Gina Zervos

The Ciarra Martens Scholarship is a scholarship given to one Rolla High School student each year in honor of the late Ciarra Martens who lost her life in a car accident in 2021. Ciarra was a friend to many, and daughter to RHS’s head custodian, Robert Martens. This year, the leadership class wanted to do something special for Robert Martens as a thank you for all he does for RHS.
“We know Robert, we knew Ciarra, and we just wanted to show appreciation to him in a bigger way than just getting him a gift. From Soak-a-Senior, which was led by Hadyn Brooks and Colton Petersmith, we raised five hundred dollars for a second Ciarra Martens scholarship,” said leadership student Ava Cavender.
All of this planning and hard work was a secret though, and the leadership class was not allowed to tell anyone in order to keep the scholarship a surprise.
“Mrs. Webb cleared the idea, and so we started planning in secret. The only people who knew about the scholarship was the leadership class, and everybody who participated in Soak-a-Senior had no idea. Anytime we were asked what the money from the event was for, we would just say it’s for leadership stuff, or it’s for another leadership event,” Cavender said.
Since the scholarship was a surprise to Martens, he had no idea why he was given two scholarships to hand out in honor of his daughter.
“Before the ceremony started, I got my package to pass the scholarship out, and it had two of them in there. They said it was a mistake, and took the second scholarship. I said, well, if you need me to write a five hundred dollar check for this extra scholarship I’ll be glad to, because I was afraid that they had told someone that they were getting a scholarship and then they weren’t gonna get one. So I was gonna write a five hundred dollar check that night to cover it, but she said no we got them taken care of. So I didn’t think nothing of it,” Martens said.
Even though Martens had seen the second scholarship before he was supposed to, he still was unaware of what leadership would do when he went up to present the Ciarra Martens Scholarship.
“I went up there and presented it, and then Ava, Allison, and Molly said stay up here on the stage, so I knew something was going on, but I had no idea what it was. And when they did that, it brought me to tears. I had no idea they were going to do it, and for them to have done something like that was really awesome,” Martens said.
Presenting Martens with the extra scholarship was also extremely emotional and meaningful for the leadership students that presented him with it.
“We presented the second scholarship at the award banquet; I just loved being a part of it, and it was a super special moment for the three of us again. It felt super surreal and it was definitely emotional because it is just such an important scholarship, and it was super important to him. It was amazing to be able to be a part of it, and we all just appreciate and love Robert. He helps us with numerous things, not even just leadership events. So this was an amazing opportunity to show our appreciation,” Cavender said.