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AMERICAN CENTURY CHAMPIONSHIP

July 24, 2016

Stateline, Nevada

GENE UPSHAW SCHOLARSHIP AWARD WINNER ANNOUNCEMENT

THE MODERATOR: This is our Gene Upshaw Scholarship Award Winner presentation. This is one of the highlights of the week, quite frankly. We say that every year, but we mean it every year, and it's fun.

Let me tell you a little bit about the scholarship: It's $5,000. And NBC Sports and Edgewood Tahoe are the contributors. It's awarded to a high school high-achieving student possessing the characteristics that Gene displayed throughout his life and career: Community service, leadership and academic excellence.

Let me make some introductions. First, if I could, Gary Quinn, who is the Vice President of Programming and Owned Properties within NBC Sports. Gary, always a pleasure to have you here.

Terri Upshaw, been here for the last eight years, always a pleasure for you to grace the scene here. We appreciate you being here.

Bryan Davis, Director of Marketing at Edgewood Companies. And our award winner, Mr. Scott Harrison. Scott, congratulations. Way to go.

(Applause)

We're going to list a few of his accomplishments, but before we do, let's introduce his family: Claire. That's mom. Dad, Peter. Siblings, Jamie, Ben, Jan -- did Sean make it?

Well, because of these people, here's some of the things this young man's accomplished:

Honor student at George Whittell High School. He'll be graduating in May of next year, 2017. This is the one that I always like: 4.8 grade point average.

GARY QUINN: What was that? 4.8?

THE MODERATOR: Yes. That's something we are not used to. How's that? Eight AP classes in junior and senior year; student council president; been involved in many sports: Cross-country, soccer, basketball, skiing, golf.

How many sports do you have over there? Wow. This is great.

Attended the Stanford Summer College program in 2015. Had an internship in June/July 2016 in Scotland at an accounting firm. I think dad might have had something to do with that. I'm not sure. (Laughter).

He's a Nevada Youth Legislator for the Nevada State Senate. And this one is real impressive: Co-founder of a nonprofit blackhispanicinterviewcoaching.com, which provides free interview coaching to diversity undergraduates to prepare them for positions with prestigious companies; recruited 40-plus interview coaches from the top 10 business schools in the country.

This young man's a player. I'll tell you what. He's volunteered in the community at a number of different places, including the Key Club. He's been out here at Edgewood helping with the ecology group, and also has worked at Bread and Broth, a kitchen to help people that are less fortunate.

He is a keynote speaker at Douglas County Tech Conference which is presented to 100-plus educational professionals about the use of high tech in high schools.

I don't know where the ceiling ends for this young man. Congratulations.

Gary, let's start with you about NBC's involvement and your relationship with Gene Upshaw over the years.

GARY QUINN: Thanks, Phil. I was sitting here trying to see if my GPA added up to 4.8 over four years of high school. (Laughter).

But amazing, Scott, what you've accomplished, and what a great example you're being to your younger brothers and sisters. And I have a story to tell you about how you've influenced some people in New Jersey you didn't even know it.

But one of the reasons this is my favorite moment of the week, one, the event's almost over and I can sleep for the next four days. (Laughter). But it's been an unbelievably great week for us.

The community here is just -- we talked to the volunteers yesterday, just such a wonderful place. I talked to Scott's dad about when they moved here eight years ago.

I said to my wife, we need to retire here, because it's such a beautiful place. The community has embraced this event for 27 years now.

We've got a new seven-year deal with American Century. So we're going to be here for years to come. But the best part of it is to be able to give back to the community, and to be able to give a small token of recognition to Scott is just a wonderful thing, in Gene's name.

Just to continue his legacy in some small way is what we were trying to do. The benefits of that. You get to become friends with a wonderful person like Terri, who has done wonderful things with the golf event that they created.

And it just keeps getting bigger and better. We were just talking about it. They just had a very successful event this past Monday. It's good they can piggyback off our event, and we're doing everything we can to help her.

