Nursing student Jessie Noseworthy has become the second Memorial Sea-Hawk to win the national Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) Student-Athlete Community Service award.

The talented third-year striker follows Samantha Hansford who won the award in 2010.

Ms. Noseworthy first earned the Atlantic University Sport (AUS) Student-Athlete Community Service Award earlier this month, and just last week was named a first-team AUS all-star after finishing fourth in the AUS soccer conference with a team-leading nine goals in 13 league games.

She is an exemplary student-athlete, balancing athletics, academics and extensive community involvement.

She is a longtime 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.

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

A driving force behind the Street Reach Christmas Stockings drive, Ms. Noseworthy is in her second year of co-ordinating 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 Ms. Noseworthy travelled on a four-week volunteer trip to India. Spending her time in a small Tibetan refugee village in Northern India, she taught English to young boys at a local monastery, as well as joining a local doctor on a health campaign.

She travelled to different Tibetan schools, monasteries and seniors’ homes to assist a local physician with physical assessments on patients, conducted English conversation classes in small villages and played cricket, volleyball and soccer with local children at the end of their school day.

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

The other nominees for the national award were McGill defender Julia Vetere, Guelph defender Bianca Ferlisi and Alberta midfielder Annalise Schellenberg.

Last year, Ms. Noseworthy helped lead the Sea-Hawks to their first-ever AUS women’s soccer title.