Photo By Austen McClain | Lt. Raquelle Sands, a Surface Warfare Officer instructor assigned to Mariner Skills...... read more read more
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Lt. Raquelle “Rocky” Sands decided she wanted to go to college in the fifth grade. Growing up in Northville, Michigan, the harder question was how to afford it. Today, she stands at the head of a classroom at Mariner Skills Training Center Pacific (MSTCPAC) in San Diego, teaching the Navy’s next generation of surface warfare officers (SWOs) how to drive a warship.
Sands is a Basic Division Officer Course (BDOC) instructor at MSTCPAC, a subordinate command of Surface Warfare Schools Command (SWSC), a learning center of Naval Education and Training Command (NETC). In August 2025, she earned her Master Training Specialist (MTS) designation. In the first quarter of fiscal year 2026, MSTCPAC named her its Instructor of the Quarter.
Her students are newly commissioned surface warfare officers, weeks away from reporting to their first ships. Her job is to turn them into ship handlers ready to take the deck of a warship.
Sands grew up in Northville, Michigan, and graduated from Northville High School in 2015.
She has two older brothers, and both became her models for service. “I grew up pretty poor,” she said. “I knew I wanted to go to college, but I needed a route to pay for it.”
Her oldest brother went the aviation route and became a naval flight officer (NFO) operating in F/A-18s. Her middle brother is a Machinist’s Mate Nuclear 3rd Class (MMN3) on submarines.
When she applied for a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) scholarship in her senior year of high school, her brothers’ careers had already pointed the way.
“When I was first learning how to become a division officer, I would think to myself: how can I be the kind of leader my brother deserved to have?” Sands said.
Sands earned her commission through NROTC at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2019. She completed BDOC as a student in San Diego, then reported aboard her first ship, guided-missile destroyer USS Pinckney (DDG 91), in November 2019.
Within months, she embarked on a nine-month deployment that crossed the 7th and 4th Fleet areas of responsibility, including counternarcotic operations with the U.S. Coast Guard off the coast of South America. She earned her Officer of the Deck letter in December 2020 and pinned on her surface warfare officer pin in May 2021.
“I love driving ships,” Sands said. “I love driving fast. I love turning hard.”
Sands learned some of her sharpest lessons aboard the Pinckney. Two weeks after reporting aboard as a fresh ensign, she misjudged a close contact and turned and slowed the ship. Her commanding officer calmly polled the rest of the bridge watch team. Sands had been wrong.
“He did not get upset at me,” she said. “He made the correction, and told me he was glad I trusted my instincts to move the ship.”
Two weeks later, that trust paid off. At 0245 on a low-visibility night during a close-proximity training exercise, Sands caught another vessel closing on her ship at high speed on the radar. The officer of the deck dismissed the contact at first. Sands pressed. He took another look and ordered the turn.
“I very frequently think about my confidence in that moment,” Sands said. “If my CO had not empowered me to trust my instincts, my ship and the Sailors on board could have ended up in danger.”
That lesson followed her to her second ship, USS Wayne E. Meyer (DDG 108), where she served as the navigator. On the bridge of the USS Wayne E. Meyer, she became known for a three-part call her bridge team came to expect: “Drive fast. Turn hard. Make waves.”
As navigator, Sands ran maneuvering board calculations, walked junior officers through man-overboard recoveries, and watched classroom theory turn into ship handling in real time.
“I love training the junior officers,” she said. “I love how their eyes light up when they get to really understand what is happening when I make these commands. They have been working in the classroom, and they get to see it actually fully come together.”
On the Meyer, Sands also served as the assistant senior watch officer, organizing the ship’s qualification boards. In her two years aboard, the ship qualified 21 officers of the deck and 18 surface warfare officers.
Of all her moments at sea, Sands said the proudest came at a reenlistment. As an administrative department head on the Meyer, she re-enlisted her Quartermaster First Class, the Sailor who had been her right-hand on the bridge. He gave her a letter of recognition. It still sits on her desk at MSTCPAC.
“I love being a navigator. I love driving ships. But our sailors, whether it is your division officers or your enlisted sailors, that is what makes the job of being a SWO great. It is our people.” — Lt. Raquelle “Rocky” Sands
In May 2024, Sands transferred to MSTCPAC. The command and its East Coast counterpart, Mariner Skills Training Center Atlantic, anchor the Navy’s surface training pipeline for new junior officers.
Sands’ BDOC students learn the basics: ship driving, seamanship, division officer paperwork, personnel management, engineering, damage control and firefighting, warfighting fundamentals, and the foundation of leadership.
From BDOC, they move into Officer of the Deck (OOD) Phase 1 and OOD Phase 2, each phase layering progressively more demanding scenarios in the command’s Conning Officer Virtual Environment (COVE) simulators.
To every class that comes through, Sands shares a line from one of her own mentors, then-Lt. Cmdr. Cory Zebian, her senior watch officer on the Pinckney.
“Every day, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, sons and daughters trust us to lead their loved ones into danger and bring them home safely,” Zebian told Sands’ wardroom. “That is why our job matters.”
By the time her students leave San Diego, they have logged hundreds of hours of simulator time, hold their standard commands, and are fluent in the international rules of the road, radar interpretation, and the ship’s electronic charting system.
“When new ensigns get out to the fleet, they are going to be more capable than what we have ever had in previous generations of SWOs,” Sands said. “They get out to their ships ready to set foot on day one and get to be leaders.”
Sands has one year left of active service. She plans to transition to the Navy Reserve and return to MSTCPAC as a reserve instructor. Outside the simulators, she writes; her first novel was published earlier this year.
“The Navy is a tough career,” Sands said. “It will test you beyond your limits, mentally, physically, and emotionally. Yet you will never find a more fulfilling career that forces you to grow and adapt, not just for yourself, but for the incredible people that rely on you.”
NETC’s mission is to recruit, train, and deliver those who serve our nation, taking them from street to fleet by transforming civilians into highly skilled, operational, and battle-ready warfighters. For more stories about how NETC prepares Sailors and Marines for success in the fleet, follow @NETC_HQ on Instagram or visit https://www.netc.navy.mil.
| Date Taken: | 06.15.2026 |
| Date Posted: | 06.15.2026 10:08 |
| Story ID: | 567788 |
| Location: | SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA, US |
| Web Views: | 44 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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