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Roy Blount Jr. Selected For TRA Rice Scholarship Award Includes Summer Position On Staff of Morning Telegraph NASHVILLE, Tenn., May 9.— Roy Blount Jr., 17, of Decatur, Ga., today was named winner of the Thoroughbred Racing As-sociation-Grantland Rice scholarship as the youth who shows the most promise as a sportswriter. Purpose of the scholarship is to commemorate the memory of Grantland Rice each year by providing the winning youngster with the kind of liberal education Rice received at Vanderbilt University. Rice was considered the dean of American sportswriters when he died in 1956. He was graduated from Vanderbilt in the early 1900s and started his career with Nashville newspapers. His syndicated column appeared in newspapers around the nation for many years. The four-year-old scholarship is worth almost 0,000. It pays all necessary expenses at Vanderbilt. Another of Blounts awards comes in the form of a position on the staff of The Morning Telegraph. He will be employed in the New York office this summer as part of his training for a career as a sports-writer. Charles Chuck Nord, first winner of the Tars Rice scolarship in 1956, worked for The Morning Telegraph last summer, one of his major projects being a well-received series of articles on The Jockey Clubs school for officials. The Morning Telegraphs offer of a summer post for the student granted a Rice scholarship was made by Editor and publisher J. Samuel Perlman at the TRAs annual convention in Miami in 1955 in the hope that the recipient would devote his talents to the field of thoroughbred racing. Blount has worked for the Atlanta Journal and the weekly Decatur-Dekalb news. He is editor of his school paper, . senior class president and number one student among 199 graduating. Chosen as alternate was Weldon George of Burley, Idaho. Other finalists were Marvin Aufrichting, Brooklyn, N. Y.; Roy Hall, Albuquerque, N. M.; Michael Harmon, Cincinnati, Ohio; W. Thomas Johnson Jr., Macon, Ga.; George Martin, Louisvlle, Ky.; Robert Oak-man Jr., Clarksdale, Miss.; and Charles Veeder, Albany, N. Y. , Previous winners in addition to Nord were Thomas Templin, of Lexington, Ky., in 1957; and Larry Daughtry, of Abilene, Tex., in 1958. Participating in the judging were TRA president John Cella of St. Louis and treasurer John A. Morris of New York and a committee v "of sportswriters including Paul Lowry of the Los Angeles Times, Paul Men-ton of the Baltimore Evening Sun, Fred Russell of the Nashville Banner, ahd Maurice Shelvin of the Chicago Tribune.
