This young man wants to continue to ‘play ball,’ and to be of service to his local community.
Maxx Puya of Norwood, a recent high school graduate who is weighing several athletic scholarship offers at local colleges, says he turned down potentially lucrative out-of-town scholarship offers so he could stay in touch with his neighborhood.
Puya, a member of Fordham Preparatory School’s 2017 graduating class, is a catcher on their team and graduated with honors.
He continues to weigh offers of scholarships from coaches at local institutions like the College of New Rochelle and the CUNY system.
According to his father, Hugo Puya, he has been offered scholarships of $700,000 from local and non-local colleges including Penn State, University of Scranton and Indiana / Perdue.
Puya said he is just looking for a college nearby where he can continue to play baseball because he enjoyed it so much the first time around, after years of playing at Castle Hill Little League and Fordham Prep.
He said that towards the end of his senior year, he thought about hanging up his cleats for good, but then later reconsidered when he saw he might be able to keep playing.
And after a dearth of offers earlier in his senior year, some came in later on.
“I remember thinking to myself ‘I don’t think I am playing in college’ and then I started getting emails from all of these other coaches,” said Puya. “I got four or five and it really helped me keep the faith in terms of playing.”
He said he wants to become a vital part of a college baseball team.
Puya certainly has been of service to the community, winning an award from the borough president for service.
During his high school years, he said, he volunteered at a soup kitchen Part of the Solution on Webster Avenue.
He also volunteered at The Children’s Village in Dobbs Ferry, NY at a mentoring program for children in a home for young men.
Part of the service was for Fordham Prep’s requirement that its young men complete 15 hours of service in their junior year and 75 in their senior year, said Puya.
He learned time management from a variety of his activities, he said.
These include being a student athlete, achieving a black belt in karate at Excel Martial Arts, and remaining an honor student throughout his time at St. Ann Grammar School and high school.
Scouting reports supplied to the Bronx Times shows he has talent as a catcher, and hopefully a college will come along that strikes his fancy and is a good fit.
He said that he might participate in Reserve Officers’ Training Corps in college.
“Right now it would be hard to make a decision on the spot,” he said of his options, adding that it may come down to the school offering the best financial deal, as it does for so many college students.
