This year, it was Noseworthy’s capital gain
Soccer star named 2017 St. john’s female athlete of the year; Liam Hickey and Team Gushue are repeat winners of male athlete and team of the year awards
This time, Jessie Noseworthy was on the winning side of some extremely close voting results for St. John’s athlete of the year honours.
The Memorial Sea-hawks and Jubilee Trophy soccer star was named winner of the Margaret ‘Mag’ Davis Memorial Trophy at the 2017 Molson-coors St. John’s Athlete of the Year awards banquet, held Monday night at E.B. Foran/greene Room at City Hall.
Noseworthy finished with 27 points in the voting for the awards, just two ahead of former Memorial volleyball star Jill Snow.
The balloting for male athlete of the year and team of the year honours was more clear-cut, with para athlete Liam Hickey and the Brad Gushue curling rink winning those awards, respectively, and each for a second consecutive year.
Last year, Noseworthy was also a finalist for the Davis Trophy, but she and baseball player Heather Healy both finished one point behind winner Hannah Rivkin, another soccer player.
In 2017, Noseworthy played for the provincial women’s champion Holy Cross Avalon Ford senior women’s team which captured a bronze medal at the Canadian Jubilee Trophy competition, this province’s best-ever national finish. She was also the leading scorer and MVP in the provincial women’s league, was the top scorer for Memorial in AUS play and was a first-team conference and second-team U Sports (Canadian university) all-star selection.
Snow, who was named the AUS women’s volleyball MVP for a second straight year and was a U Sports first-team allstar in 2017, had 25 points in the voting. Soccer player Alyssa Armstrong, who also played with the Holy Cross women’s team and was a first-team allstar for the AUS champion Cape Breton Capers, had 19 points.
Hickey, who helped Canada win the 2017 world men’s sledge hockey championship, claimed his second straight Tom ‘Dynamite’ Dunn Memorial Trophy with 42 points in the balloting. That was 26 more than runner Colin Fewer, who won his record 10th Tely 10 title in 2017. Hockey player Tyler Boland, who finished his major junior career as the QMJHL’S secondleading scorer in 2016-17, had 14 points.
It was the second big revelation in as many days for Hickey; on Monday, he was formally nominated to play with Canada’s sledge hockey team at the 2018 Paralympic Games in South Korea next month. In doing so, he will have the rare achievement of having competed for Canada in both Winter and Summer Games. A member of the national men’s wheelchair basketball team, the 19-year-old played for Canada in that sport at the 2016 Paralympic Summer Games in Rio de Janiero.
The Gushue rink, which also includes Mark Nichols, Brett Gallant and Geoff Walker, became the first Newfoundland and Labrador entry in 41 years to win the Brier national men’s curling championship, and did so before a home crowd at Mile One Centre. They followed up that victory by capturing the world men’s championship in Edmonton.
Those wins were part of a 2017 that also saw the Gushue rink achieve great success on the World Curling Tour and in Grand Slam events.
Team Gushue had 50 points in the team-of-the-year voting. The Holy Cross women’s soccer team was runner-up with 28 points, while the Atlantic Rock U19 rugby team, another national bronze-medal winner, was third with seven points.