But Gene was such a great ambassador to this event. He obviously was just an icon on the field, off the field, what he did for the NFL Players Association, the legacy he left behind and how many people he touched that came through that players association is just probably something we can't even quantify.

But he had such -- for whatever reason, the thing that touched me the most was that he unconditionally always wanted to help me. And I was just a pee-on. I've had this job for 22 years. And for years every year he would come and say: Hey, how can I help you? Can we get some guys to come make the event better.

I just always appreciated the fact: He didn't want anything from me, he just wanted to help.

And it's such a special man, and I think that, Scott, he would be so proud to be linked with you as you should be to be linked with him.

Funny story. I was showing my son Scott's resumÃ© because I was trying to try to maybe coax him along a little bit, a sophomore in high school. I said, Son, this is not video games and watching Netflix. (Laughter).

And funny enough, he ran for student council president and won. So he's going to be the junior class president. And it was because of your influence.

I say that because you don't even realize that doing great things like you are, reaching out in the community like you are, inside and outside the classroom, it has an impact on people that you might not even realize.

And as I said, your brothers and sisters are looking up to you, and you're laying the groundwork for a very successful run for them, too.

So we're really proud of you and just really happy that you're here today, and again to be tied to Gene's name. So thank you.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Gary, very much.

Bryan Davis with Edgewood Companies.

BRYAN DAVIS: Scott, as Gary said, and I'll say it: Just really amazing. As I mentioned when I first met you, I had an opportunity -- it still took me two to three reads to just truly digest everything that you've accomplished. Like Gary said, it's wow. It may not take me four years to get my GPA added up, but very close to that.

Edgewood Tahoe, Edgewood Companies, when we were approached with this eight years ago, it was an easy yes for us to participate.

We're very involved in the community already. But to tie into Gene's name and the efforts that were made here on behalf of the tournament and how else we could contribute, this was, like I said, really easy.

And watching these students come through over the last eight years and realizing what they've all accomplished and that being local leaders, youth leaders in the community, anything Edgewood can do to continue to support that, we will.

As Gary said, just to reiterate, we're very proud to be a part of this. Very proud to have it associated with Gene, and we'll continue to do this for the next seven years and hopefully more. Congratulations.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Bryan.

And Terri, please tell us some of the things that have been going on. We know obviously with all the work that you've done up in Truckee with the Gene Upshaw Memorial Cancer Center that's there now and your feelings on this event over the years. So take it over, Terri.

TERRI UPSHAW: First of all, congratulations to you. I can also say that I'm not sure that a 4.8 would even have been in the mix. I want to know what you do in your spare time, because it's just -- your accomplishments are just remarkable for your age.

I'd like to also thank Gary and Bryan for always supporting this. It's something that's near and dear to me and my family. I know that Gene would be proud of this. He, as you said, never did anything for himself.

He didn't ever think about, well, I'm doing something for me; it's for others. And he led the players association for the good of the game, for the players. He was all about community. He was all about commitment. He was all about academics. Just being a respectful person in the community and sort of honoring -- he honored the past players.

He looked into the future. He wanted to make sure that players and up-and-coming athletes would have sort of a standard, and that is something that was always really important to him.

We just came off our golf tournament, our eighth year of the Gene Upshaw Memorial Golf Classic, and it was very successful. We raised money for the cancer care programs at the Gene Upshaw Cancer Center over on the other side of the lake and for traumatic brain injury research.

And it's just important to keep his legacy moving forward to again helping within the community. And we chose Tahoe because this is where we vacationed and had a home for many years. And it felt like home to us when we came here. We just really -- there's something about this community, as you all know, you've moved here eight years ago, and you choose to live here for various reasons.

And it's just a beautiful community. It's a beautiful place. I wish you all the success. I think you -- I don't know what you have in store for the future, but I am so impressed with what you've accomplished at such a young age. It's remarkable.

Kudos to mom and dad.

