Submitted photo Cardinal Mooney High School senior Erik Vargo’s award-winning photograph, “Heartbreak on the Hardwood,” shows Youngstown State University basketball player Naz Bohannon after a last-second loss.

Two Mahoning Valley teens won national honors in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.

Erik Vargo, 18, a senior at Cardinal Mooney High School, won a silver medal for his photograph “Heartbreak on the Hardwood.” Emily Bennett, 16, a junior at Lakeview High School, won a silver medal for her painting “The Year Was 2020.”

Their entries were among 21 works that received gold keys in January out of more than 350 entries in the Northeastern Ohio Art Region, which covers students in grades 7 to 12 in Mahoning, Trumbull, Columbiana and Ashtabula counties.

Those gold key winners moved on to the national contest, where winners were announced last month in New York.

“I just came home from hanging out with friends, and my mom got a message from my photography teacher informing me I got the award,” said Vargo, who lives in Boardman. “I was really surprised. Just hearing ‘national’ in the title of the award was surprising, but it was a nice surprise.”

Vargo’s photograph was taken at a Youngstown State University basketball game in early 2020 and shows Naz Bohannon pounding his fist on the court after a last-second loss.

“I didn’t want to shove a camera in his face,” Vargo said. “I kind of hip fired (the camera) and tried to match up where I thought he would be. The shot turned out perfect.”

Maureen Kandray, Vargo’s film and photography teacher, said, “Erik’s natural sense of design and competence with the media and curiosity to explore more make him a standout. His assigned projects and independent themes and projects have been created with fine care. Most of all, his photos and visual media tell great stories. They speak. That magic quality is in each one, and he has that innate ability to capture the right moment.”

Vargo called Kandray “a guiding light through the whole process,” including reminding him to to submit his photo before deadline.

He plans to attend Youngstown State University in the fall and major in either business or communication. He said his dream job would be working for a professional sports team either as its photographer or in the marketing department, where he would be able to incorporate his love of photography.

Bennett, who lives in Vienna, said she was “quite excited and slightly confused” when she saw on the Scholastic website that she’d won a silver medal.

“I did it last year and had two pieces go (to nationals) but I didn’t win anything,” she said. “Looking at the stuff that did win, it was so incredibly, incredibly good I never thought that could be me.”

Bennett’s painting depicts depicts a young woman clearly feeling the stress of her situation. It was painted during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think the face is a very interesting thing to paint,” she said. “It’s something we all know and something that can show so much even with the littlest changes. I started doing it a few months into the pandemic. It was my way of passing the time. It was so chaotic, I wanted to characterize that, and I knew it was something everyone could relate to.”

Her art teacher, Jeff Piper, said, “During my 16 years of teaching, I have only had one other student to win at the national level, but I have never seen a student win as many awards as Emily has in the last couple of years. She is a very dedicated and creative student who excels at all subjects here at Lakeview High School. I look forward to seeing what Emily accomplishes with all her talents past the high school level.”

“He’s really given me a platform to do things I didn’t know I could do,” Bennett said about Piper. “He’s really a great influence.”

Bennett is evaluating where she wants to go to school and what she wants to study. She said she might not major in art, but she wants it to remain an important part of her life.