Senior Nick Marinaro was named a Scholar-Athlete by the Minnesota Chapter of the National Football Foundation on April 26. This award honors Minnesota high school football players for their outstanding athletic, academic, and community service accomplishments.

This award was special for Marinaro to receive, and it also showed how his dedication paid off. “It was the culmination of a lot of hard work for me. I have always tried hard in my studies, and I have tried my best to become the best football player I can. Getting recognized with this award is an achievement that embodies a lot of that hard work,” senior Nick Marinaro said. 

This was no easy task for Marinaro to accomplish, it took a lot of hard work from him in and out of school. “[There were] long hours of studying and a lot of time spent in the gym building my strength to become the best student and football player I can be,” Marinaro said. 

Marinaro was also involved in extracurricular activities at Benilde St. Margaret’s, which helped him become more suited for this award. “I was involved in a lot of things at BSM for a long time and one of those things was participating in the student council for four years, and I was voted the senior class president,” Marinaro said. 

There were certain people and things that helped Marinaro to achieve his dreams and become the person he is today. “My parents always instilled the value of hard work and education. I always dreamed of going to the [best] college I could, so I always tried to get the best grades possible. It was also a goal of mine to play college football, and although that goal seemed unrealistic for a long time, I still worked as hard as I could to make it happen,” Marinaro said. 

Marinaro was named to the highest academic honor roll and became a member of the National Honor Society. Additionally, he was a two-year member on BSM’s Link Crew. He will be taking his academic and football skills to Dartmouth College next year.