The Mexican American Golf Association, Phoenix Chapter, is offering $1,000 scholarships to graduating high school students.
“We have been awarding scholarships for several years,” said David Juarez, a Goodyear resident and the association’s scholarship chairman.
Students can apply through
magaphx.com before April 30.
The Mexican American Golf Association was founded in the early 1960s in California before it branched out to Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
“It’s a social organization,” Juarez said. “The one thing we have in common is we play golf. We represent every ethnic group you can think of. We have about members in the Valley and in Tucson. There are several hundred in Texas and California.”
Each club is run differently. The Mexican American Golf Association received its nonprofit status and helps food banks and people in need, along with offering scholarships.
“In the last few years, we’ve pushed our scholarship initiative,” Juarez said. “We’re much more active in the community directly.”
Juarez encouraged parents or grandparents to guide their grandchildren or children to the website to apply.
“We assume all the kids need some financial assistance,” Juarez said.
MAGA hosts golf tournaments, but because of COVID-19, they were canceled. The group is now shifting funds that would typically be used for that to the scholarship program.
“Typically, these Western regional tournaments are great financial events for our club, but it does somewhat limit our financial resources during our host year,” Juarez said.
“That said, we are conservative with our scholarships this year, but that may change because the COVID-19 pandemic may cause us to cancel this year’s Western regional tournament.”
Juarez said the student qualifications for a 2021 scholarship will be heavily weighted on grades and essay writing.
“It’s all grades. … Normally we’d have them get a letter of recommendation,” he said. “Their grades have to be given to us. We have essays and a volunteer educator who grades the essays.”
Juarez added 40% of the selection process is GPA and the essay is 30%.
“We take the highest points,” he said. “They don’t have to be associated with our group, but if two kids are tied and they’re associated with the group, they’d get it. Last year we had 20 applicants and we took the top 10,” Juarez said.