by Dave Blocksom ’68
Sports
Withrow football is back. In his fourth season at the helm, Coach Kali Jones has taken the Tigers to the playoffs for the second year in a row. For the first time since the State playoff system was established in 1972, the Tigers made it to the district second round where they fell to Kings. Two seniors received DI college offers and four received DII offers. All told, our players were offered $12.1 million in college scholarships.
Withrow – The first fifty years: GAA-The Founder and The Advisers
Bob Linnenberg ’63 continues his excellent research into Withrow’s rich history with “Withrow – The first fifty years: GAA-The Founder and The Advisers”. You can read this article by clicking HERE.
Academics
We are proud to announce that two of our seniors have received prestigious Marian Spencer Scholarships to UC. Jamiah Mixon and Jaylen Green will receive fully paid room, board and tuition, plus an all-expense paid study abroad, as well as enhanced advisor support. The scholarships are typically offered to one senior at each CPS high school, but we were honored this year with two recipients.
Experiences
Through your generous donations we have been able to provide additional support and experiences for our students and staff this year. In March we funded a field trip to Kentucky State University for 80 of our students. The trip was led by Withrow Resource Coordinator James Robertson ’99, who is a member of our Alumni Board of Trustees. The students were able to tour the campus, enjoy a lunch in the school cafeteria and watch the KSU-Central State basketball game. It was an eye-opening experience for our students to see a historic black university. We are also funding an April trip to Howard University so that our rugby team can participate in the HBCU Rugby Festival. As Coach Nathan Myers stated, “This will enable our players to experience a rugby community where there’s a greater sense of shared culture and experiences” than they experience locally.
The Arts
We continue to support our growing fine arts program as explained in Christy Backley’s article in this edition. Specifically, we are now providing percussion, woodwind, and brass tutors for all of our band classes, as well as partnering with the Carlson-Berne Scholarship Fund, which provides tutors for our string classes.
Healthy Living
Through our Feed Our Tigers program we continue to provide game day team meals for over 400 of our student athletes. The mental health of students, teachers, and staff has been in the headlines ever since the Covid outbreak. Again, thanks to generous donations, we are providing mental health support to our Tiger family. Currently 80 students are receiving weekly mental health treatments, and we are funding weekly treatments for six students who do not have health insurance for mental health treatments. We have provided several catered lunches for our teachers and staff to show them our appreciation for the tough work they are doing.
Technology
We have hired a website developer to update and completely redo our aging website. This work will be completed this summer, so please check it out in August (withrowalumni.org).
Thanks
In closing, I want to thank all our donors who make all this possible for our students and staff. Your dollars really are transformative. Just a reminder to those of you who are 73 or older and are required to take a Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) from your taxable retirement account: You can make a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) to Withrow Alumni Inc (WAI) in lieu of your RMD, and you won’t have to pay income taxes on the distribution. You can do this even if you take the federal standard deduction and don’t itemize on your tax return. Of course, all other donations to WAI are tax deductible. We sincerely appreciate any donation you can make by clicking HERE. Thank you for your support.
