A 51-year-old woman has outperformed recruits less than half her age after graduating from U.S. Army Basic Combat Training with one of the highest physical fitness test scores in her company.
Army Sergeant Sandra Coast, who had to lose 30lbs just to qualify, achieved better scores than both her male and female peers, who have an average age of 23.
Indeed, they are closer in age to her son, Jeff, himself in the U. S. Marine Corps, than they are to her.
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'She is a prime example that age is just a number. She ran faster than soldiers young enough to be her kids,' [First Sgt. John Byars said].
Her age was a number though, before she enlisted, that would have prevented her from joining had she not already served in the Navy from 1982 until 1993.
She gave up her life as a sailor to raise her son Jeff, but when he joined the Marines on graduating high school, she was inspired to fulfil a long-held desire to return to the military herself.
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