Past Scholarship Recipients

     Hi! I'm Jordanna Gagnon, 2024 Valedictorian and graduate of Gilpin County High School. In high school, I was a captain of our volleyball team, a part of National Honors Society, Student Council, Interact Club, a member of our soccer team, and the Lady Eagles basketball team manager in my senior year. I also spent time volunteering at the Gilpin Public Library my junior year, and played on a club volleyball team based in Clear Creek throughout all of high school.

     Volleyball has always been my biggest passion. I started playing when I was eleven, and since then, the brightest part of my day in school was going to practice each day. Volleyball has brought me closer to my community, through games and fundraisers, and has given me something to work towards, with an amazing team to dedicate myself to. I applied for the Shelby Allen Memorial Scholarship because of my love of volleyball and desire to lift up my community, values that Shelby always embodied, and because I wanted to help honor Shelby and her amazing connection with everyone she knew. 

     I am a freshman at Colorado State University, working to earn a dual-degree in Psychology and Neuroscience. I really enjoy being at CSU, as, although the school is much bigger than Gilpin, I know that I am in a place where I can nurture my curiosity while continuing to be a part of the community around me. I have learned so much already from the amazing classes I've been able to take, and I am so excited to continue learning and becoming a better version of myself. In the future, I plan to pursue a career in the medical field, possibly looking to become either a neuropsychologist or an anesthesiologist. I hope to honor Shelby's legacy by continuing to foster my love of volleyball and by being a part of my community throughout school and beyond. 

Hey, my name is Lynda Icenogle and I attended Gilpin County High School. In high school, I was an active NHS member since my sophomore year and an affiliate of the varsity cheer team from freshman year through my senior year. With my hard work and the dedication that I shared with my coaches and team, our little team of 5 was able to earn the title of CHSAA Spirit State Runner Up in 2022 in the 2a-3a GameDay division. Now, in this division, we were going up against teams that had on average 15-20 people, and in a competition like GameDay where crowd engagement is one of the highest scoring elements, we were at a major disadvantage and honestly I just wanted to perform to the best of my abilities and have fun. Winning truly wasn't my goal, even though it would be an amazing accomplishment. Hearing that semifinals announcement that we were moving onto finals was truly my "I made it" moment, and I felt like the hard work we put in choreographing our own routine and arguing about what to put where and why was truly worth it all. After performing again, we ended up winning second in state by only two tenths of a point behind first.

That next year, however; I felt like our team had an obligation to uphold and we had to prove that us winning isn't just an anomaly. I think that mindset set me up for failure the next year, we didn't make it to finals and I blamed myself for not doing enough. We had a 5 point deduction for going over the allotted three minutes we are given for our routine that excluded us from our ability to perform again at finals. Personally, since I was head captain, I felt that I let my team down too and I wasn't a good enough captain for them. That moment made me lose my spark and for a while I didn't want to continue my athletic journey. 

After a few months, getting accepted to the Colorado School of Mines, and quite a few long discussions with my dad, I accepted the fact that I had another chance. This chance was never even a thought before. I found out that Mines had a nationally competing cheer team, and getting on that team was my new goal. I started going to recruitment clinics, talking to the coach, and keeping up with what the team was doing. I sent an application to be recruited for the team that included my highlights as a cheerleader and that same week I was informed that I didn't need to try out for the team, no, I was one of the few that got personally recruited. My spark was now a flame and I knew that everything I had worked for up to that moment was worth it. My "failures" no longer mattered to me, what mattered now was being an active member of this new team that I will get to call home. My athletic journey will continue on for at least another 3 years now. My first year as a collegiate cheerleader has almost come to an end with my first national championship in the bag. I can proudly say that my career goal is to not win, but to keep growing with the program I'm in, though, winning would be nice too. 

Personally I applied to the Shelby Allen Memorial Scholarship because I personally knew both Cody and Shelby personally and I would have been honored to know that my journey can uphold the memory of how much they did for our community. I plan on finishing my degree of civil engineering at the Colorado School of Mines to hopefully make my dream career of becoming a Disney Imagineer come true. So far, I've learned that I definitely chose the right major for myself and there is nothing else I could see myself doing. I am truly in the right place and I am forever thankful for my opportunity to make this happen. I love the way that Mines sets its students up for success instead of trying to weed us out like larger universities, I feel like the people here want me to succeed not because it's good for them, but so I can know that I deserve to be here.