To apply for this four year scholarship at the beginning of freshman year submit an application for admission to Stepinac and attach a two page letter requesting consideration for this scholarship. Explain the reason for your financial need and how the example set by B.T. Collins may help you be as successful in all important aspects of life as he was. Include references by two teachers and one other community leader outside of your family.
 

Michael McCauley, Class of 1998
Winner of B.T. Collins Scholarship

Mike, a member of the class of ‘98 and the first BT Collins Scholarship recipient, was a stand out basketball player at Stepinac.

Mike recently dropped a line to Bill Choquette, one of the principals behind the Collins Scholarship. In the letter Mike thanked him and Stepinac for the opportunity to be able to attend Stepinac...

“I’ve discussed several times before how much being able to attend Stepinac meant to me and how much I think many of the values, lessons and confidence I learned there stay with me today as a twenty six year old.”

Mike has a very successful clothing business in New York City and is now an annual contributor to the BT Collins Scholarship Fund.

National Championship 2006

Two weeks into Camp Becket, Nick came down with a fever and aches, within a few hours he was so stiff he couldn’t move, soon after that he began to develop a rash all over his body. It was his blood coagulating in all his veins and under his skin. Nick had meningococcal meningitis and he was dying. Within 18 hours of his first symptom, Nick was in a coma; within 36 hours he had last rites; within 48 hours Nick was still alive. He had beat the initial onslaught of a disease that is usually fatal. But now he and his family had to deal with the repercussions. By the end of September, Nick, still in a coma, had his lower legs amputated through the knees and his arms between the wrists and elbows. By Thanksgiving, awake, aware and ok with his situation, he had been moved to Burke Rehabilitation Hospital – just a hop, skip and a jump from Stepinac.

Stepinac was so important at this time for Nick’s recovery. Monsignor O’Keefe, the staff, and students would all pop in to visit and to make sure that Nick felt a part of the Stepinac family right from the start. Many of the seniors from the Varsity Hockey team spent hours hanging out in Nick’s room. They even organized a schedule for someone to spend the night so his parents could get a break. Nick was a part of the Stepinac life.

That September, Nick started Stepinac as a freshman, and the B.T. Collins Scholarship recipient. He spent three years at Stepinac, no different from the rest of the student body except for the fact that he rolled through the halls instead of ran! Nick had a great three years. He performed in the big school musicals, “South Pacific,” “Bye Bye Birdie”; he participated in Stepinac’s social activities; and he played hockey. Not for, but against his former Crusader teammates. Nick had found sledge hockey with the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association and was the team’s center. There were a couple of games where, the EPVA team brought extra sleds for the Crusaders to experience a different, yet no less tough, version of the game.

Nick left Stepinac for his senior year at his home town school in Croton. He was playing sled hockey and, a new passion, wheelchair rugby many days after school in Long Island, New Jersey upstate and the logistics of driving every day – yes, he was driving his own car to Stepinac every day – was getting a little much. “I can never car-pool with anyone who plays my sports!” That year, Nick also rode his handcycle with a group from NYC to Washington, DC to commemorate the victims of 9/11. When he hit DC after 280 miles, it was a Stepinac classmate who greeted him at the finish in front of the US Capitol.

Nick is now a senior at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fl. Nick spends a good amount of time working with the National Meningitis Association, of which his Mom, Nancy, is a Founding Board member. He has spoken before the State Legislatures in New York and Massachusetts as well as appeared before the Center For Disease Control in Atlanta on the subject of meningitis vaccination and recommendations. He has traveled around the country to participate in wheelchair sports such as snowboarding in the Rockies, swimming at the amputee Endeavor Games in Oklahoma, throwing on his legs to go scuba diving deep below the Caribbean, and has plans for sky-diving with a quad-amputee member of the Army’s Golden Parachutes. But he has left hockey behind.

His fulltime sport has become wheelchair rugby (aka ‘Murderball’) and Nick is the youngest member of the United States Paralympic Wheelchair Rugby Team. He has represented the country at the World Wheelchair Games in Rio de Janeiro, the World Cup in Christchurch, New Zealand, the North American Cup in Vancouver (bringing home the Gold every time), and now has his sights set on the Paralympics in Beijing in September 2008.

Nick is doing fine. It was Stepinac and the opportunities he had from the Stepinac community right from the hospital and rehab that helped form his strong confident attitude. And it was the B.T. Collins Scholarship that helped enable his time at Stepinac. What a positive benefit it was, and will be for future recipients.

Gary Springer, Nick’s father
Croton On Hudson, NY
December 2, 2007