Heidi Wicks

Adrienne Penney, a fourth-year student in Memorial's School of Pharmacy, has received the CIS Therese Quigley Award for volleyball, academics, and community service.

Ms. Penney is the first student-athlete from Memorial to receive the Thérèse Quigley Award since its inception in 1994.

On the court, the fourth-year power hitter played in all 16 league games and all 60 sets this season. She was fourth overall in the AUS conference in block assists with 36, seventh in total blocks (50) and seventh in blocks per set (0.83).

Born in Corner Brook, Ms. Penney moved to St. John's to attend university. She is the former president of the MUN Pharmacy Society and has both led and taken part in many pharmacy advancement events such as Pharmacist Awareness Month. She has been a pharmacy yearbook committee member and editor for the past four years and is serving as a grad committee member for 2014.

Ms. Penney has also taken part in numerous fundraising events for charity including the AIDS Walk for Life, CIBC Run for the Cure, the Canadian Cancer Society’s Relay for Life, as well as the Christmas Families initiative. She led and coordinated the Home for Dinner program for the Ronald McDonald House this past February and sold bracelets to raise money for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation at Memorial’s Go Pink event in January.

Further to her fundraising activities, Ms. Penney has been involved in the local community through coaching and participating in development camps for junior high and high school students with the Memorial volleyball team each summer.

“Adrienne is an outstanding student who’s just completing her pharmacy degree and will start her career in New Brunswick in May,” said Memorial head coach Bill Thistle. “She has been an outstanding leader for the Sea-Hawks and the pharmacy school. She has a beautiful heart, a mature mind and has a positive impact on all she’s touched. We will miss her, but we know that our loss will be someone else’s gain.”

The other finalists were McMaster’s Amanda Weldon and Mount Royal’s Julia Pasieka.

Two weeks ago, Ms. Penney received the Atlantic Canadian equivalent of this award, The Atlantic University Sport (AUS)'s Erin Bursey Memorial Award.

Read this story on today.mun.ca - Memorial's online news source.