Pajaro Valley High’s Jesse Ramirez and Aptos High’s Zack Powell are among 24 Northern California high school football players to earn $1,000 scholarship grants from the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame.

Ramirez, Powell and the other scholarship winners will be honored Thursday during the 50th NFF Awards Dinner at the San Francisco Marriott hotel in Burlingame.

Each year, two Santa Cruz County football players — one a lineman and one a back — are selected for the honor. Each high school nominates up to two athletes, and this year Ramirez and Powell, out of a total of 17 nominees, were selected as the winners by a committee of former coaches and school administrators. The criterion for selection was 40 percent athletics,

40 percent academics and 20 percent leadership, according to Ken Thomas, the Santa Cruz County chairman.

“When we considered all three categories both Zack and Jesse were very strong in each area,” Thomas wrote in an e-mail. “Both of them not only stood out as football players, making all league teams, but are very strong academically. In addition they have found time to be leaders at their respective schools and in the community as well.”

Ramirez, a 5-foot-6, 215-pound lineman, called the award “a great honor,” saying it lets people know that students at Pajaro Valley do work hard and it gives the school good publicity. Ramirez carries a 3.97 grade point average and plans to major in physical therapy or sports medical training at UCLA or UC Berkeley.

Ramirez said that he’s gotten good grades since middle school, and coaches and teachers encouraged him to keep it up. He said in addition to the NFF scholarship, he was also awarded a $200 scholarship by the Santa Cruz Host Lions Club.

“He’s just a really good kid,” Pajaro Valley athletic director Robert Gomez said. “If you ever need anything, you can go to him.”

While undersized, Ramirez was named to the Monterey Bay League’s first team the past two years.

“I think I did well, he said. “I did my best.”

He said he might try to walk on to the football team at college.

Powell carries a 4.0 grade point average and plans to study mechanical engineering at Brigham Young University, according to the Web site of the NFF’s Northern California chapter. He was the Santa Cruz Athletic League’s Junior of the Year a year ago and was named to the league’s first team as a defensive back this past season.

Aptos athletic director Mark Dorfman said Powell is “very deserving.”

“Not only does he have a great GPA, his athletic ability is off the charts in football,” Dorfman said.

Powell is the 19th Aptos High student to win the scholarship, Dorfman said, with the last being Bryan Van Meter in 2003. Trent Dilfer won it in 1989, 12 years before quarterbacking the Baltimore Ravens to victory in Super Bowl XXXV.

“It’s quite an honor,” said Dorfman, noting that many luminaries, including some new inductees to the College Hall of Fame, typically attend the dinner.



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