PUB

Her teammates and coach call her Palin. At 5’8’’ with a slim build, she exudes a quiet confidence and carries herself with the poise of a vice-presidential candidate. She also shares the same first name as the former vice-presidential candidate—Sarah—but that’s not why Sarah Beard earned the nickname during her freshman year at TCU.

"One of her favorite hobbies is hunting, so there's a connection there, and she kind of resembles a young Sarah Palin," head rifle coach Karen Monez says. "You might call her a little bit more conservative than most. It just kind of stuck."           

Hunting? It’s an unexpected revelation coming from the soft-spoken woman sitting across from me. During the thirty minutes we’ve been talking, Sarah hasn’t stopped smiling once, and it’s hard to picture this Danville, Indiana native holding a gun in her hand, much less knowing how to use it. Wearing no makeup and casually dressed in shorts, t-shirt, and the official TCU rifle team jacket, Sarah’s style confirms her distaste for showiness and pretention. Her ponytail bounces back and forth as she talks about home, how much she enjoys living in the country, and being close to nature. Upon first impression, she seems like the vegetarian, tree-hugging type.            

“I know, I get that a lot,” Sarah says sheepishly, referring to the fact that she doesn’t seem capable of raising a finger against an animal, much less squeezing a trigger. “But [hunting] is just something my family does. It’s about being outside. It’s not about killing things.” She holds up an imaginary gun and assumes the look of a crazed killer—an effect that is ruined by the smile, eye roll, and laughter following not three seconds later. But for the 2011 U.S. national rifle champion and potential member of the 2012 U.S. Olympic rifle team, guns most certainly are her “thing.”           

In six short years, Sarah has skyrocketed to the top of her sport.  Her accolades and accomplishments include Junior Olympic competitor, World Cup competitor, Pan-American Games competitor, NCAA Champion, and USA Shooting National champion in small bore. Although Sarah is required to compete in both air rifle and small bore as a member of the TCU rifle team, she prefers the latter event. In small bore, competitors fire .22 caliber small-bore rifles from three positions—prone, standing, and kneeling—at targets 50 feet downrange. The bulls-eye is about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.                    

Sarah notes that love of the sport did not initially motivate her to begin competitive shooting. Knowing that her father had traveled around the world as a member of the 1984 U.S. Olympic shooting team and as a professional shooter, Sarah wanted the opportunity to have those same experiences. "I almost discouraged her when she brought it up," William Beard remembers. "I had always taken her hunting and fishing with me. I was concerned that she thought that I wanted her to do it and she kept bringing it up. The first time she practiced was at the Indiana State Championships. I was so impressed with how she took to it." Sarah doesn’t recall all the specifics of that first competition in 2006, but she does remember one thing: “I realized I was good.”            

While Sarah realized she was good and continued to compete at increasingly higher levels, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to compete in college. Sarah’s response when the TCU rifle coach Karen Monez asked her to visit the school? “Oh, what the heck.”    

Although Sarah chose to come to TCU largely because of the rifle program, she walked on to the team and received the majority of her scholarship from ROTC. After one year of ROTC, Sarah decided that the military option was not for her, but because of a very successful freshman year shooting for the team, she received an athletic scholarship that allowed her to stay at TCU. “I can totally see God’s hand,” nods Sarah.            

In addition to trusting God for financial provisions, Sarah credits her faith for sustaining her through various challenges. Though she doesn’t mention him by name, she tears up at the thought of Stephen Scherer, the assistant coach on the rifle team her freshman and sophomore year, and the older brother of teammate Sarah Scherer. On October 3, 2010, Stephen, a senior at TCU and member of the 2008 U.S. Olympic rifle team, was found dead in his off-campus apartment from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.           

“I went through a really rough time my sophomore year…” her voice trails off for a moment before she continues. “Sarah’s brother…I was pretty close to him. We dated—secretively.” She flashes a mischievous smile at this last part, trying to lighten the mood with this confession. “It’s really interesting: it was a really low point, but then Sarah and I started getting really close. We’ve become best friends after that.”            

Sarah relies heavily on Sarah Scherer. The two exchange tips and feedback after matches, attend the same church, and challenge each other both athletically and personally. Scherer agrees that the two have much more in common than their first names. For Sarah Beard, this aspect of shooting is essential: “That’s really the main reason why I am shooting—to form relationships with people.”

