It’s that time of year again! Equipment being fitted, paperwork being filed, shopping for cleats and stocking up on Gatorade! Besides all the physical work that is involved in putting together a fun and extraordinary experience with the Cougars, there comes an equally important aspect that helped all of our participants get to where they needed to be for football and spirit- academics! Pop Warner is the only national youth sports organization that requires academic standards to participate; our athletes are a complete picture, not just a snapshot from one angle or another. These children are capable of effort and application on and off the field. It is important to encourage them as the years go by that life isn’t about the next touchdown scored, how many yards gained or how high you are on the pyramid. Effort, application, confidence and goodwill make the greatest team players and thereby the greatest teams. As we collect report cards from all of the athletes, there is a secondary motive beyond participation only- the National Pop Warner Little Scholars program goes through great lengths to recognize those that go above and beyond in academia and extracurricular activities. If the participant was in grade Four or above in the 2012-13 year, they may qualify for All-American Scholar recognition on the State, Regional and National level if they have achieved a 96% GPA or higher. These All-Americans represent the top 2% of the 400,000 National Participants. The team Scholastics Coordinator enters every report card into a spreadsheet that translates the grade system used into a numerical value for comparison. If the grade is close (95% or even a 94.7%) we will try our best to find a way to make sure it is taking the maximum weight! After the GPA is processed, qualifying families will be asked to fill out an addendum that asks for any and all non-sport extracurricular activity, awards or volunteer work over the past year. Each item is weighted to increase the student’s base score for consideration. Unfortunately the weight of each item is only known to a few people on State and National level. So let’s get ready to celebrate those students who have went above and beyond in hard work and dedication! I have a feeling that we will have a record year for qualifying students; if you know already that your player/cheerleader had great grades last year in Fourth grade and up, start stirring up those memory banks, folks! Jot down as many awards, activities, volunteer details that you can remember, cause I’ll come a-knockin’! Go Cougars! -Tanja Johnson, Scholastic Coordinator, rccmama@gmail
Posted on: Fri, 12 Jul 2013 02:05:16 +0000
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