Diamond Details: Stephanie Coates
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Members of the Virginia softball team – both student-athletes and coaches – will be revealing 20 random facts about themselves to VirginiaSports.com each weekday leading up to the team’s season-opener on Saturday, Feb. 13th at the Elon Tournament in Elon, N.C. Up next is sophomore pitcher Stephanie Coates, a native of Gloucester, Va.
1. I no longer have any grandparents. However, I do have a wonderful person in my life that has been just like a grandmother since the day I was born. I call her Miss Linda, and she and I share the same birthday. She has always told me that I am the best birthday present she has ever received.
2. I am allergic to chocolate.
3. While pitching in a team scrimmage last fall I was sniped by an UVA ROTC army man that was behind the center field fence.
4. I am obsessed with Mustangs (the car, not the horse). I collect matchbox size versions of them, I have a mustang calendar, and I actually own one.
5. I nearly cut my leg off … while shaving.
6. Sometimes people think I am older than my 25 year-old sister or that we are twins. In high school I went to one of her college award ceremonies. I was holding her award for a minute, and someone congratulated me on a job well done even though she was standing next to me. I decided to play along and thanked them. Also, this past year we were at a check-out counter, and the cashier asked if we were twins. We both looked at each other, then answered, “No, but we are sisters.”
7. My sister and I get pictures professionally done for my parents of the two of us when we are both at milestone ages. We give the pictures to them for Christmas, and my mom cries every time.
8. I can put my legs overtop my arms while sitting down, lift myself up off the floor, and walk on my hands.
9. I rode the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world, Kingda Ka, in 2007.
10. I currently own 30 purses, which I have gotten over several years. I like to coordinate them with my outfits.
11. I also won 40 pairs of shoes, some of which I still have from when my feet stopped growing. They range from dressy shoes to boots to Sperry’s to tennis shoes.
12. When I was little I would hide under the kitchen cabinet while playing hide and seek.
13. I started pitching when I was five, because my sister did. I had to use a tee-ball, because my hands were not big enough to hold a softball yet.
14. I am a pro golfer and bowler … on Wii.
15. I was the bat girl for the VA Roadsters, a professional softball team, when I was 8 years old. They gave me a t-shirt, and it still fits.
16. I won the fourth grade talent show with my friend Stephanie. We did a dance to the song “I Want You Back” by N’SYNC.
17. I won the Boys and Girls Club S.T.A.R. Award that enabled me to go to NYC and watch the MLB All-Star Game, and that was the last year of the old Yankee Stadium. It was an awesome experience.
18. My throat used to close up when I was young, because of our fireplace fumes, so now we have gas logs instead of burning real wood.
19. I used to collect change at the bottom of the wave pool at Water Country. I would save it up, and by the end of the summer I would have enough to buy my friend and me a churro each.
20. I weighed less than 100 lbs through the sixth grade.