IHSAA Foundation Announces 2026 Impact Awards, Distributing $50,000 in Scholarships

The IHSAA Foundation will distribute more than $50,000 in scholarships to 21 Indiana senior student-athletes at Sunday's Impact Awards banquet, recognizing a class of recipients defined as much by what they built in their communities as by what they did in competition.

The ceremony takes place April 12 at Gridiron Hall inside the Indianapolis Colts Indiana Farm Bureau Football Center, where honorees will be recognized across 10 separate scholarship funds. The 13 recipients of the flagship C. Eugene Cato Memorial Scholarship collect $2,500 apiece, a combined $32,500, while a March 20 release confirmed an additional $27,000 distributed through eight supporting programs. Sponsors include Forté Sports Medicine and Orthopedics, the Indiana Pacers, Indiana Fever, Indianapolis Colts and Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance.

Kankakee Valley senior Max Duttlinger is among the Cato class and represents the Foundation's clearest archetype for what gets rewarded. A varsity captain in both football and track and field, Duttlinger earned Academic All-Conference and Academic All-State honors in both sports. Off the field, he serves as president of both Business Professionals of America and National Honor Society, while logging time with the school's Freshman Mentors program and Fellowship of Christian Athletes. That combination of multi-sport captaincy and documented campus leadership is the pattern the selection committee has consistently rewarded.

Zeke Faulkens of Greenwood Community illustrates the same logic through a different lens. A two-sport athlete in basketball and football, Faulkens also serves as a Cadet Teacher and founded Greenwood Community's first Black Student Union, while regularly assisting with youth football and basketball leagues and volunteering to winterize homes in the community. He is among the additional scholarship honorees announced in March.

The Thomas A. Brady, MD Comeback Scholarship Award, presented by Forté Orthopedic Research Institute, adds a different kind of gravity. One of the 2026 honorees fractured his T1 and T2 vertebrae during a tournament match in May 2025, was diagnosed with Central Cord Syndrome and faced the possibility of never regaining independent mobility. His return to competition is precisely the adversity-to-resilience arc that the Brady Award was built to recognize.

The full Cato class stretches across the state's competitive geography. Laura Barco of Martinsville, Jordan Bunch of Delta, Sarah DePew of Garrett, Karter Gray of Shenandoah, Mackenzie Hacker of New Palestine (the first student-athlete in that school's history to receive the award), Wijdan Mohammendain of Fort Wayne North Side, Katelyn Seibert of North Posey, Rex Speer of Bloomington North, Kenna Streeval of Edinburgh, Grier Swaim of Fishers, Sawyer Tippmann of Fort Wayne Snider and Ella Williams of Washington join Duttlinger in the class. Fort Wayne placed two athletes; over 100 completed applications crossed the review panel before former IHSAA commissioner Bobby Cox and Indiana Pacers Sports and Entertainment senior vice president Andy Arnold helped finalize the list.

For underclassmen tracking how to reach this stage, the selection criteria spell it out in plain terms: a minimum 3.0 GPA, at least one IHSAA varsity letter and a principal or athletic director willing to put their name behind the nomination. What separates finalists from nominees, however, is closer to Faulkens founding a new student organization or Duttlinger holding dual presidencies: documented initiative that extends well past showing up.

Since 2003-04, the IHSAA has recognized 326 outstanding student-athletes with Cato scholarships alone. The Foundation has awarded more than $180,000 in total support across its history, and Sunday's banquet pushes that number forward.