YWLA students, and their community, win Dallas Cowboys Community Captain competition

A team of students from Young Women’s Leadership Academy (YWLA) in Midland earned a lot more than touchdowns during their recent trip to The Star in Frisco.

The YWLA team huddled up, called the winning play and emerged victorious at the Dallas Cowboys Community Captain competition — and that also means their community back at home won, too.

The Cowboys Community Captain competition is part of a new partnership between the Cowboys and Chevron that is encouraging teamwork between Permian Basin students and nonprofits on service projects that benefit their communities.

As part of the initiative, teams of students from Midland and Odessa partnered with a local nonprofit to develop proposals for community service projects. Student teams were participants in the Abell-Hanger Foundation’s Students In Philanthropy (SIP) program. The YWLA team was one of five student teams whose proposal advanced to the finals of the Cowboys Community Captain competition. On Nov. 28, the teams pitched their community service project ideas to a panel of judges from the Cowboys, Chevron and Abell-Hanger Foundation at The Star in Frisco.

On Feb. 1, we visited the YWLA SIP class to surprise them with the news that their team earned the title of Dallas Cowboys Community Captain. As part of their reward, Chevron donated $10,000 toward the project they plan to carry out, which is to renovate and rehabilitate facilities used by the Midland Children’s Rehabilitation Center’s (MCRC) equine programs, including its Hippotherapy (“therapy on horseback”) programs.

Legendary Cowboys safety Darren Woodson appeared on video to help share the news. On April 19, Woodson will join YWLA students and other volunteers from the Cowboys and Chevron to implement the YWLA team’s project at the MCRC equine barn.

The YWLA was ecstatic to announce their victory in Frisco.

“Our girls have top-notch presentation skills and our non-profit partner Midland Children’s Rehabilitation Center is amazing,” the group stated on Facebook, offering a special shoutout to SIP teacher Mrs. Pinter and “our Game Changers who threw a hail Mary and won. it. all! TEAMWORK!”

Jonathan Harshman is a public and government affairs advisor for Chevron’s Mid-Continent Business Unit.