Joined GS: 2017
2018-19 Co-SoCon Coach of the Year
2019-20 Co-SoCon Coach of the Year
2021-22 SoCon Coach of the Year
Sandra Worman was hired as the head rifle coach at Georgia Southern in 2017 and completed her fifth season with the Eagles in 2021-22. Worman, who is a highly decorated shooter from her competitive days, came to Statesboro after three seasons as the volunteer assistant rifle coach at The Citadel.
In 2021-22, her Eagles went a perfect 7-0 in Southern Conference dual matches and went on to win both the smallbore and overall team SoCon titles. The team title was the first in program history. The Eagles also finished the season ranked 17th in the country, a program best. Erin Ballard won the school's first individual smallbore SoCon title and was named the Smallbore Athlete of the Year while Ashley Judson was named the Air Rifle Athlete of the Year. Four different athletes earned a combined seven all-conference honors, as well. For her efforts, Worman was named the SoCon Coach of the Year for the third time.
The 2020-21 season saw the young Eagles (four sophomores and six freshmen) come on late to take the SoCon smallbore title in March, Worman's third title in four years. The squad came up four points short of the overall title, but the runner-up finish was at the time the highest in program history. Judson was again named SoCon Air Rifle Co-Athlete of the Year and the Eagles finished with a national ranking for the first time.
Competing with four freshmen most of the 2019-20 season, Worman guided a young squad to big gains late in the season as two student-athletes earned all-conference honors in air rifle, one earned all-conference accolades in smallboare and Judson was named SoCon Air Rifle Co-Athlete of the Year. Her efforts earned her co-coach of the year honors for the second year in a row.
In 2018-19, she was named co-coach of the year in the SoCon after leading the Eagles to a team conference title in air rifle. Two of her pupils: Rosemary Kramer and Courtney Weekley both earned first-team all-conference honors in both disciplines after outstanding years. Kramer won the league's air rifle title and became the first NCAA qualifier in program history while Weekley capped off a stellar career with a third-place finish in air rifle and a sixth-place finish in smallbore. Kramer went on to set a new NCAA Air Rifle Championship record with a 599 (out of 600) in the preliminaries and then took home bronze medalist honors to also secure first-team All-America honors.
In her first season with the Eagles, Worman's team saw marked improvement as the year progressed as they finished with a 16-12 match record. The team broke the school record for aggregate score four times as the top five scores in program history in the small bore air rifle and aggregate were all set in the 2017-18 season. Georgia Southern raised its small bore team average by over 17 points per match, its air rifle team average by over 27 points per match and its aggregate team average by over 45 points per game.
Three Eagles: Kramer, Weekley and Lydia Odlin were named All-Southern Conference and two more student-athletes were named Academic All-Americans by the CRCA.
While a member of the staff at The Citadel, she helped contribute to the co-ed team’s 2016-2017 decade-high score performance. She also coached six athletes to the Junior Olympics in Colorado Springs. She was also responsible for the planning and teaching of mental training curriculum for the team, as well as the physical maintenance of Megalink Targeting systems.
Worman began her smallbore shooting career at age 10 with the Alamogordo Junior Rifle Club in New Mexico. Through weekly practice and regional and national matches, she increased her skill level and confidence to the point that she won 11 of 12 National Sub Junior titles awarded by the NRA in 1984. She represented her home state at the National Matches in Camp Perry, Ohio, as part of the state’s Whistler Boy team from 1983-1985.
From 1987-89, she made the National Development Team in three-position and air rifle and went on to represent the United States in matches held in Cuba, Austria and Poland.
In 1987 she was the Polish National women’s prone champion. She finished high school a year early to accept a shooting scholarship to St. John’s University in Queens, New York, and was designated an NCAA All-American in air rifle for three of the four years.
During her tenure at the Citadel, she contributed to the Citadel co-ed team’s decade high scores by encouraging the cadets to embrace mental management processes and positive self talk. 6 cadets qualified for the Junior Olympics in Colorado Springs during this time.
Worman has been a volunteer rifle coach at the Palmetto Gun Club Junior Rifle Shooting program since April 2014. The objectives of this program are to introduce safety, marksmanship, range etiquette and stewardship to the next generation of three-position and precision air rifle shooters.
A member of the St. John’s University rifle team member from 1987-1991, Worman was a three-time All-American (1987, 1988 and 1989) and was named the team captain in 1989-1990. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Spanish from St. John’s and spent a year in Madrid teaching English as a foreign language. Worman has an NRA Class 1 rifle coach certification, and recently earned the Certified Advanced Rifle Coach credential through the USA Shooting Coach Academy.
She and her husband, Robert MacNeil, transplanted from Southern California to the southeast in 2009.
