Sandi Morris

Sandi Morris is a dynamic Pole Vault athlete. Sandi Morris stole the hearts of many sports fans with her elegant leaps as an Olympian and world record holder. She played in high school and college before going pro in 2015.

She paved her way for the 2016 Rio Olympics via hard work, devotion, and consistent training.

Sandi’s personal best vault is 5 meters, and she hopes to improve on that in the coming days.

Childhood and Family

Sandi Morris was born to Harry Morris and Kerry Morris on July 8, 1992, in Downers Grove, Illinois.

She is one of two sisters. Sandi was a tomboy as a kid.

Sandi enjoyed being in nature and communicating with it.

Furthermore, she enjoyed climbing trees and making mud pies in the backyard.

She was athletic by nature and could spend hours outside.

Her affection for animals was another important aspect of her personality that she acquired as a child.

Her athleticism, on the other hand, came as no surprise to everyone.

Both of her parents participated in athletics during their youth.

In college, her father competed in Pole Vaulting. Kerry, her mother, was a pentathlete.

Shelly began to track and field when she was six years old.

She dabbled in a variety of sports before settling on pole vaulting.

Her height and speed were also observed by the school coach, who thought she would become a good pole vaulter.

Body Dimensions

Sandi Morris is a stunning woman with blonde hair and hypnotic blue eyes.

She has a fair complexion and a thin, toned physique.

She currently stands at 1.73 meters (5 feet 8 inches) tall and weighs 137 pounds (62 kgs).

Workout

Morris goes to the gym on a daily basis to stay in shape.

She also posted some photos of her workout routine to her Instagram account.

She lifts weights twice or three times a week for her strength training session.

Facts of Sandi Morris

Net Worth

Sandi Morris’s total net worth is expected to be between $1million – $10million.

Star athletes in track and field generally don’t make as much as other sportspersons do. On top of that, pole vaulting is an expensive sport.

Sandi makes a decent income with her prize money, appearance money, and brand endorsements. Well, she has a brand deal with Nike and is the ambassador of NOW Foods.

She sometimes hosts garage sales for an extra bit of income. She made one such sale in 2016 to raise money for her sister’s flight to Rio.

Just like everyone, the pandemic has been difficult for athletes too.

During the lockdown, she sold gears that she no longer used and said she was able to make ‘one-third of what she usually makes.’

Senior High School

Greenville High School, a medium-sized school in South Carolina, was where she finished her high school education.

Her mother, Kerry, was a track and field coach at the school while she was there.

Sandi, on the other hand, defied her father and mother’s advice. As a result, they needed to locate a good coach.

Rusty Shealy was discovered in the process. He is widely regarded as one of the top pole vaulting coaches in history.

So her parents took her once a week to Shealy’s cap in Columbia to train her. Her training paid off, and she was soon vaulting 10 feet.

Shealy began tutoring local children in Greenville in the meanwhile.

Shelly made considerable development and began competing for junior and senior titles.

In her final season, she set a new state record by vaulting 12-7.

She won crowns in the South Carolina High School League twice in her high school career, in 2009 and 2010.

She did not just Pole Vault in high school, but she also played volleyball.

College

Sandi was a highly sought-after college vaulter recruit. She attended the University of North Carolina for her first two years of college.

She was a three-time all-American performer in North Carolina for two seasons.

She finished 11th at the NCAA outdoor championships with a final clearance of 13-7.25.

She came in third place in the 2011 ACC Outdoor championship.

Her indoor personal best was 13-10.5 and her outdoor personal best was 14-1.25 at UNC.

She earned a national title in the 2010 USATF Junior Olympics.

Sandi felt like her progress at UNC was stopped during these years. She was performing poorly in both classes.

Arkansas University

Morris transferred to the University of Arkansas in 2013 after two years. She is a broadcast journalism graduate.

Bryan Compton, an Olympic gold medalist, and the six-time national champion was her Arkansas coach.

She flourished under his tutelage, leaping higher than ever before.

She also broke the American outdoor record at this time.

With a final clearance of 14-3.25, she finished fourth in the NCAA championships in 2013.

She set a personal best of 14-6.25 during the Arkansas final qualifying.

She did not compete throughout the outdoor season due to a variety of factors.

She began the 2014 season by finishing sixth in the Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays.

