2018 Wiscasset Middle High School graduate Vanessa Dunn is following the Boston Red Sox more closely now that she's been to Fenway Park. At the famed major league ballpark July 29, Dunn got a $1,000 Red Sox service scholarship.

Dunn said later, it was pretty cool to be at Fenway for the first time, and then afterward to see the ballpark again on television and know she'd been there.

Her extensive community work helped get her there. That and academic performance and financial aid eligibility are the criteria for the scholarships open to students at 170 high schools in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut and Rhode Island, according to an Elevate Communications press release.

When she was fundraising and otherwise helping throughout high school, she wasn't doing it so she could get scholarships, Dunn said. But winning the scholarship showed her, other people feel the work was important, like she felt it was, she said. "That meant a lot."

Her father Michael Dunn, interviewed separately, said he was very proud of his daughter for getting the scholarship and for the initiative she took seeking it and others that will help toward her studies at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. He said a $9,500 one she recently won from the George Mitchell Institute will be spread over the four years of college.

The release states Red Sox President & CEO Sam Kennedy and Red Sox Executive Vice President Troup Parkinson congratulated Dunn and fellow Red Sox service scholarships on the field, a ceremony before the Sox hosted the Minnesota Twins.

Then-New Hampshire Governor John Lynch, Red Sox Principal Owner John W. Henry and Red Sox Foundation Board Member Linda Pizzuti Henry started the program in 2010, the release states. 

Watching the day’s game at Fenway was also a first for Vanessa’s older sister and fellow Wiscasset graduate Abby Dunn, their father noted.