ASF Student Athlete Scholarship Winners 2025!

We are proud to announce the five student athletes who earned $2,000 scholarships this year! Our 2025 winners are Ozan Kleiman, Ava Pandya, Sadie Swinney, Emma Thornton, Chander Tripathi.

These students are AISD graduating seniors who plan to attend college or trade school in the fall. In their applications, they told us about their passions outside of sports, the ways they give back to their communities, and the lessons they have learned from playing sports in high school. Sports is about so much more than winning and losing, and it requires so much more than physical effort. These students surprise and inspire us in each essay. We know they are going to do great things next year and in the years to come!

To date, the ASF Student Athlete Scholarship Fund has awarded $38,000 to 38 students. That has been made possible thanks to all of you in the community who have donated to the fund or participated in Bench-A-Thon. Watch a recap of the 2025 Bench-A-Thon fundraiser here.

 

Meet our winners:

 

Ozan Kleiman

McCallum High School

Sport: Powerlifting

What are your interests outside of sports? The natural world has always been a source of inspiration and solace. Whether hiking through trails, or simply appreciating the beauty of a sunrise, the connection to nature offers a sense of peace and a reminder of the world’s vastness. Volunteering, like handing out thrifted clothes to the homeless, is more than an act of service—it’s an opportunity to connect with people and understand their struggles. Mentorship, especially coaching my younger brother and friends in powerlifting, is about building confidence and fostering a sense of achievement for me and them.

What do you aspire to be? My career goals include becoming a kinesiologist or sports trainer, specializing either in powerlifting or athletic training. I want to be knowledgeable on the biomechanics of human bodies, determining how certain practices improve performance and physiological health. A person’s ability to move in his or her environment efficiently and safely with an understanding of how to optimize this through evidence-based practice is what most interests me. To realize this, I intend to participate in research programs and projects that will contribute valuable knowledge to the field of sports sciences. By incorporating practical work along with continuous learning, I am able to help individuals reach their full potential and become their best physical and mental selves.

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Ava Pandya

Anderson High School

Sport: Volleyball

What are your interests outside of sports? Outside of athletics, I am very passionate about volunteering. I am a part of a National Charity League where I volunteer at a local church filling cars up with groceries. In addition to that I also bake dozens of cookies for the Mobile Loaves and Fishes Foundation. My passion towards volunteering took me beyond this charity league, and I became the Vice President of Key Club. Key Club is a volunteering school body association and through this club I have been able to give back to the community in more ways than I could imagine.

What do you aspire to be? I aspire to be a Dermatologist and own my own practice. Being a dermatologist is a highly rewarding career that allows me to give back to the community. I will have the opportunity to help many people, whether that be by guiding them on their skin journey, improving their overall health and well-being, or detecting and treating skin diseases.

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Sadie Swinney

McCallum High School

Sport: Archery (Captain)

What are your interests outside of sports? I am very widely involved both in and outside of school and I’m passionate about my work as a musician, writer, fashion designer, and volunteer. Actively, I am a flute player in the McCallum Wind Ensemble and a singer in the Chamber Choir but I’ve been making music since before I can remember. Outside of school, I design and sew clothes both for myself and to show on runways, am in the process of writing and editing a full-length novel, and I volunteer with various charities and non-profits around the city through National Charity League. I am passionate in expanding my horizons by trying as many new things as I can and learning about the other people who are dedicated to their crafts.

What do you aspire to be? I aspire to be a published author as a full-time job later in life. As an author, I want to spread my love for reading and literature by sharing my stories. With print slowly dying as we progress into an age of technology and AI, I want to bring awareness to the importance of literacy and make books accessible to a wider number of people.

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Emma Thornton

Ann Richards School For Young Women Leaders

Sports: Cross-country, Track, and Karate

What are your interests outside of sports? I love reading all genres and participating in book clubs (My favorite books are “Just Kids” by Patti Smith and “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez), practicing Spanish with friends and during travels, learning about health advocacy (Especially women’s health), watercolor painting, scrapbooking, and discovering new music with my dad.

