Ashley Steacy: Mormon Athlete

Ashley Patzer Steacy is a Canadian rugby union player. She was selected as a member of the historic women’s rugby sevens Olympic team for the 2016 Rio Games—historic because it was the first year rugby was included in the Olympic Games. Her team won the bronze medal. She also won a gold medal at the 2015 Pan American Games.

Steacy was born on June 28, 1987, in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. She started playing rugby in tenth grade. She is a three-time Canadian Interuniversity Sport champion and a two-time CIS Player of the Year. In 2009, she was named to Canada’s team for the Women’s Rugby World Cup Sevens. In 2010, she was with the fifteens team participating in the Women’s Rugby World Cup and in 2013 she won a silver medal playing in her second Women’s Rugby World Cup Sevens. She was named Rugby Canada’s Women’s Sevens Player of the Year for 2014. Steacy missed all of the 2015–2016 Women’s Seven World Series season with a torn MCL, but she got back into shape to make the team for the Olympics.

She earned a degree in kinesiology from the University of Lethbridge.

She is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Her husband, Sean Steacy, is the brother of Olympic hammer throwers James and Heather Steacy.