Harlingen Collegiate senior competes in Youth of the Year event
Mar. 17—HARLINGEN — Gratitude.
That's what Rubi Avila feels for having had the opportunity to compete for Youth of the Year at the state level.
"I'm very thankful I was the one who was able to have this opportunity to represent the Boys and Girls Clubs here in Harlingen to compete in the Texas Youth of the Year," said Rubi, 17, a senior at UTRGV Harlingen Collegiate High School.
Youth of the Year is a leadership program of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, and Rubi has been active in the local organization for years. She's spent the majority of her Boys and Girls Clubs time at the LeMoyne Gardens Unit, one of five in the city.
She was named Youth of the Year for the Boys and Girls Clubs Harlingen in December, and Tuesday she competed at the state level.
"I have been a member of the club for about 10 years, and it's been a good experience," she said. "I've enjoyed meeting new people, having friends, being close to the staff members here, being introduced to the staff members. And becoming more like this big family."
She's even learned leadership skills through her membership in LeMoyne Gardens Unit's Torch Club, a character-building organization within the Boys and Girls Clubs. Through the Torch Club she's engaged in a variety of community service projects.
One of those projects so captivated her memory that, five years later, she remembers it well. She and about two vans full of kids drove to Rockport after the Hurricane Harvey disaster, and they spent several hours removing branches and other debris from a woman's yard. She was initially a little apprehensive about venturing into such a disaster zone.
"I was really scared, like, 'Well, what's going to be left of it,'" she recalled. "I was kind of sad, even though it hadn't happened here.'"
More recently she and her fellow Torch Club members organized the Thanksgiving meal at LeMoyne and the Valentine's Day party.
However, she couldn't attend the party. She had school work to do. After all, she's a senior at Harlingen Collegiate so she's been taking dual enrollment courses for both her high school curriculum and her university coursework.
"Usually with my college classes we do essays, and I had an essay," she said. "We do normal assignments but usually the essays are three to four pages longs. We've done several projects, like last semester we had this lab report that we had to do. It was so long. But I liked it. Even though it's a lot of work it gives me something to do. I know it's helping my education."
In all of this, she's also served in her school's Student Council and National Honor Society, and she's in the Parent Teacher Student Association.
And she's still managed to maintain a GPA of 3.8.
She plans to study health administration at UTRGV after graduation.
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