What do you aspire to be? After college, I would like to be a scientific research communications specialist. I would interpret and translate complex research findings into a language, format, and context that non-experts understand. Research communications specialists make information accessible, share research products via the Internet, journals, and presentations, and tailor messages for a variety of audiences.

Research communication serves the general public. People need to know that the information they are getting about new science and discoveries is accurate and trustworthy. Effective research communications help the public make important decisions. For example, people during the COVID-19 pandemic based their decisions on whether or not to wear a mask or get vaccinated on what they learned from the news. Someone needs to be the middleman between the scientists and the media, and that would be my job as a research communications specialist! I remember the uncertainty that my family and I felt throughout the pandemic, and I would like to help support long-term trust between the public and the scientific community.

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Chander Tripathi

McCallum High School

Sports: Football and Powerlifting

What are your interests outside of sports? I am passionate about being a leader on and off of the field. As a junior, I was selected as one of ten 11th graders (out of a highly competitive pool of over 250 applicants) to be accepted into PALS. PALS is a program where high school students such as myself mentor and work with struggling elementary school students. Additionally, we fund raise for local charities, and we’re on track to raise over $20,000 as a class through my junior and senior years. I initially joined PALS as a way to fulfill the obligation I felt I had to my community, but I soon found that I had a true passion for helping people, and I truly enjoyed being a mentor to the students. After football season ended I wanted to do more service outside of PALS, and I found an outlet to do so by volunteering as an assistant coach for a Special Olympics basketball team. Coaching the program provided me with the opportunity to share my love for sports with a group of athletes who would otherwise not be able to have the same opportunities to play sports that most kids have.

Cooking and baking are also passions of mine; I’ve been baking for as long as I can remember, and I meal-prep every weekend to meet my nutritional needs for football and lifting. Last summer I sought to combine my passion for service with my passion for cooking, which I did by volunteering for Sunday Lunchbox. Sunday Lunchbox is a local food equity organization that takes produce from local farms that would otherwise go to waste, and turns it into healthy plant-based meals for families in need. This experience fit my passions perfectly, as I got to help other people enjoy the same healthy meals that are so important to my life and lifting journey.

Some other passions of mine include pickleball (I wasn’t sure if it counts as a sport), fishing, hiking, and camping. As much as I love to help other people, I also love to have time alone, and my outdoor hobbies allow me to have the space I need to relax and get in touch with my inner self.

What do you aspire to be? I aspire to be someone that other people can learn from. I’ve learned that the best leaders don’t just try to teach everyone around them, instead they allow the people around them to learn from their decisions. I always tried to portray myself as a flawless person in PALS and Special Olympics while working with the younger kids, but I’ve began to realize that helping my peers become better versions of themselves requires a much different approach. I’ve found that the coaches, teachers, and bosses that I’ve benefited the most from working under aren’t people who try to portray themselves as perfect and without fault; instead, they’re people who provide an open window into who they are. By openly displaying their strengths and flaws, they allow the people who work under them to learn from their successes and, more importantly, from their failures. I know I’ll never be perfect, but I hope to be someone who authentically presents my strongest and weakest attributes to my peers, inspiring them to learn from my experiences.

I hope to use my communications degree to either become a speech writer or a social worker. I’ve always loved to write, and I can’t think of a better way to use my passion of writing to help create change than by becoming a speech writer. A good speech, whether it’s MLK’s “I have a dream” or Kennedy’s “We choose to go to the moon”, has the potential to unify a country and inspire generations to come. By writing for a cause I believe in, I hope to give back to my community by channeling the voices of the unheard, gathering support for important social causes, and maybe even writing the words that inspire the next generation of change. If I don’t go into speech writing I plan on going into social work, which would allow me to continue to help my community in the same ways I’ve done through PALS and Special Olympics over the past few years. I’ve experienced the reward that comes from helping the people in my community who haven’t had the same opportunities I have, and I don’t think there’s a more impactful way to give back than through social work. I would be honored to have a more involved role in helping to improve the lives of the kids I work with now, and social work would be a great way to do that.