Butler County Bama Club awards scholarships

Published 6:00 am Saturday, July 27, 2024

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The Butler County Bama Club held its annual scholarship dinner at Cambrian Ridge on July 16 and ten local students were presented with scholarships for their upcoming school year at the University of Alabama. The event featured Patrick Murphy, head softball coach at the University of Alabama, as the guest speaker.

“I know that this group does a lot of really, really good things for kids in this area to come to Alabama,” Murphy said. “That’s one of the reasons why we’ve grown in enrollment. When I started at Alabama, we were 16,000 kids. This fall, we’ll be over 39,000.”

Parker McNaughton, a scholarship recipient pursuing a degree in art with minors in advertising, public relations and art history, expressed his gratitude for the support. 

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“This is my fourth year,” McNaughton said. “I’ve gotten a scholarship, at least one, from the Alumni Association every year. So it’s definitely helped. I can kind of just worry more about my grades and getting a degree rather than any of the money problems. So it’s definitely helped a lot.”

Jana Ealum, club president, highlighted the significance of the evening.

“This is our annual scholarship event where we honor and award our rising freshman and undergraduate students,” Ealum said. “This year we are awarding ten scholarships. We also have a guest speaker, Coach Patrick Murphy, who is a University of Alabama softball coach, so we’re excited to have him. This is one of our bigger scholarship banquets that we’ve had in the last few years, and we’re excited. We look forward to seeing what these ten scholarship recipients do going forward.”

Among the recipients was Alan Alvarez, who is pursuing a degree in kinesiology.

“I’m just very grateful to receive the scholarship,” Alvarez said. “It really does mean a lot.”

The ten scholarship recipients are Parker McNaughton, Stirling Hamilton, Mykel Cheatheam, Vishnu Patel, Nolleigh Reaves, Ashton Edwards, Claire Hutson, Adrianna Thornton, Alan Alvarez and Mason Pouncey.