Over the last 14 years, the Valero Alamo Bowl has selected 356 graduating high school seniors to split over $1 million in scholarships to the university of their choice courtesy of the bowl.
Each scholarship winner received an award letter in early December, attended a luncheon at Fleming’s Steakhouse with their parents the next week and then walked on the field during the Valero Alamo Bowl to be recognized by their families and the 65,000 fans in attendance.
One of this year’s winners received a full ride and returned his $4,000 scholarship. Luckily, we had chosen an alternate: Aaron Catlin from MacArthur High School. Rather than just let him know the good news over the phone, we decided to ask him two things:
1) Does he still need money for college?
2) Would he be willing to make his pitch to our Philanthropic Committee to help us determine who gets the last scholarship?
Since his answers were “yes” and “yes”, we channeled our inner Ashton Kutcher and set up the surprise in our conference room. He came to our office ready to recite from an impressive list of accomplishments he printed out and was nervously clutching in his hand.
However, when we opened the door all he had to do was dodge confetti and pose with a big check as you can see from the video.
He missed out on the luncheon and the game, but left our office with a scholarship making this future Aggie and his Mom very happy.
