The Tampa Bay Buccaneers Foundation announced today – in conjunction with National Girls and Women in Sports Day – that applications for the second annual Girls in Football Scholarship are officially open.
The scholarship is available to female high school football players nationwide who want to pursue a career in sports, have earned a minimum 3.0 grade point average (on a 4.0 scale) during their high school academic career and plan to enroll full-time at an accredited four-year college or university.
Student-athletes interested in applying for the scholarship may click HERE or visit buccaneers.com/community.
Applications are open until April 20, 2021. The scholarship recipients will be announced at a later date.
Last year, the Buccaneers became the first NFL team to establish a scholarship of this kind, made possible through a $250,000 commitment by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Foundation. The four 2020 scholarship winners – Lorraine Angelakos (Brown University), Tatiana Maker (Central Florida), Jade Rayburn (Florida State University) and Janae Scott (Florida Southern College) were delivered the news that they had won the inaugural scholarship by Buccaneers players Shaquil Barrett, Lavonte David, Mike Evans and O.J. Howard, who made surprise appearances in the virtual interview process to congratulate the recipients.
"The Bucs have done an absolutely amazing job of representing us and what we stand for and proving that women in football deserve the same recognition as anyone else," said Rayburn.
"It shows that people are changing, things are changing, and female athletes are going to have more access to financial aid," added Maker.
The Girls in Football Scholarship is just one of the ways the organization is committed to growing the game of football and supporting gender equality on and off the field. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers Foundation hosts the largest girls flag football tournament in the country with the Girls High School Flag Football Preseason Classic, a multi-day event that brings together more than 50 high school teams and over 1,000 student athletes in a round robin-style competition. The team also established the Jr. Bucs Girls Flag Football League, a first-of-its-kind league in the City of Tampa, where the Foundation covers league fees and equipment for girls at 24 Tampa Parks and Recreation centers. And the team created the Jr. Bucs Flag Football Program, which grows the game of football in more than 90 Tampa Bay middle schools and supports over 35,000 female students every year. To learn more, visit www.buccaneers.com/community.