Sarah says sharing her Christian faith is an important part of those relationships. “There is this running joke that I’m going to be a nun when I get older,” she says with a laugh. It’s not hard to picture this fresh-faced, enthusiastic twenty-year-old joining a convent. After talking to Sarah for five minutes, there’s no doubt that the “good girl” image is sincere. Sarah’s desire to hold herself to high moral standards, to have a joyful attitude despite circumstances, and to treat everyone around her with kindness and respect has earned her a sterling reputation in the rifle community. Her faith is quietly reflected through her character; teammates and competitors don’t cuss around Sarah, something she says they do out of respect for her and not because she judges someone for how they behave.            

In addition to the nun rumor, there is another rumor circling around in the rifle community that Sarah never gets angry. At the World Championships last summer, Sarah remembers someone she barely knew coming up to her and asking, “I heard you never get angry. Is that true?” It is. “I don’t remember the last time I got really upset,” she says with a shrug. “I am pretty laid back.”           

Sarah believes her personality plays a large role in her success with shooting. “I don’t really get emotional about how I shoot. After a match, if I shoot badly…I have my set time for moping, and then I’m done. I try to stay optimistic about it… I’m pretty competitive, but mostly against myself. I’ll get mad at myself if I have a bad shot, but it’s not because I think I’m going to lose, but because I shot a bad shot and I know I can do better than that. So it’s always competing against myself. This is what I expect of myself…if I lost a match but still shot well, I would be happy.”            

While Sarah might be jittery before a match, those nerves are only temporary. “I can be nervous before I shoot, but once I start putting lead down range, it all comes back to practice…but in every sport, there are a lot of people who give their lives to it, but they never reach the level they want to reach, and that could be circumstance, it could be a number of things, but in general it’s the more you practice. And you’ll have some ups and downs, but you’ll keep climbing.”            

When asked what makes the top shooters successful, Sarah responds that there are definitely some common traits, but that she is a bit of a rebel when it comes to her shooting style. “With the top shooters, you usually see they are very methodical, very analytical. I like changing everything,” she says, already thinking about how she wants to alter her shooting stance the next time she practices. “I don’t settle on the target and then squeeze the trigger. I swing [my rifle] through, which is not what you are supposed to do, but it works for me. And it runs a little off adrenaline.” Sarah thrives in challenging, high-pressure situations—something that she’s experienced plenty of times since coming to TCU.            

In 2010, the TCU rifle team became the first all-female rifle team to win the NCAA championships. (In collegiate rifle competitions, men and women compete against each other and the majority of teams are co-ed.) At the championship, all eyes were on Sarah as the last shooter of the competition. “I put a lot of people under stress,” Sarah recalls.            

In rifle, each shooter has 120 minutes to shoot 60 rounds. “I’m really slow. I run really close to the time limit. My coach and my dad couldn’t watch. Everybody was [thinking], ‘What is she doing?’” But Sarah handled the pressure without any difficulty and helped her team clinch the title. For the freshman whose only goal at the start of the season was to make the travel team, winning the NCAA championships was just an added bonus.  “I didn’t even know how big a deal it was. I was the last person shooting and then my coach came up to me and said ‘We won!’- I wasn’t expecting that at all.”                       

As a result of winning the championship, Sarah and her teammates were invited to join other NCAA champions for lunch on the White House lawn with President Obama. What was Sarah’s impression of the experience? “Oh my gosh, it was really fun.” It’s an almost comical understatement, but Sarah’s eyes light up as she says it, and for the calm, cool, and collected junior biology major, it’s the most visibly excited she has been all morning.            

But Sarah isn’t one to rest on past achievements for long; she is always looking to the future. “I like to try new things. I’d like to go scuba diving sometime…live in another country…learn a couple new languages. Have fun.” She pauses for a moment before adding, “Well, I mean, I’d like to make the Olympic team.” Representing the U.S. at the 2012 Olympic games in London is not just a fantasy for Sarah; it is a very real possibility.            

June 5 through 7 of this year, Sarah will travel to Fort Benning, Georgia to compete at the 2012 Olympic Trials in small bore. Teammate Sarah Scherer has already earned a spot on the team in air gun, and with fellow National Team member Jamie Gray automatically qualified in both air gun and small bore, there is only one spot left on the Olympic team. Trials are several months away, but Sarah is already preparing. “I do a lot of visualization, imagining myself at the Fort Benning Range, what it’s going to be like, the pressure I’m going to feel and how I want to deal with that—develop a plan and everything. It will be a challenge, but a lot of fun. I really like shooting under challenging conditions because I feel like I have a head up on everyone else.”             

Regardless of how trials go, Sarah plans to continue in the sport of shooting, because for Sarah, the friendships that she has developed through rifle are the most important aspect of the sport. “No matter how I shoot, I really enjoy it.” Her philosophy on life is just as straightforward: “It’s really just about enjoying life and the relationships that I have.” That’s sharpshooting advice coming from one of the nation’s top marksmen.