Walter Dorman: Hello, my name is Walter Dorman, also known as Wally D. And about three years ago, I started the Wally D Sports Scholarship Foundation, which gives back to our community in San Juan County to the senior student athletes. And how this all came about, I have been broadcasting high school sports for over 25 years and have been involved with high school sports in various aspects, whether it's officiating or broadcasting high school sports, or just helping with community events or fundraisers for student athletes.

And I wanted to give back to the community in some way. And so, this process probably started about 10 years ago. And I started thinking of what can I do for high school sports to help kids out to further their education? So, I started thinking of giving back to the sports community. A lot of times, kids, they get recognized at their school, but they don't get recognized as a community. And so, I started just kind of putting this together and it's something that I wanted to be very special for our student athletes in San Juan County. There are nine high schools here in San Juan County. So, each one of these high schools are given applications for the sports that we cover.

But when we put it together, what we did was we started out with four sports, four boys and four girls to start out small, so that we can make sure that we knew what we were doing to start out with. I mean, I wanted to grab all the sports, I think, the New Mexico Activities Association recognizes 21 sports, and I was just like gung-ho and wanting to do that. And then, I realized, you know, this may be bigger than what I want to take on. So, we started out with four of the basics. We did volleyball, football, boys and girls basketball. And then, we did softball and baseball, it was our first year. And this is our third year for the annual banquet that's coming up. But we started out with those four and we built on that. And I believe the first year, we gave out around $18,000 in scholarships to over 30 student athletes.

Then, the following year we added another award to the menu, and that was cheerleading and dance all in one. And we ended up giving out close to $25,000 in scholarships and over 40 student athletes receive scholarships. And with the growth, we're growing so much being in our third year, we're doubling what we're going to give out in scholarships to 50,000, and that'll be around 70 student athletes that will receive scholarships.

And how the foundation basically works, so we take each one of these sports that we recognized, and the applications are specific to that sport, whether it's soccer, volleyball, wrestling, whatever it is. And we send that out to the schools, the coaches, and senior student athletes can fill out this application that are going to college. And as I said, it's specific to that sport, whether it's the statistics, wrestling, it could be pins, you know, how many state titles did you win, whatever it may be. And then, those applications, of course, have a deadline and they go to a voting committee. A voting committee that's various people. It's people that are on our committee, people that are from out of town, so that we can be very fair in how the voting is.

And so then, what we do is we take the top four nominees. They're invited to the annual banquet that happens the fourth week in June, on a Thursday night. Each one of those are invited. They get four tickets to come to the banquet. We also sell tickets to the banquet for $25. And anyway, people can come and attend it. Our attendance has really grown. Just in the two years that we had it, we started out with 260, our first banquet; and then, 420 for our third banquet. And this year, we're expecting 500. Five hundred's the max that we can have. So, we're expecting that because we did add six new awards this year to our banquet lineup. But those are filled out. They go to the voting committee. Four candidates are taken and invited to the banquet, and the banquet's a real special night. We have Chick-fil-A that hosts the banquet, as far as feeding everybody. And then after that's done then we get into the awards where a presenter comes up. And usually, it's a coach or administrator. It could be anyone. We also do have a special speaker that comes in and talks for about 15 minutes before we get to the awards. And it's always just different people. We've had a New Mexico Activities Association speaker last year. We had Mrs. New Mexico come and speak. And this year, we have a retired pro football player that'll come and speak at the event.

And then, we give out the awards, which as I said, we have a presenter that comes up and will tell a story about the sport or whatever it might be. And they'll say, "Here are the nominees." And the nominees will be played on a video given their stats and what they do. And then, the presenter will open an envelope and he or she will announce the winner and that winner will come up. They get a really nice, nice trophy and also will receive a $1,500 scholarship for winning their sport. So like if it's football, they'll announce the four nominees and he'll announce who the winner is. They'll get a $1,500 scholarship. And then, the other three nominees that were also invited to the banquet will still receive a $300 scholarship. So, four nominees in each of those events will get scholarships.

Let me run down what the awards that we give out for the sports. We have girls and boys soccer, volleyball, boys and girls wrestling; boys and girls golf, which has been added this year; and then, cheer and dance. We also added boys and girls track, which is the running event. Also, boys and girls field events is basically a separate award because those are kind of two different events and you can't compare them as the same. Then, you also have softball and baseball, boys and girls basketball. And football rounds up the events that we will be covering.

And then, you have your special award, you have the Comeback Player of the Year, that's sponsored by Orthopedic Associates, and it's about the players that had serious injury and were able to come back and contribute to their team. You have the Sportsmanship Award. Then, we also award the Coach of the Year, and this is always kind of a fun thing. And then, we also award the Team of the Year. And what we do with that, the Team of the Year gets a thousand dollars donated to their program. And then, we have the last two, which are top honors, and that's the Female Athlete of the Year and the Male Athlete of the Year. And the winner of that receives a $2,000 scholarship. And so, that's kind of basically how the foundation works.

We're really excited about this coming year and, of course, the ongoing years. And it's just been great support from the community that has donated to make this happen. We are a 501(c)(3), so any donations are a tax write-off, and it is just amazing. I got to say thank you to our community of how they've supported this and made it so successful that where we can double the scholarships just in three years of what we give out to our senior student athletes.

And what's pretty amazing is seeing these senior student athletes. Of course, I get to look at all their applications and, actually, last year, got talk to every one of them individually, over 43 student athletes. And hopefully, I get to do that again this year. And it shows, great personalities and just what great young people we have in our community and just the different colleges that they go to. I think last year we had a gal going to Columbia University, a young man going to Texas Tech, just all over a lot going to San Juan County. And then, also, you know, our local here in New Mexico, UNM, New Mexico Highlands, Eastern New Mexico, and the list goes on and on. And so, we're really looking forward to what's going to happen this year, who's going to be the big winners.

And if you'd like more information about Wally D Sports Scholarship Foundation, go to our Facebook page, Wally D Sports Scholarship Foundation, and you can find out a lot of information there. We post a lot of things on that. And we'd love to have you come to the banquet and be a big part of it. And with that, thank you for listening. I'm Wally D, and I hope you have a great year.