Four students in diocesan schools have been awarded Gertrude C. Kuehefuhs music scholarships.
Outstanding instrumental and choral music students receive the $250 awards to help them pay Catholic high school or college tuition. Two scholarships are awarded to high school seniors and two to eighth-graders.
Kuehefuhs was a longtime member of the Columbus St. Joseph Cathedral choir and a music instructor at Ohio State University. The awards are made possible from a gift received from her estate.
High School Instrumental Music
PHILIP SOTAK
Philip Sotak is a student at Columbus St. Charles Preparatory School, where he plays the trumpet in the concert band and the piano in the jazz band. His band director, Philip Meyer, said his ability to memorize music quickly and absorb new material is remarkable, especially because he is blind. Band members describe this as “filling his sponge.”
He has received his school’s Brunetto Outstanding Music Award. His other school activities include membership in the Chorus Angelorum and participation in the Westerville Area Resource Ministry’s holiday food drive and the Virtue Club. He hopes to attend the Cleveland Institute of Music, go into organ performance and be a music director for a church.
High School Choral Music
AYDEN JONES
Ayden Jones is a senior at New Philadelphia Tuscarawas Central Catholic High School, where she has been a cantor and a choir member for four years. At her parish, New Philadelphia Sacred Heart Church, she has been a soloist since elementary school. She played the lead role of the Evil Stepmother in the school’s production of “The Big Bad Musical” this spring.
She is a National Honor Society member and has been a cheerleader and part of TCC’s softball and volleyball teams. She plans to attend Walsh University in North Canton in the fall, majoring in nursing and taking part in choral activities.
Elementary Instrumental Music
McKENNA RAINES
McKenna Raines, an eighth-grade graduate of Westerville St. Paul the Apostle School, will attend Columbus St. Francis DeSales High School, where she was part of the marching band and concert band during the past school year.
She is a trumpet player and a soprano and was a member of the pep and marching bands and choir at her elementary school, taking part in the Ohio Wesleyan University honor band festival in 2024 and 2025 and earning a superior rating as a trumpeter in seventh grade. An injury kept her from being rated during the past academic year.
She is taking trumpet lessons with a member of the Ohio State University marching band, which she hopes to join when she goes to college. She also is an altar server, choir member and youth ministry participant at St. Paul Church and was on the news crew, basketball and softball teams and Chess Club at her former school. She would like to major in aerospace or aeronautical engineering in college and is taking lessons in hopes of obtaining a pilot’s license.
Elementary Choral Music
ABRAHAM MORRIS
Abraham Morris, a member of New Philadelphia Sacred Heart Church, will be attending Tuscarawas Catholic High School for the third year when he enters ninth grade for the coming academic year.
His natural gifts in acting, comedy and music were displayed as an eighth-grader in his performance as the Big Bad Wolf in the school’s production of “The Big Bad Musical” and in work with the Little Theatre of Tuscarawas County.
He also plays piano, has been an altar server, Vacation Bible School volunteer and fish fry worker at his parish, has been part of his school’s football and cross country teams and Chess Club and has been president of his 4-H Club for the past two years.
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