By Tori Harris
Mrs. Woosnam is the Athletic Director here at Scholars Guild Academy, and she has been crucial to the growth of our programs! I had the pleasure of asking her a few questions, and today I get to share with you!
How did you get involved in sports? I played sports growing up. I played soccer, volleyball, and tennis from two years old all the way through, and in high school, I played soccer, volleyball, and tennis. I played on a club team in college for soccer. And then when my kids were born, I just continued with them.
What is your favorite sport? My favorite sport to play is volleyball, and my favorite sport to watch is football. And then basketball and volleyball tie for second for favorite sport to watch.
What prompted SGA to start an athletic program? I think that in general Scholars Guild has everything that a homeschool family would want for their child, but they were missing that athletic piece for a long time. I think that they recognized that there were a significant number of student-athletes that attended Scholars Guild, and that we were all having to kind of go outside of our area geographically or sending our kids to private schools to play and we wound up playing against each other a lot, and that kind of was fighting against the idea of community and unity of the Scholars Guild student body. I think there were conversations amongst the board as to whether athletics might be something that would work at Scholars Guild, and ultimately they decided yes.
What sports do we currently have, and what sports do you hope to introduce in the future? For fall, we currently have volleyball and middle school cross country. For winter, we have co-ed bass fishing and boys basketball, and then for the spring, we have baseball and softball. I hope that we’ll add sports as students are interested. I don’t really have specific sports in mind that I want because I’ve really tried to offer the sports that the students want. We had an interest survey at the end of last school year sort of getting a feel for which sports students would want to play at Scholars Guild, where students all picked the sports that they want. We listed out all the sports that our league offers and then they chose and we tried to go with what the majority wanted. There’s a group of people that want soccer or football, esports, or whatever, and all of those are great options, but we’re just trying to go with what the majority wants because we know that for football for example you need a lot of people to field a football team, and I don’t know that we would have that interest right now. So just kind of looking ahead considering different sports that we would consider the sports that students really wanted, and that’s how we’ll decide moving forward.
What is your favorite part about being the athletic director? I think my favorite part is just getting to talk to people. I have had the opportunity to make a lot of new friends with this role, and I’ve met a lot of parents at Scholars Guild that I would otherwise have not ever met. I’ve also gotten to meet lots of coaches and athletic directors across the state, which has been really nice and fun and formed friendships with those people and have a sort of camaraderie with other athletic directors that I would not have had, so that’s really my favorite part I think, is just getting to talk to people and having more friends.
Is there anything you wish to say to the student body about our new athletic program? I would just say it’s for you, and that’s why it exists, so take advantage of it. Even if you don’t play a sport, get involved by coming out and supporting your friends who do play. Come and cheer for your team because the whole reason it exists is for you. It’s not for anyone else, it’s not for the parents who are driving their kids everywhere. But it’s for the students, and so I would love for every student to be able to say when they graduate from Scholars Guild that they were a part of it, even if they never played a sport or participated on a team, that they felt like they were a part of it because they came to the games or they cheered on their friends, they went and watched somebody cross the finish line at a cross country meet, that kind of thing.
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