Emma Van Brunt will be going back to Illinois this fall.

In five months, the Montgomery County senior will be heading to Greenville University in Greenville, Ill., about 50 miles east of St. Louis. She earned a pair of scholarships to help pay for her tuition for the 2022-2023 academic year at the NCAA Division III school.

Van Brunt received a $19,500 Women In Leadership scholarship and a $1,500 band scholarship. The scholarships will cover about half of her tuition of $40,000.

“I’m just like a big ball of energy right now,” Van Brunt said. “I think it’s going to last for a really long time. The fact that the scholarship is renewable and that they did it for band students is huge. You always hear about a sports scholarship and things like that. But for a band kid to get it is a huge thing.”

On March 4, Van Brunt signed a letter of intent to go to Greenville in front of 36 people at the MCHS cafeteria. Greenville University Director of Bands Alex Kirby was also in attendance.

“Honestly, the fact that everybody who is coming out here supporting me is something I never thought would be possible,” Van Brunt said. “I’m so blessed. I wouldn’t be able to do it without every person in this band and my parents.”

Van Brunt, who transferred to MCHS from Bunker Hill, Ill., in her sophomore year, was a member of the MCHS band for three years. She played the flute.

“Emma is amazing,” MCHS band director Casey Dillon said. “She’s been in the band with us ever since she moved to the school. She has been a positive person. She’s always there to support her classmates and do whatever she can to help them. She’s so very kind and generous. She’s very popular with our band and outside our band as well. She’s a great flute player. She’s always working hard to get better.”

Van Brunt earned the Women In Leadership scholarship after writing a thank you essay about Wanda Lucas, who is the founder and owner of Cinderella Affair, a nonprofit organization in Bunker Hill.

“I helped with it and I volunteered with them,” Van Brunt said. “I had a lot of great experiences. It really kept me out of a lot of trouble and a lot of things that I shouldn’t be doing. So I kind of wrote about how she really helped me develop as a woman and how I would like to run my own charity and carry on that legacy someday.”

Van Brunt’s band scholarship will be renewed every year. Dillon said she was happy that the senior received an award to play for the Greenville band.

“A lot of the kids don’t realize that you can get scholarship money for band,” Dillon said. “It’s something that I always talk to them about because I went to college on a partial music scholarship. We talked about if you don’t want to go to school and be a music teacher, they will pay you for a lot of different band stuff. They will pay you to march and they will pay you for pep band. So you can keep that going as a source of income throughout college.”

Van Brunt began playing music when she was in sixth grade.

“It’s been my life for seven years and it’s going to be my life for the rest of my life,” Van Brunt said. “I can’t imagine living without it. I could never give it up.”

Van Brunt will major in education and minor in music. She plans to be a band teacher in the future.

“I want to be a band teacher because band is a thing that helps me grow as a person and I want to be able to pass it on to somebody else so they can grow as a person,” Van Brunt said. “It helps me express myself. I’m not very good with words at all. Somebody can come out and they play an instrument and you see their face light up for the first time. They made a sound so invigorating for them and for you because you got to help them and you got to see what they did.”