“On to postseason and ready for more” – Leanne Wong’s next chapter

By Christy Sandmaier

In 2023, the headlines surrounding Leanne Wong often read “World-class gymnast by day, CEO by night.”

When she wasn’t captivating thousands of fans in the Stephen C. O’Connell Center as a member of the Florida Gators, or buried deep in the books tackling her pre-med coursework, Wong could be found heat pressing t-shirts in her college dorm and serving as the mastermind behind Leanne Wong Bowtique. And oh, by the way, she also could be found capturing bronze in the All-Around in her best-ever performance at the 2023 U.S. Championships and winning gold with Team USA in Antwerp at the World Championships in the best gymnastics year of her life.

Now it’s 2024, and in addition to leading the Gators to their sixth Southeastern Conference regular-season title, Wong continues to chase her Olympic dream. This year, the headlines are building up quickly once again as Wong looks to be well on track to be at her best for the Florida postseason, starting Saturday at the SEC Championships in New Orleans where the Gators will take the floor in the second of two sessions, and more than ready to resume her Elite campaign in May. After a bit of a slower start this season, Wong scored a 10 on floor on February 24 against a stellar LSU team, completing the Gym Slam (a perfect 10.0 on every event). Looking to peak at just the right time, her momentum continues to rise, and it’s evident that her team of coaches are pacing her perfectly as she balances both her NCAA career and her second run at competing in an Olympic Games. 

From now until July, it’s full speed ahead – but as always, Wong keeps calm and has it all in perspective. She’s waiting to see how the remainder of her NCAA season plays out before deciding where she’ll train this summer, while simultaneously continuing to pursue all of her usual endeavors (plus some). 

A student-athlete and self-taught entrepreneur, Wong also recently announced her memoir – My Journey, Trust the Process – on the Gator Tales podcast with Sean Kelly. It was somewhat spur-of-the-moment and inspired by the question, she said.

“I really didn’t know when I wanted to release it. And actually, the day before I had this podcast where I did announce it, I was working on the glossary of some terms to include because we had just been making little changes here and there. [Sean Kelly] asked if I could help him understand gymnastics better. And I was like, ‘well, funny that you asked that question, because last night I was just working on the glossary and that’s exactly what my book is.’ It’s about my journey and how I reached the highest level of gymnastics. But I also just want to inform people about the sport of gymnastics, so I try to really include those details so people can gain some knowledge on the sport.”

It’s something she had on her mind for a while to write, and the majority has been finished for some time, she said. She’s been fine tuning the book, finding the space to breathe, and really hone in on her message. It’s also only part one of her career, she told us, with the rest yet to be written – hopefully in Fort Worth in April and again in Paris this summer.

Here’s more from Leanne on her book, the Gators, the Games, and as always, how she balances it all.

Congratulations on announcing your book! When did you first decide to write it? Take me through your process and inspiration…

Well, I think originally was when I started traveling for Elite meets. I wasn’t always with my mom, so a lot of the time, I would just send her messages and stories and, I don’t know, I just like to tell her things when I’m away. She has a really great memory. So, a lot of these things that I tell her, she remembers. Just going all the way back, she’s always said, “One day we’re going to write a book.” I think just through that and just from the beginning, it’s just been a goal of mine, and my family’s. My mom would write things from my childhood and things about how my parents met and those kinds of details. I would write the things that I experienced and we would just collage it all together. So it just came together through pieces.

Without giving too much away – because obviously we want people to read it – what are maybe a couple of the key messages that you definitely want to come across to your readers?

Some of the key messages are definitely just working hard and striving for those goals and not giving up until you get there. There’s going to be lots of ups and downs in life, so it’s always important to have a plan B. Things aren’t always going to go smoothly. A lot of it is my story, meets and what I experienced in those competitions. And I have a “life lessons learned” chapter at the end. That’s definitely a part where anybody – even people who don’t know about gymnastics – can just learn from it. I just hope to inspire everyone who reads it in gymnastics and in life in general.

Do you think there are things in the book that will surprise people about your career so far?

I do think people will be surprised to learn a lot of things. There’s just lots of details that you wouldn’t normally know just about a person, I guess. It’s amazing how much we could write from when I was born to 2021 before college. So, we put an end to it because there’s already over 300 pages! We’re hoping to write another one about my college experience and how I’m trying to balance both Elite gymnastics and college gymnastics.

