Seven Sea-hawks named AUS soccer all-stars; MUN’S Skanes earns major honour
Seven members of the Memorial Sea-hawks are among the nine Newfoundlanders who were named to Atlantic University Sport 2017 soccer all-star teams on Wednesday. As well, fifth-year defender Claire Skanes of MUN has been selected as the conference’s 2017 student-athlete community service award recipient.
The announcements came on the eve of the opening day of AUS soccer championships, with the women’s tournament in Antigonish, N.S., and the men’s in Sydney, N.S. An engineering student with a current GPA of 4.0 and a cumulative GPA of 3.97, Skanes volunteers with the Easter Seals Swimming Program and is also a home volunteer with Newfoundland and Labrador’s Ronald Mcdonald House.
In addition to her local volunteering contributions, Skanes travelled to Ecuador for two weeks in 2014 to help a village build a schoolhouse and further develop a water drainage system. Skanes also served as vice president external for Memorial’s Engineering Society from 2014 to 2016
Five of Skanes’ teammates earned all-star nods, including Sea-hawk-leading scorer Jessie Noseworthy and Jane Pope, who both were firstteam selections.
In fact, Noseworthy and Pope have been conference all-stars in all five years of their collegiate careers. Noseworthy has four straight firstteam selections after being named to the second team as a rookie in 2013; Pope was a first-team all-star that same year, and was picked as a second-team all-star the following three years. Meanwhile, Sea-hawks rookie goalkeeper Sydney Walsh, who had a conference-leading 10 shutouts this season, was named the 2017 second team along with fellow Seahawks Keisha Younge and Teri Murphy. It’s the third straight second-team selection for Younge, a defender, and a first for Murphy, who plays the midfield. Alyssa Armstrong of St. John’s, a midfielder for the top-seeded Cape Breton Capers, was named to the first team for a second straight year.
On the men’s side, the second-team all-stars included Memorial striker and Sea-hawks’ leading scorer Tyler Forsey, along with his teammate Alex Pretty, a defender.
This is a first selection for Pretty and a second for Forsey (he was on the 2015 second team), who are both graduating players. Thomas Pieroway of Conception Bay South, the goalkeeper for the St. Francis Xavier X-men, was named a conference first team all-star. The Memorial men face UNB in a playoff quarter-final today (see story, page A12), while the Sea-hawk women earned a direct berth into the semifinal round of their tourney.