When Vince Bruner read his name at the Anne T. Mitchell Senior Honor Awards ceremony at Northwest Florida State College’s Raider Arena, Brock Dugan was sitting on stage with the top students from the other five Okaloosa County high schools. He knew it was okay either way — if he won, great, and if he didn’t, that was fine too.

He won.

“I was really shocked to get it,” Dugan said.

The Peggy Gorday Bruner Award honors the most outstanding academic scholar among all of Okaloosa County’s graduating seniors. Dugan was selected from among six finalists, one from each of the county’s high schools: Addison Overton from Baker School, Anthony Bernich from Choctawhatchee High School, Daniel Barnes from Crestview High School, Aiden King from Laurel Hill School, and Zachary Ott from Niceville High School. All six earned the recognition as the top-ranked seniors at their respective campuses.

The announcement came during a ceremony recognizing 639 high school seniors from across Okaloosa who will graduate with honors next month. To earn the distinctions of summa cum laude, magna cum laude or cum laude, students had to carry a weighted GPA of 3.75 or higher.

Dugan carried a 4.8214.

He is finishing first in a Viking class of 379 students. He has been on Northwest Florida State College’s President’s and Dean’s List for three straight years through the Sigma Mu Chapter of Phi Theta Kappa. He earned perfect scores on his biology, civics and U.S. history end-of-course exams. He was a Coca-Cola Scholars semi-finalist, an Elks Foundation semi-finalist, and has been an AP Scholar since his sophomore year.

Ask him how he did it, and the answer is short.

• “I was studying almost every day,” Dugan said. “And trying to do that while doing sports.”

Ask him who pushed him hardest, and the answer is also short.

“My mom,” he said, looking at her across her office.

The work behind the number

Dr. Linda Dugan is a professional school counselor at Fort Walton Beach High School. She has watched her son walk the same hallways she walks every day for four years. On the night of the Bruner Award ceremony, she cried as his name was called.

• “I know how hard he has worked to earn that position,” she said. “He’s never compared himself to anyone else. He doesn’t do that. He is who he is, and he’s been known to work really hard, both in the school and outside of the school.”

The work started early. Schoolwork first, every day, before anything else. Math came easy to him — it always has. But Reading and English were the grind.

“I had to keep studying,” Dugan said of the subjects that didn’t come naturally. “I didn’t really have to study math, but reading and English required a lot more time.”

He has been dual-enrolled at Northwest Florida State College since freshman year, stacking college credit online alongside his high school coursework. He kept up with it the same way he kept up with everything else — one assignment at a time, every day, without missing any.

His mother’s guidance wasn’t only to push. It was also to rest. When he needed a break, she told him to take one. When it was time to get back to it, she told him that too.

• “Whenever I need a break, she always tells me to take one and then I get back to it,” Dugan said.

What he gives away

Dugan helped start the fishing club at Fort Walton Beach High School as a freshman. He has been a member all four years, serving as secretary and, this year, as vice president. He has won the school’s fishing tournament every year since his freshman year.

What most people don’t know is that he has never kept any of the rewards.

Every rod, reel and prize he has won over four years of tournaments, he has given away to kids who don’t have the equipment to fish with. He has done it every year since ninth grade.

It fits a pattern that runs through his resume. Dugan has logged more than 330 community service hours — most of it being hands-on work. Yard cleanup for elderly neighbors. Dock building and cleanup. Beach plantings on Okaloosa Island. Walking and washing dogs at PAWS. Helping families move. More than 100 hours of landscaping in the summer heat.

He also runs his own small landscaping business, and one of his longtime clients is a neighbor with stage four cancer, a man he continues to work for, often without charging.

• “I just really want to help other people out,” Dugan said. “I feel bad if I can’t help someone and I see them working. I just want to do as much as I can for other people.”

It is, his mother said, the thing she is proudest of.

