Last July 4th, a 27-year-old Coast Guard rescue swimmer named Scott Ruskan was on his first mission. ESPN announced this week that he will receive the 2026 Pat Tillman Award for Service at the ESPYS on July 15.
Floodwaters hit the Guadalupe River with little warning that morning. Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp for girls that has operated in the Texas Hill Country for nearly a century, sits along the Guadalupe River outside Kerrville. It's the kind of place families return to for generations, daughters going where their mothers went, and a place where young women become lifelong friends. There were roughly 200 campers on the grounds when the water started rising.
Ruskan had completed Coast Guard rescue swimmer training six months earlier. His crew flew him into Camp Mystic and left him there because every extra seat on the helicopter could be used for another camper or counselor. There was no radio, no cell service, and no other trained responder at the camp.
In the release, the ESPYS reported what those three hours looked like:
For three hours, with no radio and no cell service, he was the only trained responder on site, setting up triage, organizing safe zones, carrying children barefoot in the dark, and comforting each one before moving to the next. His coordination enabled 165 rescues on a day where twenty-seven people died. What set him apart was that he was the only person who stayed behind—voluntarily grounded—so others could be lifted out to safety.
One hundred and sixty-five campers and staff got out. Twenty-seven people died in the flooding.
The Pat Tillman Award goes to someone with a connection to sports whose service reflects the legacy of Pat Tillman, the Cardinals linebacker who walked away from a multimillion-dollar NFL contract to become an Army Ranger after September 11 and was killed in Afghanistan in 2004. Ruskan ran track and cross country at Rider University before joining the Coast Guard.
Since the rescue, Ruskan has been named grand marshal of the 2026 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Downtown Parade and was awarded the Legion of Merit by President Donald Trump at the State of the Union in February, where he was reunited for the first time with Milly Cate McClymond, one of the girls he had carried out of Camp Mystic. Not bad for someone who was six months out of training when the river rose.
Read More: Introducing a Radical New Concept … Sports Reporting Actually Reporting on Sports!
Feel-Good Friday: Young Houston Girl Finds a Sweet Way to Help Pets Impacted by the Texas Floods
Ruskan won't be the only honoree that night. Former Major League Baseball pitcher Jim Abbott was born without a right hand and threw a no-hitter for the Yankees in September 1993. He will receive the Jimmy V Award for Perseverance. The late Jason Collins, who died in May of brain cancer, will receive the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage posthumously.
Somewhere out there, the families who got their daughters back that night probably don't need a trophy to remember what Ruskan did. But it doesn't hurt that one of sports' biggest stages will make sure the rest of the country does, too.
Editor's Note: Do you enjoy RedState's conservative reporting that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.
Join RedState VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member