Student Spotlight: Danielle Worthy
Danielle Worthy begins her first season this fall with the Lady Panther volleyball team as a middle blocker, the position that provides the first line of defense against the opposing team’s hits.
When she was in seventh grade, Worthy attended a small Christian school in Jacksonville, Fla. where everyone played every sport. However, she was encouraged to concentrate on volleyball.
“I played soccer growing up, but I never really fell in love with it,” Worthy said. “Volleyball was the first sport where it felt more like an outlet. When I come into the gym, I can clear my head and be in my own space, not really thinking about other things. I just fell in love with the sport and the team dynamics. It’s a great community, so I wanted to continue that into early adulthood.”
In ninth grade, Worthy joined Jacksonville’s OTVA, one of the premier volleyball clubs in the country. She played volleyball during the school season and, in the off-season, played club volleyball. “It’s basically a high school team, but it’s a group of girls from different high schools that make a team and we travel a lot, playing in tournaments against other clubs in other parts of the country,” she said.
Worthy’s other love is kids. In fact, she’s majoring in Elementary Education at SFSC, partly because she loves to be around children. After graduating from SFSC, she wants to continue to play volleyball at a four-year institution, earn a bachelor’s degree, and, eventually, head to North Carolina, where her parents will move a few years from now.
Last March, Worthy joined other young people from her high school in Jacksonville on a mission to Guatemala. The high school offers a program called Student Ambassador Leadership Team (SALT) that takes seniors on the mission trip.
“We went for one week to a school that’s in one of the worst poverty areas of Guatemala City,” she said. “The school is run by a family whose goal is to give children in the surrounding area an education and opportunities to find jobs and to assist the families to get out of poverty. Their organization is called Deep Stream, and they run an elementary school and a high school.”
Worthy said the students take an English class and that she and the SALT volunteers became part of the students’ final exam. “We played games with them,” she said. “They’d teach us some Spanish and we’d teach them some English. It was a great way to interact with them in spite of the language barrier.”
The SALT volunteers also worked on the school’s farm, planting seeds, and did a little sightseeing at a volcano.
One day, Worthy and the other volunteers were welcomed into people’s homes in town. “The houses were, often, 10’ x 10’ and had five people living in them,” she said. “Seeing how little they have really opens your eyes to appreciating what we have in this country and the opportunities we have. It made me become a lot more aware of how thankful I should be in my life.
“And it gave me a heart for people in that part of Guatemala City. I want to continue to go on missions after college and just be able to reach out and help them as much as I can. Just seeing the joy the kids had coming to school. It was their escape. For us, it’s like, ‘Oh, I have to go to school. Ugh.’ For them, they were like, ‘I get to go to school and see my friends.’ They’re so excited about their education. It helped me not take that for granted anymore.”
The mission trip to Guatemala only strengthened Worthy’s love for children and the desire to make a difference in the world. “I’ve always had a passion for kids,” she said. “The only job I’ve ever had in my whole life has been babysitting. Having spent time with the kids in Guatemala, I discovered that you can make such an impact on their lives at that age. That’s when they’re developing and taking in information and holding on to it. I want to be someone who can make a positive impact in those kids’ lives. I’d love to teach out of the country and work at that school in Guatemala.”
