Publish date: 22 December 2022

Colleagues are invited to support a former Mersey Care member of staff who has been shortlisted for the Deaf Sports Personality of the Year for her international football and futsal career – including the Golden Boot Award.

Zara Musker worked in the trust for four years. Despite learning to live with a progressive hearing loss most of her life, Zara went to mainstream school, university and completed a sports science degree. Alongside this she played football for Blackburn Rovers and Everton women in the super league and won a scholarship to play football in America.

Unfortunately during Covid Zara lost all the limited hearing she had and was fitted with a Cochlea implant. Understandably, this was a very difficult time for Zara: it totally knocked her confidence as she had to learn to hear again through the cochlea implant device.

She is now studying a Masters in neurosensory sciences and training to be a clinical scientist in Audiology in the NHS. Her passion is to improve deaf awareness and inclusion for people with hearing loss.

Zara continued playing Football for England Deaf team and Futsal for the England Futsal team. In September 2022 Zara went to Italy with the England Futsal team and competed in the European Deaf Futsal Championship winning Gold. Zara won the Golden Boot Award and was named in the all-star top 5 team of the tournament.

Zara has now been nominated out of 100s of applicants for Sports Personality of the Year award which will be held in London in 2023. With her passion to improve services for people with a disability/hearing loss and highlight lack of inclusion and accessibility for the same it would be great for Zara to get her opportunity to speak about it in the awards forum.

It would be great if you could support Zara and register your vote. Voting finishes at midnight on 31 December: