Paddle to the Medal

Kayaker Ashley Nee once paddled 67 miles over 23 hours along the Potomac River, startled awake by jumping fish as she started to doze off.

That’s what you do when you want to be a world-class athlete in an obscure sport in the United States and need to raise $13,000 for a year’s worth of competition (and want to give your parents’ bank account a break after a decade and a half of training).

This year, it’s all finally paying off: The University of Maryland kinesiology major clinched the lone spot for a U.S. woman to compete in kayak slalom—in which competitors must navigate 18 to 25 gates, sometimes upstream, in raging, boulder-filled waters—at the Olympics Aug. 5–21 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

“I’m still trying to process it,” says Nee, who narrowly missed the 2012 London Games on a technical tie and was kept from the 2008 Beijing Games because of a shoulder injury. She’s especially looking forward to walking in the opening ceremony, but reminds herself, “I’m there to race. My job is to stay focused and do the best I can.”

Nee took time off from her studies in 2014 to train and plans to return to UMD this fall to finish her degree. With two, three or even four daily practices, weight lifting, video analysis and more—as well as a miserable commute from College Park to her training facilities on the other side of the Beltway—she wanted to make sure she was giving paddling her full attention leading up to Olympics. After all, she’s been waiting for this moment since she was 10 years old.

“I’ve known Ashley since she was a little girl—the talent was clearly there,” says Adam Van Grack, chairman of USA Canoe/Kayak. “But the No. 1 thing about her was her enthusiasm and her passion. Even when she was just a young kid at the pool [kayak] rolling sessions, she had a huge smile on her face—the biggest smile of any of the kids.”

That was at Valley Mill Camp in Nee’s hometown of Darnestown, Md., which has produced Olympic, world and national champions dating back to the 1970s. It wasn’t long before she was training with a coach and entering competitions. Though her first few races involved flipping into snowy, icy water in Pennsylvania and being beaten by a girl with a broken arm, by 2004 she was good enough to make the junior national team.

She balanced high school with training and competitions around the world, and even became certified as an emergency medical technician (“In whitewater, anything can happen, so I wanted to be prepared for a bad situation”), all leading up to the 2008 Olympics. But after not making the team that year, she stopped paddling and moved out to Hawaii to stay with some friends, giving her shoulder a post-surgery break.

But after two years, it became clear she wasn’t done with the sport—and her now-wife, Ashley McEwan (herself from a prominent paddling family), convinced her to move back to Maryland to pursue a berth in the 2012 Olympics.

Transferring to UMD from the University of Hawaii gave Nee a new perspective on kayaking, especially classes like physiology, which improved her understanding of her body. But perhaps the most important part of coming to UMD was the opportunity to work with rehabilitation coordinator Kala Flagg, a member of the Maryland Athletics staff.

“Within 15 minutes, I gained 15 degrees of the 30 that I was missing” in shoulder movement, says Nee. She was back to full range of motion after just a few more sessions—without which she never would be in Rio.

She’s already been down to Brazil twice to practice on the course, though the gates, water levels and even rock placement will likely change before the competition, and she arrived July 22 for her final preparations. Her wife, parents, brother and uncle will all be there to cheer her on as she competes during the first week at the games.

Plenty of other people will be rooting for her back at home, including the tight-knit kayak and canoe community. On any given day out on the Potomac, Nee runs into someone she knows, whether it’s guys leading a camp full of kids who become wide-eyed with excitement when they’re told she’s competing for Team USA, or an 80-year-old woman Nee calls an “inspiration” because she’s out paddling almost every day of the muggy Maryland summer.

Less than a month from the biggest competition of her life, Nee pauses in the water to demonstrate hand rolls for the young campers, laughing as they try to race her down the river.

“Paddling is an amazing community,” says Nee. “Friends become family. You don’t just go kayaking—you become a kayaker.”