CHARLESTON, S.C. – This summer The Citadel Athletic Department is highlighting a number of our coaches in a series titled Coach's Corner. The videos will post each Wednesday morning throughout the summer and are intended to help Bulldog fans and supporters get to know our coaches away from competition. Each Coach's Corner episode features the coach reflecting on his or her background, goals and experiences, in addition to their attraction to The Citadel and coaching our cadet-athletes. Links to previous Coach's Corner posts can be found at the bottom of this article. This week we feature Sandra Worman.
Rapid Fire
Last movie you saw in a theater: Beauty and the Beast
Last book you read: 10% Happier
Favorite meal: Oatmeal
Favorite musician: Warren Zevon
1. What is your favorite childhood memory?
In 1984, I won 23 of 24 national titles as my last year as a sub-junior and it probably sounds ridiculous to go back to something when you were 14 years old but there's a saying "Once you've experienced greatness, it can never be taken away" so to me at 14 that felt fantastic and it gave me the self-confidence and the wherewithal to sustain me for years. I didn't blow through it until my 30s, that feeling like tall cotton of having put my mind to something and done it so completely.
2. Who was your favorite athlete as a kid?
My favorite athletes were Lonnie Miley and Pat Spurgeon. They are both gold medal winning Olympians in precision rifle shooting.
3. What is your favorite hobby outside of athletics?
My favorite hobbies are probably reading, yoga, watching movies and playing cribbage
4. What is something on your bucket list you haven't been able to check off yet?
The scorpion pose in yoga. It's a hand stand but then you bring your feet over so when you're going over into it and then balancing into it and holding it, you go through all your balance points. It is very tricky and proving a very worthwhile adversary.
5. What is your favorite movie?
Star Wars is usually on loop programming, all of them, at the house so I'll go with the Star Wars franchise.
6. Tell us about your most memorable vacation:
I'm going to go with a recent one. My husband and I went to Scotland and we drove all over, which was delightful but him driving and me navigating felt a little bit like an activity that a marriage counselor would prescribe as a team-building exercise and we totally crushed it. We came back married, in one piece and with no mishaps.
7. What is the best sporting event you ever attended?
Probably the Pan-Am games in Havana, Cuba in 1987 just because not that many Americans were going to Cuba at that time.
8. What is your favorite place in Charleston?
Taco Boy is probably my favorite place in Charleston.
9. How did you get into coaching?
Coach Bill Smith can talk you into anything. He could sell snow to a snowman. I knew him from the community, shooting is a very tight community and I would see him out at Palmetto Gun Club and he first got me to run the junior program out there and then he asked if I would be his assistant coach.
10. What attracted you to The Citadel?
The coaches that helped me when I was younger were all volunteers so certainly paying homage to that, recognizing how much time it does take to coach, you know I felt like I owed. I literally shot my way out of the state of New Mexico and went to a better life and a better education. You know just giving kids a better life and a better education and the opportunity to pull themselves up by their bootstraps using these skills that they are learning through athletics.
11. Tell us about your most memorable experience so far at The Citadel:
There are two things. One is a specific thing and one is a series of events. So the specific thing is and I know coming from the athletic department this is going to seem like a funny thing but we once got beat by a team who was using our equipment. The reason I like that so much is because sportsmanship I think is at the heart of what we do in athletics and should be a priority. So the fact that we lent another team equipment, they didn't have left-handed equipment and they had a left-handed shooter who was just ready to flourish but had been struggling with right-handed stuff, so Coach Smith lent her a left-handed rifle and they just beat the tarnation out of us that day. We just felt very happy that we were able to contribute to that spirit of sportsmanship by doing that. I really admired Coach Smith for doing that and to be proud to be a part of a school and a program that is so focused on sportsmanship that we are willing to help other people be the best that they can be even if that means we lost that day.
The other thing that I've liked the best is watching the kids be better than themselves. There was a saying I once heard that went "To be better than someone else is pointless but to be better than yourself is everything". So when we're teaching the kids that you can overcome this terrible shot, you can come in feeling terrible on match day and somehow pull it together mentally and physically, you have it within you to be able to achieve this seemingly insurmountable goal when you're in the moment of what you have to overcome. So to see them be in a match and have a tough day and to not give up and to keep striving and to bounce back from a bad shot, that's just fantastic because that means what we're telling them, they're hearing and they're applying practically. That's not only for precision rifle shooting that it matters but also in life.
Coach's Corner Schedule
May 31 - Jody Huddleston
June 7 - Sandra Worman
June 14 - Chuck Kriese
June 21- Jack Marchant
June 28 - Lori Bonacci
July 5 - William Smith
July 12 - Craig Mosqueda
July 19 - Erin Leonard
July 26 - Rob Hjerling
Aug. 2 - Kris Kut
Aug. 9 - Ciaran Traquair
Aug. 16 - Stevi Robinson
For more information on The Citadel rifle, follow
@CitadelOlympic or visit CitadelSports.com.