“When people need help, it makes you realize that serving others — the best thing is watching them flourish instead of your own,” she said.

Tennis, pickleball and a Selkirk contract

On the athletic side, Dugan played varsity tennis at Fort Walton Beach High for three years. He won the Navarre Invitational, took singles and doubles titles at TOPSL in February 2024, and was named MaxPreps Athlete of the Week that same month. He earned FHSAA academic recognition for his GPA as a tennis player.

Then he found pickleball.

“I thought it was more fun than tennis because you could play with your friends,” Dugan said. “I just kept playing. I think it’s a little bit more fun than tennis.”

He started playing with his uncle, his cousin and his brother. He kept playing. The wins came: first place at the Gulf Shores Battle at the Beach men’s division,, first at the A2M Biloxi Pickleball Tournament men’s division, second at the Elite Pickleball tournament in Jacksonville, third at the OWA Foley tournament, third at the Pensacola Pickleball Tournament, and fourth out of 22 teams at a Thanksgiving men’s tournament in Santa Monica, California.

• Earlier this year, Selkirk, one of the biggest names in pickleball equipment, signed him to a contract. A friend of Dugan’s who was already sponsored by the company suggested he apply, telling him his rating was high enough to get picked up. Dugan sent in an application. Selkirk reached out.

They send him about six demo paddles at a time, which he uses to run demo days that let players try paddles before they buy, and to teach. He taught a friend how to play.

“I thought I had a better chance of going to higher levels of pickleball than tennis,” Dugan said.

He plans to keep playing in college. Florida State University has a pickleball club, and he is looking at joining.

What comes next

This fall, Dugan is heading to FSU to study civil engineering — a career path that started, fittingly, with a lawn.

One of the people whose yard he has worked on is a civil engineer. The conversations they had over that yard work stuck with him. When Dugan toured FSU and Auburn University, civil engineering was what stood out to him most. The FSU-FAMU College of Engineering sealed it.

He already has a working interest in the field. Dugan lives on Okaloosa Island and fishes near the site of the Brooks Bridge replacement project. He has been watching the construction with a technical eye: the concrete curing, the rebar placement, the engineered retaining walls. On his FSU tour, civil engineering instructors covered some of the same material he had already been watching go up outside his door.

Asked whether he sees himself coming back to the area after college, he answered the way he answers most things — directly.

• “If there is a career here, I’ll be pretty excited,” he said. “Because then I could probably fish.”

Who he walks for

Dr. Dugan’s own ties to Fort Walton Beach High run deep. She worked in guidance and coached volleyball at the school years ago before moving to Germany to play competitively for three years, then to Georgia. When she came back, she coached a bit while settling into the counseling role she holds today.

“Once you get in that door, it’s hard to not stay here,” she said. “It’s a Viking family.”

Ask Brock what he will miss about Fort Walton Beach High School, and the list is short but specific.

• “The teachers,” he said. “They’ve been really nice. And I’ll miss my friends.”

When he walks across the graduation stage next month, his mother will of course be there — but in a different capacity than the one she has held for the past four years as a counselor in the building. Asked who he is walking for, he kept the answer short, again.

“My mom and myself.”

There is one more thing worth knowing about Brock Dugan, though he did not bring it up himself. His grandfather, who had Parkinson’s disease, lived in the Dugan family’s home and Brock helped care for him. On the morning of one of his tennis matches, his grandfather passed away on the way to the tournament.

Brock composed himself. 

He played the match.

It’s safe to say that Dugan will also be walking for the man who meant so much to him.

It is the kind of thing that does not show up on a resume, and the kind of thing the Peggy Gorday Bruner Award does not technically measure. But it is the kind of thing that, if you ask Dr. Linda Dugan, explains more about her son than the 4.8214 GPA ever could.

“In life, things are challenging,” she said. “But when we move forward, you take care of people.”

And as evidenced by her son’s impressive resume, Brock has been doing that for a long time.