BOSTON–Nishka Pant, a rising high school senior from Westborough High School in Massachusetts, is one of six winners of the 2019 Bay State Games Future Leaders Scholarship.
Ms. Pant has been swimming for USA club teams over the past five years as well for her varsity swim team for the past three years, qualifying for the State Championship in each year.
She earned Mid-Wach all-star honors recognized by the Telegram and Gazette for the third straight year and was named her team MVP this year.
After winning the Global Harvard Vision Leadership Conference case study competition, Ms. Pant started a vision club at her high school, raising money for an eye hospital in India.
She has been interning at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of MIT over the past few summers, working on different research projects.
Ms. Pant says she is grateful to Bay State Games for creating such a platform and to her high school for encouraging and supporting swimming.
These winners were selected from a large applicant pool after a process that included committee reviews of all applications and live interviews with selected applicants. The selection criteria included winners’ achievements and involvement in academics, community service, athletics, and leadership roles.
The Bay State Games Future Leaders Scholarship program was established in 1989 and has since distributed nearly $400,000 in financial aid. Each of the rising high school seniors will receive a $2,000 scholarship.
The six 2019 Scholarship winners are
Emily Dobrindt Milton Milton HS Swimming
Allondra Msallem Dedham Dedham HS Track & Field
Nishka Pant Westborough Westborough HS Swimming
Keleyia Lamarra Rochelle Mattapan Wellesley HS Swimming
Jacqueline Smith Stow Nashoba Regional HS Archery
Ella Stanwood Wenham Hamilton-Wenham HS Figure Skating
The Future Leaders Scholarship aims to identify young men and women who will be tomorrow’s leaders. Each year the Bay State Games is proud to award these $2,000 scholarships to six deserving Bay State Games athletes.
Past recipients of the Future Leaders Scholarship have gone on to institutions located in New England as well as across the nation including Harvard, Stanford, Boston College, Notre Dame, Princeton, UMass Amherst, Yale, UCLA, Boston University, Holy Cross, Tufts, University of Virginia, Holy Cross, and Providence College.
The Massachusetts Amateur Sports Foundation awards these scholarships because it believes the future leaders of tomorrow are developed during their high school years with a solid foundation built on academics, athletics, and other interests as well as community service. Achieving success in academics, athletics, and community service teaches responsibility to self and to others, fosters a sense of self-worth, and develops an appreciation for the importance of setting goals and working to achieve them. If learned well, these lessons help make effective leaders in business, education, and the community. These values help to craft the leaders of tomorrow, and the Bay State Games hopes to help these leaders with the Futures Leaders Scholarship program.
