Bennett Awards, working in conjunction with Skiver Advertising, created a new custom sculpture award for the inaugural Defender of the Nation Award. This new recognition award, presented by the Charlotte Touchdown Club, honors a college football player from one of the nation’s service academies, including Air Force Academy, The Citadel, Coast Guard Academy, Naval Academy, Norwich University, Texas A&M University, Virginia Tech, VMI and West Point. The award is based on exceptional leadership qualities on the field, in the classroom and in the community. The recipient must also exhibit a high standard of integrity by leading through example.

For this award, Bennett Awards created a new, unique custom sculpture award based on a design developed by Skiver Advertising. The main component of the award was in the form of a battle shield, a design leveraging the award sponsor’s logo (The Independence Fund) and an ancient Roman shield. The battle shield sculpture was created from hand-rubbed rustic bronze-plated pewter encasing light stained oak wood. The pewter and wood combined to contrast the positive and negative spaces in the shield. The service academy logos were sculpted into the pewter back of the shield. The shield was attached to a custom handcrafted ebony-stained mahogany sculpture that served as both a stand and base for the shield. A plate was attached to the base of the award with engravings of the award name, year of presentation, and logos of The Independence Fund and the Charlotte Touchdown Club.