2024 Hall of Fame: 'Disciplined' Gymnast Sarah Dame One of CMU's All-Time Best

NOTE: First in a series of profiles on members of the 2024 Class of the Marcy Weston CMU Athletics Hall of Fame.

Sarah Dame makes her living in the judiciary.

Ironic, because it was her stubborn refusal to adhere to the rules that set her on a course that would lead her to academic and athletic success at Central Michigan, then to law school and, eventually to her career as a law clerk.

"My parents put me in gymnastics when I was 2," Dame said. "I did not take turns or wait in line very well so that's how I got started. They wanted me to learn some life lessons."

Clearly, she did. She also learned to be a pretty good gymnast.

Dame, one in a long line of standout gymnasts to come through CMU, will be inducted into the CMU Marcy Weston Athletics Hall of Fame as part of the 2024 class.

2024 MARCY WESTON CMU ATHLETICS HALL OF FAME CEREMONY
Date: Friday, Sept. 20, 2024
Time: 6 p.m. ET
Location: McGuirk Arena Main Floor
Admission: Free and open to the public

She will be inducted during a ceremony in McGuirk Arena on Friday, Sept. 20 (6 p.m.) and then introduced at the CMU-Ball State football game at Kelly/Shorts Stadium. on Saturday, Sept. 21.

She comprises the 2024 class with wrestling coach Tom Borrelli, football player Eric Fisher, volleyball player Kaitlyn (Schultz) Miller, basketball/baseball player Chad Pleiness, and track & field/cross country runner Ryan Watson

That start in gymnastics in beautiful Maple City in northern Michigan when she was barely able to walk paid off for Dame, who helped CMU to three Mid-American Conference championships from 2000-03.

The 2001 MAC all-around champion, Dame twice earned All-MAC honors, and in 2003 helped lead CMU to its best ever finish in an NCAA Regional, a tie for second. She also qualified for the NCAA Championships as an individual, one of five Chippewas at the time to have accomplished that feat.

She was an Academic All-American and a four-time Women's Collegiate Gymnastics Association Scholastic All-America Team honoree.

After graduating from CMU with a near-perfect grade point average, Dame went on to Indiana University Law School where she earned her juris doctor.

She has worked since 2007 as a judicial law clerk for a federal judge in Indianapolis where she and her husband, Jason Wuerfel, have raised their two daughters, Callie and Lucy.

The sport of gymnastics, and her time at CMU in particular, helped Dame immensely both in her professional endeavors and her personal life, she said.

"It's a sport of perfection," she said. "You start at perfect and then you're marked down after that. It teaches lessons more about the journey than the result.

"A few of my teammates were perfect on some occasions and that was amazing, but for the most part you're not going to have a perfect routine and so it taught me early on to continue to strive to be better the next time and compete against yourself. Can you be better the next time? What little tweaks can you make for the next time?

"And I've used that in my career as well; paying attention to the details and making that little tiny tweak that makes the difference the next time."

As Dame's hall of fame induction date nears, she said it is the relationships she formed with her coaches, Jerry Reighard and Christine MacDonald, and her teammates that she most cherishes upon reflection.

"Those are the things that I took forward with me, those lifelong relationships with my teammates," she said. "Jerry and Christine were both just huge impacts on my life. Jerry married my husband and me. Those are the biggest things the sport has given me.

"You're in the gym day in and day out with these people. They see you at your worst, they see you at your best. That's what I loved about the sport and that's what I still miss."

Central Michigan University Athletics

2024 Hall of Fame: 'Disciplined' Gymnast Sarah Dame One of CMU's All-Time Best

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