JESSICA VARNER OF CENTENARY COLLEGE, a junior golfer, has been selected as the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference Character and Community Female Student-Athlete of the Week for the week beginning December 11, 2017.
The SCAC honors the efforts of student-athletes who excel in the field of athletics while also serving their campus and community.
"Jessica Varner has never turned down an opportunity to serve her community," said Ladies and Gents Golf Head Coach Emlyn Aubrey. "We do 3-4 service days as a golf team per school year, and she is always there to help as well as motivate her teammates to do the same. She not only loves the challenge of improving herself, but also loves helping others improve as well."
Varner is in the 3/2 engineering program at Centenary. Besides being a member of the Ladies golf team, she is very involved in the local Shreveport-Bossier City community in many aspects. She is currently volunteering at the local at the local Caddo Parish Animal Shelter, where she helps exercise, walk, play, and take care of the animals.
With the Centenary golf teams, she assists in various projects, including the First Tee program, the annual BIG Event at Centenary, and the yearly Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service. The First Tee introduces golf while also teaching leadership skills to youth in Caddo Parish. The BIG Event brings together students, faculty, staff, and alumni to help beautify the neighborhood surrounding Centenary College.
On the links, there has been no shortage of successes for Varner in her collegiate career. To wrap up the spring 2017 season, Varner became the first Centenary golfer to win an individual conference championship since Hal Sutton in 1980. With that, she also earned All-Louisiana Sports Writer's Association honors.
So far in the 2017-18 season, Varner has finished in the top-10 in all tournaments played - including titles in the first two tournaments of the season. The seventh-ranked golfer in NCAA Division III also finished eighth at the Fred Mark Invitational, a Division I tournament where she was the only NCAA Division III golfer.
