Spieth Presents Empowerment Through Athletics (ETA) Featuring Leanne Wong!

Inside Gymnastics in pleased to announce that Spieth is the presenting sponsor for a new year-long series, Empowerment Through Athletics (ETA), showcasing athletes who are making their mark both on and off the competition floor. Athletes will be announced in the pages of Inside Gymnastics Magazine and then their profiles will appear on InsideGym.com.

“This acknowledgement is meant to celebrate the complete person beyond the athlete,” Spieth says. “Often, we see only athletic ability and forget the holistic attributes that drive the athlete to succeed in and out of the gym. Balancing mental, emotional, and physical health takes an elite approach. By highlighting individuals who strive for success in all aspects of their training, it will empower others to do the same.” 

We are proud to kick off the first installment of the series with impact athlete Leanne Wong, who has made her mark on the competition floor on both the collegiate and Elite scenes and has made an incredible difference off the competition floor through her community service work, including the Leanne Wong Foundation, all while serving as the CEO of Leanne Wong Bowtique!

For the full press release, Click Here!

Leading By Example

By Nate Salsman and 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, Belgium at the World Championships in one of the best gymnastics years of her life.

Fast forward and Wong is still creating headlines and turning heads with everything she’s accomplished on and off the floor. She’s an icon in the sport as much for her character as she is for her accomplishments.

Twice a Team USA World Champion (2022 and 2023), 2021 World All-Around silver medalist, and twice an Olympic alternate (2020 and 2024), Wong is a beautifully gifted artist in the sport. Throughout her time balancing NCAA and Elite gymnastics, she’s remained an athlete who continuously challenges herself, always with the next goal in mind, always with her eyes on the future, and daring all of us to give back, and to dream what’s possible.

In 2025, she once again led the Gators back to the National Championships. And while not advancing to the Final certainly wasn’t in the script, what Wong has accomplished (so far) in her sport and off of the mat, is nothing short of extraordinary. It’s why no matter where the road leads for her next, she’ll always be remembered as one of the greatest athletes the NCAA has ever seen. A 2025 AAI Award finalist, Wong is also one of 15 student-athletes in NCAA history to achieve a Gym Slam—scoring a 10.0 on all four events. She’s a 29-time All-American and the 2024 NCAA uneven bars champion.

Competing in both Elite and collegiate competition throughout her four years as a Gator was never a decision that Wong took lightly, especially as the calendar flipped to 2024. With the introduction of NIL in college athletics, gymnasts no longer have to decide between competing in college and chasing their Olympic dream. Wong is one of those athletes that competed in both Elite and NCAA gymnastics. However, unlike her U.S. teammates Jordan Chiles and Sunisa Lee, Wong was just one of two athletes to compete in NCAA and Elite in 2024 without a break from either. It was a decision that did not come easy for Wong.

“From the beginning of the year, I was debating if I wanted to stay in college gymnastics or take a year off and just focus on the Olympics,” Wong said. “I went back and forth with that a lot. I was really just balancing both college and Elite gymnastics during season. I was just really proud of everything that I did accomplish that year.”

Trusting the process is something that Wong reminds herself of regularly. She even made it the title of her book, My Journey: Trust the Process. 

“Some of the key messages are definitely just working hard and striving for those goals and not giving up until you get there,” she said. “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.”

Living her own life lessons, there was a moment in preparation for the Olympic Trials where Wong had to let God take control of her destiny. It was a full circle moment and one that ultimately shaped her experience at Trials and in Paris as an alternate for the 2024 Olympic team.

“I literally had a moment where I had to just say this prayer. It was the craziest two weeks of training after that moment,” she said. “I would train throughout the entire week, and would have as much energy on the last day of training as I did on the first day. I just had the most free competition that I’ve ever had.”

As if being a student-athlete wasn’t enough, Wong is well-known as “The CEO” of the Leanne Wong Bowtique, and for starting the Leanne Wong Foundation. The idea for the Bowtique was born after Wong took a fashion interior design class in high school and needed a creative outlet to balance academics and athletics. “It’s definitely a dream come true. I remember wearing Nastia [Liukin], Simone [Biles], Gabby Douglas and Laurie [Hernandez] and all their leos,” Wong said. “So I was like, one day, I want my name on my leo.”

Following a stellar 2023, she launched the Leanne Wong Foundation in 2024 with a focus on those with food insecurity. “I talked to some of the dining hall staff and they said, ‘We can donate it, but someone needs to come pick it up.’ That’s when I found Grace Marketplace, which is the local homeless shelter here in Gainesville. I’ve been delivering the food. I pack it up on the weekends and then get it delivered to the homeless shelters. Almost every week we have over 50 pounds of food, and probably up to 200 pounds, sometimes more or less.”

Already, more than 7,000 meals have been provided to those in the Gainesville community from the foundation. It’s allowed Wong to, once again, look beyond her own career as an athlete and lead by example in both giving and in gratitude. “In everything, give thanks,” she said.

LOOKING AHEAD

With the chalk settling on her collegiate career, Wong noted in April that a return to the Elite scene was not yet out of the picture. “I think it’s in the back of my mind,” Wong said at the time. “I have a lot of school and other things going on in my life, so I will just take it day by day and see where it goes.”

Wong graduated Magna Cum Laude with a degree in Health Education & Behavior in May, and we sense big things on the horizon from one of the most humble and accomplished student-athletes in gymnastics. Seeing her return to the Elite scene and donning her grips at U.S. Classic in July was inspiring to say the very least. She competed bars and beam and called the competition a “stepping stone” but showed off a new floor routine in podium training, which leads us to believe she’s got bigger plans for 2025.

What remains for sure for Wong is that the rest is still unwritten—and is certain to be extraordinary

For our All-Access 2025 Xfinity U.S. Championships Senior Women’s Preview, Click Here!

Subscribe to Inside Gymnastics for 3 Years and receive a free gift!