‘This whole entire journey has been crazy’: How Ashley Leugner got back into wakeboarding
Leugner is set to represent Canada at the Pan American Games after years away from wakeboarding
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After years away from the sport, Ashley Leugner has made quite a comeback in wakeboarding.
And this weekend, the Fort Qu’Appelle product is set to represent Canada on the world stage at the 2023 Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile.
“It kind of seems like the last thing on my list to get done to feel like I’ve fulfilled my career in the sport,” said Leugner, 38, who is the only female on Canada’s two-person wakeboard team.
Growing up on Echo Lake in Saskatchewan, Leugner developed a love for water sports from an early age. At four, she tried water-skiing for the first time before getting into wakeboarding at age 14 during a family trip to B.C.
Upon returning to Saskatchewan, she was hooked.
“I would make my dad get up and pull me before school,” said Leugner. “Then I would go wakeboarding after school.
“It was definitely addictive.”
That drive led her to her first local competition at Regina Beach, where she would not only compete but meet so many others who shared the same passion. She would go on to join the provincial team and continue to build relationships in the wakeboarding community.
In 2006, she went to Florida to what she calls the “epicenter of wakeboarding” for a camp before spending several winters over the next few years down there.
“We would typically go down in January or February and we would just try to wakeboard as much as possible,” said Leugner. “We were on a chain of lakes that had a wakeboard camp.
“We met a lot of other people so sometimes we would ride with them and branch out into different groups of people.”
Leugner would make her way onto the pro tour in the United States and while also training in places like California and Mexico.
In 2008, she won her first Canadian national championship in her home province, as Wascana Lake played host to the event.
The following year, she earned a silver medal at worlds in Korea, while also being named the Canadian Wakeboarder of the Year.
She would go on to win five more national championships while also making the World Cup circuit, where she competed in places like Australia, China and Korea before a serious knee injury in 2016 halted her career.
During a warmup on an off-day after a pro-tour event qualification, Leugner ended up “destroying her knee” while attempting a backflip with a grab — known as an indy tantrum.
“Way too aggressive, too much amplitude going in, too high, too much force — everything,” recalled Leugner. “I knew when I hit the water, it was bad.
“It was a really big down from the high I was on. Really put me down in a deep, dark place but I had a really good support team.”
After the injury, Leugner came back to Canada to have her torn ACL repaired. However, due to the swelling, the surgery was postponed for six weeks.
She then went through an intensive rehabilitation process, only to realize her knee wasn’t progressing as well as it should have been, despite the physiotherapy she was doing. More tests and surgeries were done before doctors realized she had built up an excessive amount of scar tissue in her knee. Eventually, she was able to get it repaired.
However, the delay meant 2017 would not be a comeback year like she had thought.
Neither would 2018 after she suffered a serious shoulder injury while mountain biking — once again needing surgery.
Leugner then had her sights set on the 2019 Pan Am Games, which was the first time women’s wakeboarding was included in the event, but she wasn’t selected.
She then decided to step away from wakeboarding.
“I kind of stepped away from the sport after that just because I felt like I had earned that spot and didn’t get it,” said Leugner.
After a few years away from the sport, where she never wakeboarded more than once per summer, she got an email in March from the Canadian Olympic Committee saying she was eligible for the 2023 Pan Am Games, which sparked her to make a comeback.
She found out that if she was able to win the Canadian championships, she would have a good chance at being named to Team Canada for the event.
“So, I really put my focus on training so I could win nationals,” said Leugner, who also got into coaching the provincial high-performance team, while juggling a full-time marketing job.
Leugner would win her seventh career Canadian title in August in B.C. before earning the official invite to the Pan Am Games, which is set to begin this weekend in Santiago.
It’s four years after she originally had hoped, but an accomplishment she is more than proud to have achieved.
“This whole entire journey has been crazy,” said Leugner. “I basically pulled the plug and quit wakeboarding entirely and then somehow blew off the game and plugged it back in.”
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