WASHINGTON, D.C. – In an effort to get inner city youths to aim for the goal of higher education through the game of hockey, the National Hockey League and Thurgood Marshall College Fund teamed up Wednesday to announce a new scholarship for hockey-playing youths.
If anyone harbored any notions that hockey won’t ever catch on in the “hood,” those notions were thoroughly thrashed by several individuals who attended the kickoff event held in a congressional hearing room on Capitol Hill.
They included college aspiring youths such as Dishawn Jackson, 17, a 6-foot-3 center not for anyone’s basketball team, but as a member of one of the after-school hockey teams run by the Ed Snider Youth Hockey Foundation in Philadelphia.
Jackson said the scholarship opportunity announced Wednesday would make a world of difference in his plans to pursue a higher education.
“I want to apply for as many scholarships as I can,” Jackson said during an interview with Diverse.
If he wins the scholarship when it is offered starting in 2013, Jackson said, “That would mean a lot to me.”
“Nobody in my family graduated from college,” Jackson said. “I would be the first one to go to college and, on top of that to get a scholarship, that would be amazing.”
