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November 14, 2008
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The Friday Flyer Editor
Canyon Lake students have been the recipients of many prestigious awards over the years; but, at a recent varsity football game, Temescal Canyon High School senior Don W. Dennert II was the first student to be televised while receiving an award.
On Friday, October 31, Farmers Insurance and Prime Ticket presented Don with the Student Athlete Citizen Award on the Fox Sports Network (FSN) “High School Spotlight” show, filmed in the end zone before the match-up between TCHS and Chaparral. The recognition included an announcement on air, a commemorative plaque for Don and a duplicate for display in the school trophy case.
Nearly 700 schools are eligible for participation in the Farmers Student Athlete Citizen Award program in which Prime Ticket invites athletic directors and coaches within CIF Southern Section and the CIF-LA City Section to submit candidates for consideration on a weekly basis. Only 30 students out of thousands have been recognized over the course of the season, so Don’s acceptance after being nominated by Athletic Director Mark Williams was, indeed, a surprise and an honor.
According to website information about the award, recipients embody outstanding achievements in academics and extracurricular activities and are actively involved in their community.
A quick perusal of Don’s résumé reveals a young man who meets those qualifications and more. Not only is he a member of all the academic organizations like National Honor Society, California Scholastic Federation and Platinum Renaissance Club (for students with a career grade point average above 4.0), he has also served as captain of the Academic Decathlon Team for two years and is a member of the Constitution Quiz Team. In sports, he is captain of the varsity basketball team as well as a travel basketball team in Murrieta.
Perhaps most revealing about this young man’s character is his application and acceptance to attend week-long summer seminars at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut; the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
The highly competitive application process for attending the Summer Seminars was similar to a college application, Don explains. There was a selection process and the review board chose the best 300 to 500 candidates out of thousands of applications. Don says his primary purpose for attending was to find out if attending a military academy was right for him.
“The Summer Seminars were fantastic – I loved each week, they were so much fun,” says Don. Each program was designed to show possible future attendees what the Academies were and how they worked. They were not meant to recruit us, but to show the campuses, the lifestyle and let students now attending answer questions we had about the academy.”
Don says the first seminar he attended was at the Naval Academy; a place he felt had the most history tied to its campus. He appreciated the camaraderie he saw among the midshipmen, more so than what he saw at the other two academies. While there his group visited the Arlington Memorial Cemetery, where, he says, “The biggest impact was seeing the tombstones of all the people who fought and died for this country. It was a realization for me about what getting into the military was really about.”
Each day at the Naval Academy got a little tougher and the last day was a sea trial in which the students had to do physical activity for eight straight hours. “By the end my body was completely exhausted; however, it was an amazing feeling to know that I accomplished a task that was so difficult,” he says.
The second seminar Don attended was at the Air Force Academy; the largest of the three campuses, it had the best scenery and was very sports-oriented, he says. The schedule was similar to the Naval Academy. The last day they were treated as if they were plebes in Basic Cadet Training.
“This was a tough day, yet I knew I could do it because I had gone through a similar day at the Naval Academy a mere week before,” says Don. With the students split into three “flights,” Don says his flight was named the best for that week.
The third and final seminar he attended was at the Coast Guard Academy and was the most strenuous, since attendees were at the seminar at the same time the new students were being trained. In addition to the regular schedule, the seminar included an engineering competition in which 32 groups made a remote control boat that had to complete a series of tasks.
“It was a lot of fun making the boat and putting it into effect. Our group came in first place and it taught me a good life lesson that the more ideas there are the better the product can be. Also, my company was named the honor company for that week.”
Don discovered something about himself while attending the summer seminars.
He says, “At first I wanted to attend the military academies because they fit my personality best. I love to have structure, a scientific and math based major and a free college education. Yet, after attending the summer seminars that changed. My first reason now for attending a service academy is to become an officer in our United States Armed Forces – to fight in honor of those who have died in battle for our country and to fight for the freedom that each American experiences every day. The academies give me the best option to be able to achieve this.”
Since attending the seminars, Don has received letters of assurance from the Naval and Air Force Academies, which guarantee acceptance if he is able to gain a congressional nomination. He has also applied to the Coast Guard Academy and will know his status before Christmas.
A resident of Canyon Lake since he was in the 6th grade, Don is the son of Drake and Charlotte Dunnert. He is certain to receive many more honors before he graduates next spring, so Canyon Lakers can look forward to reading about those – as well as his decision regarding the academy he will attend – in The Friday Flyer’s “Spotlight on Seniors” series next May.
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