Andrea Roscoe’s family is eagerly awaiting to see what she’s going to do on the national stage.
The John Will Anderson Club member gave the audience a small taste of her talent when she won the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Northwest Indiana’s Youth of the Year competition Thursday night at Avalon Manor in Merrillville. Her efforts advanced her to the organization’s state competition as well as earned her the top prize of a $5,000 scholarship.
The competition’s runner-up, Alaisha Brown of the Hammond Club, won a $2,500 scholarship.
Leaders from eight of the 10 Northwest Indiana clubs chose one of their age 13- to 17-year-old members to represent them in the competition, Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Northwest Indiana marketing director Stephanie Latic said. Four of the candidates went through the process last year, she said, while the other four were new to the process.
Their topic, naturally, was club-centered: How has belonging to the Boys & Girls Club changed their lives and what that means to them, she said. While several of them tied their experience to heavy things that happened in their lives, such as deaths in their families or learning to navigate being on the autism spectrum, the overriding theme was clear: The eight of them found the place where they can be themselves without judgment.
Before writing the three-minute speech they performed for a crowd of more than 100, she said the candidates were also required to write an essay and participate in an interview. But the competition wasn’t all just writing and talking; the candidates also got a delicious crash course in etiquette at a local restaurant and were then treated to a shopping spree to pick out the perfect, professional, personality-capturing outfit for their presentations, Latic said.
“They all really bonded over that,” she said.
Should Roscoe, 17, win the state competition, she’ll go on to regionals and then to the national competition, where she’ll stand as an example of the more than 4 million kids who belong to the Boys & Girls Clubs all over the country, said Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Northwest Indiana President and CEO Mike Jessen.
“We know on a personal level the struggles our Club kids have, and they’re real,” Jessen said. “Times have changed: In 2015, 29.3% of our kids said they felt sad and hopeless for more than two weeks; fast forward to 2021, and 46.9% feel sad and hopeless for more than two weeks. One in 10 have attempted suicide; in fact, a Club kid took their life this year.”
But to see the eight kids up there Thursday night is to know that there’s hope for the future, he added.
“Ninety-four percent of our kids feel safe in our club, and 92% want to help,” he said. “And 82% believe they can make a difference.”
Roscoe, who was a newbie to the event, said she learned a lot about working with other people to make things happen. And because the candidates couldn’t talk about their speeches with each other before Thursday, hearing the things her new friends have gone through kind of blew her mind.
“My heart went out to them. You never know what someone is going through,” she said.
The six remaining candidates — JaMal Backstrom, of East Chicago; Angelise Miranda, of Lake Station; Xander Brown, of Portage; Tromain Jackson, of Merrillville; Anthony Bryson, of South Haven; and Bryston Pemberton, of Valparaiso — were each awarded a $1,250 scholarship.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
