![Cali Wilson of Gulf Breeze High School won the overall female scholarship of $4,000 from The Pensacola Sports Foundation. [CONTRIBUTED PHOTO]](http://127.0.0.1/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/ghows-DA-89174e79-7453-3cb3-e053-0100007fd677-47a097fd.jpeg)
SANTA ROSA COUNTY — Each year, Pensacola Sports brings together the top senior student-athletes in each sport from Escambia and Santa Rosa County schools for a dinner and scholarship recognition program.
The 2019 Annual Senior Scholar Athlete Banquet had 214 senior nominees and over 700 total people in attendance on Thursday night at Olive Baptist Church for the Annual Senior Scholar Athlete Banquet Presented by Sacred Heart Health System Ascension.
Schools in both Escambia and Santa Rosa nominate their senior athletes for each sport and submit the paperwork to Pensacola Sports.
A selection committee made of educators, community leaders, and Pensacola Sports board members reviews the anonymous applications and selects the best person’s credentials for each sport. Those are the individual sport winners. Then, they select the overall male and female winners from the individual sport winners.
Cali Wilson of Gulf Breeze High School won the overall female scholarship of $4,000 from The Pensacola Sports Foundation.
Other awardees were Katherine Player and Liam Werner, both from Gulf Breeze High School. Player was awarded the Whataburger Books Scholarship, while Werner received the Dr. Alec Kessler Memorial Scholarship
Additionally, Pensacola State College awarded 24 individual sport winners with a scholarship.
Gulf Breeze’s Vanessa Welch, Madelyn Vasquez and Callie Mitchell each took home a scholarship. Welch was the girls lacrosse winner. Vasquez won the scholarship for softball and Mitchell received a scholarship in the girls tennis section.
Navarre’s David Melega, Julia McMaster and Joshua Carter also won scholarships. Melega was the basketball winner, while McMaster won in girls weightlifting and Carter won in boys weightlifting.
Pace also ended the night with three winners. Erica Fisher won in girls cross country, while fellow classmates Mary Elisa Schultz and Tyler Tran won in girls gold and wresting, respectively.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Local athletes receive scholarships