Off The Line


Life’s A Dance: Sarah Scherer’s Other Passion


If only there were the equiva- lent of a touchdown dance in shooting – Sarah Scherer would be set. The 22-year-old 2012 Olympian, however, is al- most perfectly still in her shooting stance. Stoic even. A nice shot or a win doesn’t elicit much more than a proud smile.


allow people under 21 years old so she’d bring her along. “We’d go together since that’s the only way they’d let me in,” she said. She was hooked. Later, another friend who was in the dance school at TCU was also in ballroom and would go with her to a dance studio on Fridays where they’d learn a new style in the beginning of the ses- sion. “At that point, I had only


Yo u would never know it, but off the


line, she dances. Scherer had never tak- en the traditional dance lessons that many young girls do, but as a fresh- man at TCU, a friend of hers convinced Scherer to sign up for a Latin Ballroom class. “Well, it turned out he


had a crush on me, but I’m really glad he invited me to it!” she said. “We’re still really good friends. I showed up – I was so nervous, I was going to be bad, it was going to be terrible, but I really loved it!”


So in between her rifl e training and schooling, Scherer would practice com- binations of different Latin dances – salsa, merengue, bachata - she even started teaching her mother since the Latin club in Ft. Worth wouldn’t


PHOTO BY DAN SHIREY March 2014 | USA Shooting News 63


learned Latin ballroom and they did mostly American ballroom,” she said. “So when a guy would ask me to dance, I’d be like ‘I don’t know this dance, but you can teach me…I’ve never com- peted in it, but now I’ve gone to competitions to watch. It’s some- thing I’ve been doing now for fi ve or six years, but off and on, I can’t do it full-time with shooting.” And though she can’t enjoy her pastime much more than oc- casionally on a weekend, she’s found the skills developed learn- ing dances, such as her favorite Argentine Tango, have translated into improving in her shooting. “A good couple years into


it, I realized when I was danc- ing a lot I realized my standing [position] was a lot better – es- pecially for air rifl e,” she said. “It took me awhile to fi gure out the correlation and it took me a while to fi gure out why. One thing I realized, when I’m danc- ing a lot, my calves completely changed. For a girl, you’re always on your toes so there’s balance, and your feet are your founda- tion for balance which is similar in standing – your feet are your


foundation for all of the standing positions. Something else that I realized, especially with Argen- tine Tango and even some of the other dances, that when you fi rst get into close or open position with your partner, for the girl, you have usually around four beats; around fi ve to ten seconds per song, to really get a strong con- nection to get into your mind, all distractions out of your mind to really focus on that person and your body. Learning how to do that within fi ve to 10 seconds, made me realize it’s kind of the same to getting in to the men- tal zone in fi ve to 10 seconds in shooting. Once you get your whole body set, which is like set- ting your body for shooting posi- tion, you focus on the person, and in shooting you just focus on releasing the shot. It’s kind of like you have lots of things you are thinking about, but then you just zone it in on releasing the shot. I learned that when danc- ing with multiple partners, it was learning how to connect in that really fast time. It also taught me how to zone in faster on the rifl e range. You would never think of that correlation! “It was really interesting and


now I’ll always keep my dancing up while I’m shooting because it’s something that’s fun, and it’s a different mental place, but it’s similar enough that it carries over. You can only mental prac- tice so much before you’re like oh my goodness - I’ve done that – but this offers me a different avenue to get that same thing accomplished.”


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68