I was curious about that, how far into your career it goes…

It goes until the Tokyo Olympics. I talk about that and my quarantine and how that was and then how my first World Championships was. I do talk about why I chose the University of Florida and my official visit here, freshman orientation, like in the middle of trying to train for the World Championships and what I did when I came down here. It’s a fun story!

How has the response been to the book so far? 

It’s been really great. Like I said, I didn’t really plan for this to go out right now, but it just kind of happened, and I’m just really thankful for everyone who’s helped share it and get the word out. I’m getting ready to order them soon. So I’m super excited to share my story with everyone!

I know that a lot of what we talked about last year was this incredible balancing act that you’ve got going right now. This year, I feel like pacing seems to be really key for you and your team. You and your team seem to be hitting your stride at the right time…

I think pacing myself is definitely important since this NCAA season is long and then just shortly after is going to be the Elite season leading up to the Olympics. So I think it is important just to plan things out and figure out what I need to do to be ready at the very end because not only does it stop at [the] NCAA Championships, but I’m continuing to go after that. It’s been a challenge since this year is a little bit different. Last year, I had a longer break before the Elite season started. So I think this year is even more about balancing both at the same time.

We were at National Team training camp in February and Jordan (Chiles) mentioned how she didn’t know how you and Jade (Carey) were doing it – balancing Elite and NCAA – especially in an Olympic year. For you, doing both seems to have worked very well so far. Do you think it’s because you’re not solely focused on one thing? You have school, NCAA competition, your business, your book… Do you think that in some ways it’s easier to balance because you’re not thinking about one thing – the Olympics – all day, every day? 

That’s something that I actually talked about with somebody – someone who works with coaches around the NCAA. I think he was saying there’s like a personality type. There’s different people who need to be focused on one thing, but then there’s others who strive and succeed with many things going on. He said, ‘that’s clearly you. If you took a test, it would show that.’ So I do think that having a lot of things going on keeps my mind going and kind of helps me balance everything.

Six-time regular season SEC Champs… Is it hard to believe that it’s postseason? Did it just fly? 

Season [has] definitely flown by. I can’t believe how far we’ve grown since the beginning, since the team has improved our score for the past eight weeks, which is pretty impressive. I think just in the beginning we were kind of a little bit discouraged, like, ‘oh, how did we get this score? What do we need to do to improve?’ So I think just continuing to go into the gym with that mindset of ‘we’re not where we are yet and there’s still room for improvement and we’re still pushing for the same goal and continuing to want to improve every weekend,’ is what’s keeping the team going.

Do you feel like you’ve grown into a leadership role this year?

I definitely do think I have kind of gotten to a little bit more of a leadership role compared to the last two years and being an upperclassman now, just because we have such a young team. We had six freshmen come in, so I was kind of just teaching them what we do and how things are done just in order to reach our goals. I felt like something just spoke to me. In one of the first few weeks of the season, I actually put together this self-reflection sheet. I kind of just wanted to put it together for myself, but then some of my teammates saw me making it and I decided to share it with the team. So now after we watch film, after our meets, we all have our self-reflection sheets and we kind of just reflect on our week, how things were inside and outside the gym and how our performance was, how many sticks we got, maybe how practice was that week. I’ve actually turned that into a more generic book. So it’s not just for the Florida Gators, but I have a journal that I made into, like, a spiral notebook, and we’ll be putting it on my website as well.

[The notebook is] just for gymnasts to reflect on competitions or events or practices. And I have a little explanation with definitions and how to fill out the journal.

Heading towards your championship season with the Gators, what are your specific goals? What is the team looking to accomplish?

We’re super excited to be the SEC regular champions for the 6th season in a row, but of course, nothing is done yet. We still have a long way to go, and of course, we want to become the SEC Champions at the SEC Championships, and then we’re going to have Regionals here in Gainesville. So that’ll be super fun just to be in our hometown and have the home crowd around. That [will], of course, determine if we go to Nationals and that’s where we want to get the National Championship title. We’ve come super close the past two years, but it’s just focusing on the details and saving every tenth.

Is your plan currently to stay at Florida to train through Classics, Championships, Trials…?

I mean, I guess I have done it differently every year. The first year I went home, I stayed here for half the season, finished my classes, and then went back home and then finished that Elite season with my club coaches. But then last year in the summer, I had to stay here to take classes. So I ended up doing the Elite season with my college coaches and actually went to Worlds with Owen (Field) and had the Florida coaches. This year, I guess I’ll be making that decision just based on how the two different seasons went. But, I think it was a lot of fun with the Florida coaches this year, and it’ll be really fun to continue!

Photos by Lloyd Smith for Inside Gymnastics

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