SMITH MOUNTAIN LAKE, Va. (WDBJ) – The Olympics may be over, but two Smith Mountain Lake wakeboarders are preparing to pursue their own world championship title in Australia.

Ashley Kazmer and Joy Manning have made a name for themselves in the wakeboarding world and continue to show what women can achieve in the sport.

From a young age, Ashley Kazmer was gliding across the water and making breakouts. As she notes, when you come from a family that practices water sports, you learn the skills quickly. This led to Kazmer unleashing her competitive side by entering competitions at the age of 15.

“It was nerve-wracking at first. A lot of the people I was competing against had been competing their whole lives, so they were a lot better than me at the beginning, but then I started to find my way. I’m just having a lot of fun,” Kazmer said.

Now 19 years old, Kazmer has already won several regional competitions and competed in Seattle, Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, New Jersey and Portugal, where she became the reigning Junior Pro World Champion in 2023!

“Two weeks before the competitions I do my runs. So we do four tricks in one run and four tricks in the second run. The whole weeks before the competitions I practice my 8 tricks in a row so I’m really consistent. I try not to get super stressed, but just do what I know I can do every day and just be able to execute it when the competition starts,” Kazmer said.

Kazmer is aiming for another title this year at the 2024 WWA Wakeboard World Championships in Australia. She will be joined by Joy Manning, who also lives on Smith Mountain Lake and is proving that age is just a number when it comes to becoming a professional wakeboarder.

“I actually didn’t start wakeboarding until I was 32 or 33. I’ve been deathly afraid of water my whole life. I said to my husband, who has been an avid water skier and wakeboarder since he was a kid, ‘Let’s go out and try this.’ So I put his wakeboard on him, got in the water, got up on the third try and said, ‘I think I really like this, let’s try it,’ and he couldn’t get in the car fast enough to buy me a wakeboard,” Manning said.

With a background in gymnastics, learning the skills for wakeboarding was a natural fit for her. At 51, she is a 10-time national and world wakeboarding champion in the Masters/Veteran 40+ division. Manning has competed in several cities around the world, including Texas, Ohio, Minnesota, Indiana, Wisconsin, Montreal, Cancun, and Japan.

“One of the main reasons I continue to wakeboard and want to wakeboard is because, similar to Ashley, I come from a very competitive background, but I have to constantly pay attention to what’s going on with my body health-wise and physically. I think wakeboarding keeps me in my mindset of wanting to eat right, train and keep my body in shape,” Manning said.

Although they compete in different divisions, Kazmer and Manning agree that the key to wakeboarding is to have fun, practice as much as possible, focus on the fundamentals and slow down when learning new tricks.

“In wakeboarding, you have to hold the edge so you can get as much speed into the wake as possible. It’s frustrating when you can’t do a trick you’ve done a thousand times and you don’t know why. But you just need a different perspective or to move on to a different trick,” Kazmer said.

The duo are excited to compete at the World Championships and motivate each other to get better in a sport they hope to see more women compete in.

“We just meet up as often as possible in the summer. Ashley pushes me, honestly. She’s a lot younger than me, but I want to keep up with her. “I always love having other girls to drive. It’s just a very different atmosphere on the boat when girls drive together than guys. But it’s fun to keep pushing each other,” said Manning.

“It’s always great to represent Smith Mountain Lake, so it’s always special to go to a competition and see someone from your hometown,” Kazmer said.

The 2024 WWA Wakeboard World Championships will take place from September 26-29. You can download the WWA app to live stream the events: https://www.thewwa.com/rideline/

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