THE MODERATOR: Now we'd like to introduce our special guest, our award winner of the Eighth Annual Gene Upshaw Scholarship Award, Mr. Scott Harrison. Way to go, my man.

(Applause)

SCOTT HARRISON: Firstly, I just want to say thank you to everyone in Tahoe as a whole. I moved here about eight years ago from London. And in such a big city, it's so extremely hard to make a proper name for yourself and have had all the opportunities I've had.

I think moving to a place like this, where there's so many people who want to support local kids, it's a lot easier to be noticed by families and stuff.

And I really appreciate the people, like everyone here, who are so happy to help everyone in the community. I want to say thank you for everyone in Tahoe for that, and you guys, thank you.

THE MODERATOR: Questions?

Q. I want to know where you're going to go from here. Because at one point I'm going to need neurosurgery, and so I figure you might be the one.
(Laughter)

SCOTT HARRISON: So, firstly, I still have one more year of high school. And I'm going to try and take a couple of AP classes and apply to all my colleges and stuff.

Then I'm planning to hopefully take a gap year and apply to one of the Big Four accounting firms in Europe and hopefully just get an internship there for a year so I can get some work experience. Then go to a college and then see where it takes me from there.

Q. Unlike these guys, I was a 4.0. We're in the same boat: I was a 1.0 my freshman year, 1.0 my sophomore year. (Laughter) I want to ask about your left wrist, if I may. How did that happen?
SCOTT HARRISON: I was dirt biking with my dad only five or six days ago. And I wasn't even going fast. It was near the end of the day. We were just riding home and the bike kind of slipped out from underneath me.

And as I was falling off the bike, I think I just must have landed awkwardly on my hand. And this bone in my arm right here kind of just snapped off the growth plate and chipped the growth plate off.

So they had to push it back in. So, yeah, it was rough.

Q. You're on the sports shelf for a little bit?
SCOTT HARRISON: Yes. For the rest of the summer.

Q. And you have a microphone; your parents do not. So if you could share the story of why you guys came to the states.
SCOTT HARRISON: So both my parents can do their jobs from anywhere. And when Wi-Fi came along, both of them -- well, what they've told me is they had a revelation of sorts and thought why are we working here when we can work anywhere in the world.

They did some research and we came up with Tahoe, and we moved here for six months to scout it out, and then we just absolutely fell in love, and we've been here ever since.

PETER HARRISON: I said to my wife Claire, it was my dream to come to Tahoe. And Claire said, well, we're not moving to Tahoe; there's nothing wrong with London. It's not broken. So we'll go for six months.

So I agreed to that. When we got here, I turned into the best husband, temporarily. (Laughter). And after four months Claire said: This is too good. We have to stay here. It's the best place we've ever been.

So here we are eight years later. Very grateful to the community for accepting some Brits over here.

THE MODERATOR: Better give the mic to your wife. She's got to get a word in here.

CLAIRE HARRISON: It's a very, very special community. We're really very privileged to be part of it. Wonderful opportunity.

Thank you so much from all of us for recognizing Scott's really relatively minor accomplishments so far, hopefully, with this wonderful scholarship.

It will be a really fantastic kickstart to him. So we really appreciate all of you. So thank you very much.

Q. Since we're here right now, I wanted to ask you if you had a list, of the top three favorite celebrities who are playing in the golf tournament, who would you name?
SCOTT HARRISON: I think quite obviously Steph Curry. Then Justin Timberlake, because of my mom and all the years --

Q. Your mom wasn't a groupie, was she? (Laughter)
SCOTT HARRISON: And then probably Charles Barkley. I haven't actually -- I never saw him play or anything, but --

GARY QUINN: It's probably better that you haven't.

SCOTT HARRISON: All my friends talk about him. (Laughter).

Q. How is your golf game?
SCOTT HARRISON: Not very strong, unfortunately, but I'm working on it.

THE MODERATOR: Congratulations to you and your family. We're very proud of you and the accomplishments that you've had so far in your young life and look forward to staying in touch and finding out what the world holds for you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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