2026 Childress Family Foundation Scholarship Awardees
At the close of the 2025-2026 school year, the Childress Family Foundation Scholarship Committee selected six outstanding graduating seniors at Mayfair High School in Lakewood, California to receive college scholarships of up to $10,000, recognizing the hard work they put in as student athletes and supporting their continuing education.
For the 2026-2027 academic year, the Josh Childress Scholarship recipients are: Kennedy Dimmy, Spencer Cummins, Daleyna Le, David Perez, Kendyl Gutierrez, and Miles Mitchell. Pictured with Josh Childress (center) below.
Kennedy Dimmy – Kennedy played basketball at Mayfair High School and is headed to Clark Atlanta University to major in Business and strengthen leadership skills as a future businesswoman.
Being a student athlete means so much more than playing a sport. A student athlete signifies discipline, leadership and commitment. Playing basketball all four years of high school taught me that in order to be a student athlete you have to work hard on and off the court. You have to be attentive in everything you do, and you have to hold yourself accountable. – Kennedy Dimmy
Spencer Cummins – Spencer will continue his baseball career at Occidental College, planning to earn his degree and then work in the sports medicine field to help other athletes like him.
Looking back at my high school career, I am thankful for the experiences Mayfair has given me because I have grown as a person and gained several life skills that I can use later on…From the ups and downs of a sports season that every athlete goes through, I feel I have learned multiple skills such as resiliency, humbleness, and teamwork. – Spencer Cummins
Daleyna Le – Daleyna played tennis during her time at Mayfair High School, where she graduated in the top 10, and will be attending UC Irvine as a nursing major with the ultimate goal of becoming a nurse in the pediatrics department.
To me, being a student athlete is about balance and dedication. It’s about balancing being a student and an athlete and being equally dedicated to both. Some may say that the “student” comes before the “athlete,” but in my opinion, both are necessary to the overall wellbeing of the individual. Sometimes sports are an escape from academics, and sometimes academics are an escape from sports. They feed off each other in a way that can either create a nurturing harmony or a consuming cycle. – Daleyna Le
David Perez – David played baseball during his time at Mayfair High School and plans to pursue documentary filmmaking and investigative journalism at the University of Southern California, hoping to challenge people’s perspectives, helping them see the world beyond the narrow lens of their own experiences.
I plan to impact my community in two ways. The first is through storytelling. Just as baseball taught me not to run away from failure, I want to approach journalism with that same willingness to sit in discomfort. Through film and journalism, I hope to be an educator in a secondhand way placing audiences inside experiences they would otherwise never encounter. I hope my work will challenge perspectives, moving people toward greater awareness and compassion. – David Perez
While I may not physically be an athlete forever, the mindset of being one lives on. And that more than any statistic, win, or trophy is what being a student athlete truly gave me. – David Perez
Kendyl Gutierrez – Kendyl played Varsity soccer during her time at Mayfair High School and will be attending UC Irvine. Kendyl will study Chemistry with an ultimate goal of enrolling in medical school to become a forensic pathologist.
Being a student athlete means everything to me. Throughout my formative years of life, playing soccer for Mayfair has developed my commitment, time management, and grit. It has brought me my most treasured high school experiences. It has given me my support system through the sisterhood I was able to build with my teammates. It has shaped my identity, making me the person who I am today. – Kendyl Gutierrez
Miles Mitchell – Miles played football, volleyball, and track and field at Mayfair High School. He will continue his football career at the United States Air Force Academy, where his goal will also be earning a degree from the Academy in Electrical Engineering and Cybersecurity, specifically to design secure systems that detect and protect medical devices.
Football taught me how to become a resilient person by forcing me to face my setbacks with discipline and preparation rather than make excuses. One of these setbacks included dealing with a torn hip labrum while in high school. This required me to persevere through practices and put in extra time for physical therapy. This level of consistency requires lots of mental strength, self-discipline, and dedication; however, this consistency put me in a position where many of my younger teammates would look to me as a source of inspiration and guidance. Not everyone gets to say they have people that look up to them, so I’m proud that I could consistently lead by example particularly with those teammates who went through struggles with confidence or playing time. – Miles Mitchell
“The Josh Childress Foundation has a strong commitment to improving the lives of youth. Through family, my commitment to education and athletics, I was able to live out my dreams and create new opportunities. A child cannot help the circumstances into which they are born, but a community can help uplift and encourage a child to become the best version of themselves. I want students to know that anything is possible and I believe that I have a civic and social responsibility to utilize my resources and influence to make the world a better place for the youth. The Josh Childress Foundation Scholarship was created to empower Mayfair High School student athletes to continue to strive for excellence on and off the court or field.” – Josh Childress