She finished first in the SEC outdoor championships later that year.

She eventually finished fourth in the NCAA outdoor finals this season.

Sandi finished her final year as a razorback with outstanding results.

She won the NCAA indoor championship, as well as the SEC indoor and outdoor championships, this year.

In addition, she was named SEC indoor field athlete of the year.

She competed in nine events during the indoor season.

She took home eight! She also broke the NCAA outdoor record with a jump of 4.72m/15-5.75.

Morris finally graduated in 2015 and began her professional career.

Professional Career

She finished fifth with a jump of 4.70 meters at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing.

Her best indoor time is 4.95, which she set in Portland in 2016.

In July 2016, Morris jumped 4.93m at the American track league in Houston, creating a new American outdoor record in the pole vault.

Similarly, in the 2016 Diamond league in Brussels, she cleared 5.00m, setting new U.S women’s outdoor pole vault record.

The 2016 Rio Olympics was her first one, where she managed to bag a silver medal. In the World Championships(2017) held in London, she won silver.

While in 2018, she won gold with a 4.95m jump. In the 2019 Doha World championships, she jumped 4.90, winning a silver.

Hobbies

No doubt, Sandi is a gifted sportswoman. But it is also essential for any professional athlete to have hobbies outside sports as well. Sandi enjoys horseback riding, singing, and playing guitar and violin.

Another hobby she enjoys is gardening. She has a lot of indoor plants as well as outdoor ones in her backyard.

In her recent Instagram post, she joked that her house was turning into a jungle.

She is a lover of animals, mostly reptiles. Once she had around 28 snakes, but being a full-time athlete with frequent traveling barely leaves any time for 28.

So she had to downsize it to three. She now pets two red tail boas and a ball python.

She also has two Italian greyhounds, Rango and Nim. In addition to that, she pets two birds, Indi and Juniper.

The multi-talented athlete has also recorded a song in collaboration with the swiss band baba shrimps.

Husband

Sandi Morris has been dating her now-husband Tyrone Smith since 2016. They attended the 2016 Olympics together, where they got to know each other.

Tyron is three times Olympic long jumper. He was born in Bermuda but was raised in the USA. In the 2016 Olympics, he was the flag bearer of Bermuda in the parade of the nations.

During the 2018 diamond league final meet in Zurich, Tyrone flew from the USA to surprise her with a ring.

Though she didn’t win the games, she went home with the natural diamond on her fingers.

The young couple got married in October 2019 in a beautiful ceremony.

Tyron is now 36. years old and planning retirement. He did MBA from the University of Texas and has worked with Sony Playstation as a brand marketer.

He was expecting the Tokyo Olympics to be his last one. Sandi and Tyrone were looking forward to creating memories in the game that they could share with their kids someday.

But unfortunately, Olympics got postponed, and so have Tyrone’s plans for retiring.

Throughout their relationship, Sandi and Tyrone have not been able to live in the same city. They are also planning to make it happen soon.

Building her own pole vault pit

Morris often trains at the University of Arkansas, but most of the schools were closed when the pandemic hit.

But a pandemic doesn’t mean the end of training for an elite athlete. She had to find a place to train.

During ordinary times, she would only visit her parents once or two times every year. Sandi went back to her hometown after the pandemic and shared her situation with her father.

The family had talked about building their own pole vault pit for a long time but without any concrete action. The pandemic situation left no other option than to do it finally.

After taking help from neighbors, developers, athletes, and designers around town, they managed to build a pole vault facility on their local soccer field from scratch in a month.

Sandi continued training in every way possible. She turned their garage into a weight room and used community fields for the fitness circuit.

One of her sisters is a fitness therapist who was a massive help to her.

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Social Media

Her refreshing personality of Sandi shines through her social media.

There are opposing sides to social media, but it is an easy platform for an athlete to connect with fans.

Sandi posts photos and videos and even writes blogs to share with her fans.

Sandi has a nine years old Youtube channel where she shares a video about pretty much everything, her pets, her games, and sometimes random vlogs.

She recently made a house tour video where she showed off her house plants and pet pythons.

She has said that creating and editing videos is one of the things she enjoys.

Her Instagram has 119k Followers, her Facebook has 93k Followers, her Twitter has 22.2k, Followers and her Youtube has 1.71k subscribers.