Fields of Learning was founded in 2004 by the Ferguson Family of Kirtland Hills, Ohio. There was a desire to find a way to "Give Back", and one day Bruce Ferguson had the idea come in from "Somewhere" to hold an essay contest related to high school football. It checked a lot of boxes:
Incorporated continuing education for young people
Provided encouragement for them to go inside, find a story and tell it
Called on them to tap into their creative side
Provided the opportunity to write a meaningful essay in an era of brief communication exchanges, (now exacerbated by Social Media)
Made it all about something fun - we have received many comments from students who got excited about the topic and very much enjoyed putting their essays together
And of course great enjoyment for us in reading and analyzing the essays
We have been awarding scholarships for college bound high school students now for over 20 years. Each year we run an essay competition based on the prompt "Something I Learned As A Result Of High School Football". Initially it was open only to students in Ohio, but now we accept essays from anywhere. We have been receiving between 150 and 200 essays per year and have been generally awarding five $1,000 scholarships for the selected winners. The essays are judged on multiple factors such as Quality of Content, Quality of Writing, Creativity, and Depth of the Lesson brought forward. There is additional detail on that in the "Apply" tab.
The competition is open to all high school students and is NOT limited to football players. In fact, over the years we have had about 50% boys and 50% girls apply. And of the boys, about 50% are football players. There are many stories and lessons for everyone around high school football!
Today the process is administered by husband and wife, Bruce and Catherine Ferguson. The competition runs through April 30th each year and winners are informed sometime in June. In the majority of cases, we meet personally with the winners and their families to present their check and a plaque commemorating their winning essays.
Fields of Learning has been a most rewarding endeavor, getting to get to know so many young people through their writings and especially those we had the privilege of meeting.