Wright believes her community involvement helped land the “We Go Above. So You Can Go Beyond,” scholarship from the Bank of Albuquerque.

It emphasizes participation in extracurricular activities, academic achievement and an interest in finance or business.

“I really strive to be as involved as much as I can, with community events, organizing events, volunteering,” Wright said.

Through National Honor Society and the Stater’s program at BHS, Wright has helped with food and toy drives, as well as the Eagle Essential Store, which was opened by the Stater’s students.

“We provide essentials for people in our school; such as clothing and hygiene products. We really hope that it helps our school,” Wright said.

Grand Canyon University, in Phoenix, is the next stop for Wright, who competed in soccer, basketball and track & field at BHS.

She will study finance to start her journey toward becoming an investment banker, something she once thought was “like big high stakes gambling.” However, after Wright took a closer look, “I saw that it’s really something that a lot of people should have more of an understanding of.”

Eventually, Wright plans to “start programs where we can teach kids how to invest and how to do these things which will help them in the future.”

Daniel Altobello, a standout tennis player at Valencia, is the winner of the Larry Trepland Memorial Scholarship, presented by Gene and Sadie Pino and the Belen Class of 1973.

“I feel great about it,” said Altobello, who plans to continue his academics at the University of New Mexico.

“I was stressing about trying to get all these applications in and when one finally comes back, it feels real good.”

Altobello plans to focus on chemical or nuclear engineering at UNM.

“I just want to find a major that combines physics and chemistry because those are the two things that I just really love,” he said.

The scholarship was created in honor of Trepland, a multi-sport star at Belen High School, who died in 1972 at the end of his junior year.

The scholarship is for individuals who participated in athletics and “demonstrated the ideals promoted by the New Mexico Activities Association and NMAA Foundation,” with a minimum 3.5 grade point, displaying an excellence in their activity.

“It’s going really well,” Altobello says of his final year of tennis at VHS. “I’m having a lot of fun.”

“I was kind of scared,” Madison Aragon admitted, after being summoned into an office at LLHS. “I didn’t know why I was called in. All the principals were there, and all the councilors.”

Aragon shouldn’t have worried. The gathering was to inform Aragon that she had won a Together We Rise Scholarship from the NMAA Foundation, presented by Ben Lucero and Dr. Wendy Fronterhouse.

In addition to “academic performance and evaluation of personal statements,” one of the requirements for the scholarship was participation/achievement in more than one sport or activity.

Aragon fulfilled that benchmark as a member of the LLHS band’s color guard and the Tigerettes dance team. Both are choreograph-based, but “a lot different, when you have to toss things in the air,” Aragon said of the skills associated with twirling flags.

Post high school, Aragon will study neuropsychology, a field she learned about her freshman year from an assignment exploring careers in biology.

“I really just want to work with people who are having a hard time with mental health issues,” she said. “I want to go into either social work” or therapy, Aragon said.