Year: Junior
Major: Biology/Pre-Med
Spring is a busy time for Miami University soccer midfielder/defender Camber Hayes, who has been named the 2023 Arthur Ashe Jr. Female Sports Scholar of the Year. As team captain since the second semester of her freshman year, she is focused on her training so she can give a top performance come soccer season in the fall. She also studies intently to maintain her 4.0 GPA and be a top candidate for veterinary school, which she hopes to enter after graduation next year.
“My parents instilled in me that academics come first,” Hayes says. “If I didn’t have my homework done before practice, I wasn’t going. That was a big push for me to focus on school and that laid the foundation for me to manage my time right.”
Among Hayes’ honors, she has been All-Ohio Academic 1st team, 2022 Miami President's List (top grades in the major) for the past five semesters and three-time Academic All Mid-America Conference. On the field she earned 1st Team All-Mid-American Conference this past season, All-Ohio First Team and United Soccer Coaches NCAA All-Midwest. For her academic and athletic excellence, Hayes in the 2023 Arthur Ashe Jr. Female Sports Scholar.
“She’s not a super vocal person, but she has so much respect from her teammates just because of how hard she works,” says head soccer coach Courtney Sirmans. “She is extremely intelligent in soccer and probably could easily tell all her teammates what they should be doing, but she doesn’t do that. When she does say something, everybody is all in.”
The third of four children, both of her parents were competitive athletes in high school, but neither knew anything about soccer. Her older brother, Jacori, was the first to discover the sport. Following what her older siblings did, she took up soccer, quickly finding her own passion for the sport. Jacori and older sister Carmyn both played soccer in college, so she knew she too would be a student-athlete.
