Joseph DeBruyn and Reed Van Der Hoek were a few days fresh from their graduation ceremony at Ripon Christian High.

At Wednesday’s Ripon Rotary Club meeting, they were reunited at Spring Creek Golf & Country Club as recipients of the Scholarships for Trade School. Each received $1,000 to go towards their studies in the vocational field of their choice.

DeBruyn has plans of getting his associate’s degree from Modesto Junior College in Fire Science. He also is looking forward to doing fire training in hopes of becoming a firefighter.

“We just for out about the (Rotary Club) scholarship from our counselor,” DeBruyn said.

He and Van Der Hoek both played basketball and football at RC. DeBruyn squeezed in baseball to his already schedule during this past year, and was involved in playing three sports at one time during a hectic sports season.

DeBruyn is looking to play baseball at MJC.

Van Der Hoek was a standout hoop player for the Knights, and is possibly leaning towards continuing to play basketball at MJC. That was before he received information about ABC NorCal.

Van Der Hoek hopes to become an electrician and is keeping his options open at other trade school opportunities.

Last week, the Ripon Rotary Club presented the same Trade School Scholarships to Jake Graves, Nico Ricketts, and Dylan Werner from Ripon High’s Class of 2021, and Thomas Campbell, who graduated from RHS two years ago.

John Mangelos, who is co-president of Ripon Rotary, and Youth Chair Frances Taylor indicated that the original plan was to give out four vocational school scholarships.

That, too, changed due to quality applicants.

“We had six good candidates,” Mangelos said.

The vocational school scholarships were made possible by Ripon Rotary’s recent Duck Race fundraiser consisting of 1,000 rubber ducks being unleashed into a canal for half-mile race.

The local service organization, in addition, raised scholarship funds for graduating high school students via the Chick-fil-A boxed meal chicken sandwich event last September.