For This Competition, It’S Academic

Now that the final buzzer has blared on all the B basketball madness, you’ll be happy to know that tickets are still available for Spokane’s next premier youth event.

The eighth-annual Spokane Scholars Foundation awards banquet.

It will be in the Ag Trade Center on April 19. Tickets are $20 and can be ordered through John Manning, ALSC Architects, at 838-8568.

“Huh?” you say?

If you haven’t a clue what I’m talking about, then the name Lou Rukavina probably won’t register either.

And that’s a shame. Rukavina created the Spokane Scholars Foundation with some of his friends, and he wants to get the word out early about this year’s event.

The purpose behind the banquet is simple: to give the county’s best and brightest high school students a taste of the recognition and praise routinely showered on their athletic peers.

The event has become enormously popular with educators, nominees and family members, drawing 700 last year.

Despite that success, says Rukavina, it has been pretty much overlooked by the general public and some of the media. “One year we went through (ticket agency) G&B and sold four seats,” he says.

This isn’t because of any lack of trying on the foundation’s part. Banquet speakers have included the directors of NASA and the Smithsonian Institution, as well as a Nobel laureate and Minnesota Vikings football great Alan Page.

“It’s an uphill battle to put some sex appeal in education,” Rukavina concedes, adding quickly that the battle is still “one well worth waging.”

Rukavina, 50, is a Spokane personal injury attorney by profession. His passion, however, is education and excellence.

The idea to reward scholars, he says, came to him one night in 1991 while flipping TV channels.

As the story goes, one channel he turned to featured a news account of a Spokane sports awards banquet. Another channel offered a national report on America’s dismal world standings for math and science scores.

Rukavina began to think. He recruited some of his well-connected buddies, and the Spokane Scholars Foundation was born.

Privately funded, the organization gives away 95 percent of what it takes in. That amounts to $180,000 over seven years to winners in math, science, foreign language, English, social science and fine arts categories.

The money comes with no strings. A student can use the prize to pay tuition, buy a computer or take up sky diving.

If these kids are smart enough to earn it, after all, they should be smart enough to know how to spend it.

Kids like Andrew Richardson, the University High senior who won the mathematics division in 1995. Richardson kept up a perfect grade-point average and scored a perfect 800 SAT math score despite battling cancer much of his sophomore year.

Or Parker Barille. The Gonzaga Prep student was brilliant enough to capture $3,000 first prizes last year in math and science. It was the banquet’s first double win, says Rukavina, shaking his head in awe.

The foundation’s entry system is straightforward. Teachers can nominate standout students in each discipline, which is then adjudicated by a separate panel of judges.

Grade averages of 4.0 are the norm. Extracurricular achievements help, but not all that much. “This is an academic beauty contest,” says Rukavina, “not a well-rounded person contest.”

Rukavina, the oldest of 10 children, grew up in Milwaukee. He says he acquired his love of learning from a father with high expectations. Today he is trying to pass that along to his own two sons.

“They think I’m the funniest person on the planet,” says Rukavina. “I guess if I can still impose discipline and have them think that, then I’m doing something right.”