Elayna Hemesath receives Amy Boley Heiter Award

Press Staff Report

CHARLES CITY — Before the Charles City girls basketball team’s final varsity home game of the regular season against Mason City on Feb. 5, Comet senior Elayna Hemesath became the 2024 recipient of the Amy Boley Heiter Memorial Scholarship Award.

The $500 scholarship is given to a Comet senior girls basketball player who best exemplifies the inspirational play and spirit of the former Comet and NIACC star.

Amy Boley Heiter attended Charles City High School and graduated in 2008.  She was very active on the Comet varsity basketball team during high school, and she continued her basketball career at NIACC.

Known as a deadeye shooter, especially from 3-point range, Amy would fire up the home crowd in the old Charles City gym with her long-range bombs. She once made local headlines scoring 18 points on her 18th birthday during a game placed on December 18.

In her final game as a Trojan, Amy hit six 3-point shots in the first half.

Amy was diagnosed with Synovial Sarcoma in late Oct. 2013; she was 23 years old, finishing a college career and a newlywed at the time.

Synovial Sarcoma is one of the rarest forms of soft tissue cancer in the world. Being in the pelvic cavity made Amy’s cancer even rarer. Amy underwent two surgeries, numerous rounds of chemotherapy, and many other medical procedures, all of that happening during her student teaching experience at Washington Elementary.

She graduated from UNI on Dec. 21, 2013 with her BA in Elementary and early childhood education — she was determined to not let cancer stop her from accomplishing her goals.

Amy underwent exploratory surgery in the spring of 2014 and approximately 3 months after surgery and a couple rounds of chemo, her scans were clear.

The excitement unfortunately did not last long as the cancer came back that fall.  In October of 2015, Amy had another surgery.  Without the surgery she had only days to months.

The surgery gave Amy six months as she passed away on April 29, 2015.

Fiser is the fifth recipient of the award. The others include Sarah Barry (2016), Bailey Mitchell (2017) Payton Reams (2018), Kara Hoffman (2019), Lisabeth Fiser (2020), Sadie Gebel (2021), Lydia Staudt (2022) and Ava Ellis (2023).