James Bayer Memorial Scholarship Award nominee: Jessie Noseworthy, Memorial women's soccer

Position: Forward
Hometown: St. John's, N.L.
Year of eligibility: Third
Academic program: Bachelor of nursing 

Memorial University athletics has nominated Sea-Hawks women's soccer forward Jessie Noseworthy for the 2016 James Bayer Memorial Scholarship Award.

A third-year nursing student from St. John's, N.L., Noseworthy has been a force on the field for the Sea-Hawks. Following the 2015 regular season, she was named an AUS first team all-star for the second time in her career. She first earned the honour in 2014, when she was also named a CIS second team all-Canadian.

In the 2014 postseason, Memorial went on to capture its first-ever AUS women's soccer banner at the 2014 Subway AUS Women's Soccer Championships hosted by Dalhousie in Halifax, N.S.

This past season, Noseworthy scored nine goals for the Sea-Hawks, including three game winners. She was chosen at the Atlantic conference recipient of the student-athlete community service award and then went on to win the honour at the national level.

She is heavily involved the community, serving as a team leader for Memorial's chapter of the Student-Athlete Mental Health Initiative (SAMHI).

She is a long-time volunteer with the Easter Seals program, teaching weekly swim lessons to children with physical and mental disabilities, including children with brittle bone syndrome, autism, and neuromuscular disorders.

Noseworthy is a volunteer with the Ronald McDonald House Home for Dinner Program, where she and other varsity student-athletes cook meals for the families residing in the house whose children are undergoing treatment at the Janeway Child Health Centre. Along with volunteering with the Ronald McDonald House, Noseworthy is a volunteer with Eastern Health in the palliative care unit.

A driving force behind the Street Reach Christmas Stockings drive, Noseworthy is in her second year of coordinating the initiative in which the Memorial varsity athletics community collects personal care items and small gifts to put together Christmas stockings for a local organization.

This initiative supports young people who are struggling with food security, lack of safe and affordable housing, live in poverty, have low literacy skills, have mental health issues, and have limited or no access to a strong social support network.

In June 2015, Noseworthy travelled on a four-week volunteer trip to India. Spending her time in a small Tibetan refugee village in Northern India, Noseworthy volunteered at a local monastery teaching English to the young boys, as well as joining a local doctor on a health campaign.

She travelled to different Tibetan schools, monasteries and old age homes to assist a local physician in performing physical assessments on patients. Noseworthy volunteered in the village conducting English conversation classes, and spent time with local children playing cricket, volleyball and soccer at the end of the school day.

Along with some of her teammates, Noseworthy has volunteered with the Association for New Canadians to coordinate and organize a food drive at home soccer games, with all food collected being donated to the annual Thanksgiving dinner.

"Jessie is a leader in our varsity athletics community at Memorial," said Memorial Sea-Hawks director of athletics Dr. Karen Murphy. "A 2014 all-Canadian and AUS champion, Jessie has demonstrated excellence on the soccer pitch, in the classroom and in her community service work. She sets a standard of excellence for her teammates, classmates and herself, making her truly deserving of this award."