Boothbay Region High School Senior Kyle Alamo is going for the Hood Sportsmanship Scholarship, which would award him $5,000 toward his college education.

Every year, Hood Milk grants 18 students across New England these scholarships. The students must have been an athlete in a varsity sport, plan to attend a two or four year college in the fall of 2015, have a GPA of 3.0 or higher, performed volunteer work in the community, and, most importantly, been able to put the spirit of competition above simply winning.

Alamo fits these criteria, and was encouraged to apply for the scholarship by the College Access Counselor at BRHS, Kerrin Erhard.

“She's the reason I applied,” Alamo said about Erhard. “I'm in her office nearly every day, sometimes bawling because it's very emotional, deciding my future. She's a great asset to the school, because she connects with us on a personal and emotional level that can sometimes be lacking.”

Alamo has participated in cross-country, Nordic skiing, and track and field all four years of high school. He wrote his essay about the cross-country championship game last fall, where the team had gone undefeated all season, but ended up placing third in the championship.

In his essay, Alamo talked about coming in two seconds behind a runner from Orono High School, and that if he had managed to pass him, the team would have placed second.

“It took time to finally come to the realization that, yes, we lost, but there was nothing I could do to change that. I learned that whatever the results may be, I needed to overcome losses and learn to appreciate my overall development and performance,” Alamo wrote in his essay.

“We can't let ourselves dig down in sorrow,” Alamo said. “Instead we need to appreciate how far we've come and how well we have done.”

In the end, the BRHS team won the good sportsmanship award and Alamo said he was happy with how they did, even though he would have loved to finish his last year of cross-country with a win.

“When one finds a sense of pride in his losses, then he gains a purpose and inevitably finds his victory,” Alamo wrote in his essay.

Scholarship voting is done online and people can vote once per day. The top 10 students from each state will be interviewed by a panel of judges, which will select three students from each to receive a scholarship and be inducted into the Hood Sportsmanship Scholarship Hall of Fame, located at The Sports Museum inside the TD Garden in Boston.

Voting has just begun and ends on April 24. Click below to vote or to join the Facebook group “Vote Kyle Alamo for the Hood Scholarship.”

“We live in a small town, and some of these athletes come from towns two and three times the size of ours,” Alamo said. “But this community and school are very supportive and I know I can win with everyone's support, just like Sarah Caron did in 2013.”

Alamo is currently deciding between attending the University of Maine at Orono or Unity College. His career plans involve working with animals, though he is undecided if he will go into veterinary medicine or animal sciences.

Click here to vote for Kyle Alamo

Click here to join the Facebook group “Vote Kyle Alamo for the Hood Scholarship.”