Never heard of J.T. before? You're not alone. The senior economics major and star midfielder and forward on the men's soccer team may be the school's career and single-season assists leader, the first Temple soccer player to earn a spot on the All-America team in 22 years, one of 38 players in the nation on the watch list for the Hermann Trophy (soccer's version of the Heisman Trophy), a potential Major League Soccer draft choice, a fluent French speaker and an Academic All-America with a 3.7 cumulative grade-point average, yet events have conspired to keep his accomplishments largely invisible. And that's just the way he likes it.

"I've never been a person who looks for the spotlight," Noone admitted. "Attention is awkward for me. It was the way I was raised. You go out and do your job, and do it the best of your ability. That's it. Hard work, in both athletics and academics."

On the soccer field, Noone's role is inherently selfless. He is a distributor — someone who enables others by winning possession, beating defenders and making passes that put teammates in a position to score.

A sequence in a game against Siena at the Ambler Soccer Complex in early October showed what makes Noone special. Late in the second half, Noone received the ball in the middle of the field with his back to the goal. He turned and beat his man, looked up and saw teammate Evan Bransdorfer running toward the goal to Noone's left with a defender in tow. Most defenders (and most fans) would have expected Noone to play the ball wide. Instead, Noone recognized that he could curl the ball behind the defender to a spot that only his teammate could see. The helpless defender couldn't turn, and Bransdorfer ran on to the ball and scored.

Despite earning league and regional honors at Central Dauphin High School in  Harrisburg, Pa., Noone wasn't heavily recruited. He was small — only 5 feet 7 inches and little more than 130 pounds in his junior year — and a sports hernia, an injured hip and a sprained ankle kept him off the field and out of sight for almost a year and a half at a time when his peers were being wooed by college coaches. As his body slowly recovered, he grew. A lot. While participating in the Olympic Development Program, Noone, now 6 feet 2 inches, was noticed by Temple Head Coach David McWilliams.

Earlier this season, Noone broke Temple's career assist record with his 21st helper (now he's up to 26), surpassing some of the school's greatest players, including recent Temple standout Tony Donatelli, who has played professional indoor and outdoor soccer since graduating in 2006.

"It's amazing, he really deserves it," Coach MacWilliams said after Noone broke the record in a 2-0 win against Albany. "J.T. has been great for us the four years we've had him, and I think that total will be difficult to top for a long time … He has really meant a lot to our program.”

Noone refuses to dwell on his individual accomplishments, focusing instead on the team's renaissance.

"It was really sad my first two years here losing so many games by one goal," Noone said. "The best part of my time at Temple — other than the people I've met — has been seeing the players and the coaches who've put in so much hard work here finally getting to see some positive results."

Noone's hard work and intellectual curiosity have paid off academically as well. After starting his years at Temple in the College of Education — he originally hoped to follow his mother's footsteps as a teacher — Noone explored French language studies and biology before ending up in the College of Liberal Arts as an economics major, a subject that once intimidated him.

He also was one of the first cohort of students to win a Diamond Ambassadors Scholarship, an invitation-only program launched by Temple's Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies in 2008 to encourage students with the strongest combination of academic achievement and financial need to study abroad. Noone, who had studied French throughout high school, spent the summer before his junior year at La Sorbonne in Paris, living with a French family and smashing stereotypes about Americans' alleged indifference to both soccer and the French language. He still speaks French whenever possible, including on the field with senior teammates François Sagna (France) and Augustin Coly (Senegal).

But for now, Noone's focus is soccer. Once the Temple season ends, Noone will wait to see if he gets an invitation to Major League Soccer's player combine this winter. After that, if all goes well, comes the MLS draft.

"I think a professional career is something I'm definitely going to pursue if I'm healthy," Noone said. "It's something I've wanted to do since I was five years old. I owe it to myself to try."

His coaches are confident he has the ability to play at the next level. If they're right, J.T. Noone days of being comfortably invisible may soon be over, whether he likes it or not.