These World-Class Athletes Call the Lake of the Ozarks Home

At the 2023 Wakeboard World Championships in Portugal, the fourth-best under-19 wakeboarder was actually only 16 years old. And he wasn’t from where you might expect — Europe or Australia or California. His name is Brody Spriggs, and he lives at the Lake of the Ozarks. Even more surprising: The three-time wakeboarding Masters world champ at this tournament was also from the Lake of the Ozarks. His name is Kirby Liesmann, and he happens to be Spriggs’ coach.

Given the expansive size of the Lake of the Ozarks and its numerous quiet coves, wakeboarding and wakesurfing have become popular pastimes among thrill seekers there for roughly the past decade. With wakeboarding (a cross between water skiing and snowboarding) and wakesurfing (surfing on the waves created by the boat), it’s as close as you can get to “hangin’ ten” in the Midwest, and it’s an activity unlike anything else you can do on the water in Missouri. Now, these relatively obscure adventure sports are putting this Midwestern reservoir on the map, largely thanks to Liesmann.

In 2008, Liesmann founded Kirby’s School of Wake at the Lake of the Ozarks. At the time, he was just 19 years old and chasing his own professional career in wake sports. Liesmann wanted to share the excitement of wake sports with others, and it gave him an opportunity to stay sharp and keep practicing. In the years since, Liesmann has become one of the greatest Masters wakeboarders in the world while also teaching and coaching several of the world’s best up-and-coming wake sport athletes. (Sit with that for a moment. That’s like LeBron James also coaching a college basketball team year-round.)

Four of Liesmann’s students and Lake-area shredders are making waves on the world and national scenes. Spriggs took gold in the under-18 category at the North American Wakeboarding Championships in Washington state in August, officially punching his ticket to the 2024 World Championships in Australia, where he finished third in his category. Connor Gatlin, 12, recently won first place in the adaptive category at the North American Championships in both wakesurfing and wakeboarding. These recent victories add to Gatlin’s impressive resume, which includes a silver medal in adaptive wakeboarding and a bronze in adaptive wakesurfing at the 2022 World Championships. Other local Lake teenagers that have been tearing it up include Landri Hall, 15, the 2023 wakesurfing national champ in the under-17 girls category, and Victoria Moroski, 14, who won the 2024 Wake Surf Nationals in the under-17 girls category. Moroski is currently ranked No. 1 in the world for her age group, and Hall is ranked No. 3.

“From an early age, all four of them showed a lot of dedication and natural talent,” says Liesmann. “I knew that if they stuck with it, they would do something really awesome, and now they are. It’s incredible to watch their growth and be a part of their journey. I’m so incredibly proud of them all.”

More than anything, Liesmann attributes the success of these athletes to the close-knit and supportive wake sport community at the Lake of the Ozarks.

“When one person gets better, we all get better,” says Liesmann. “In these sports, you can’t do it alone. Success requires a healthy community, and we have that here at the Lake.”

Now, Liesmann and Spriggs have goals that are both lofty and attainable. Liesmann wants to retain his status as one of the world’s best wakeboarders. (In September, he took second at the World Championships in the Masters category.) And Spriggs wants to keep climbing up the world rankings, ideally all the way to the top.

When Liesmann thinks about how far he and his pupils have come in wake sports, he can’t help but marvel.

“When I first started competing, no one really thought of the Lake of the Ozarks as a wake sport lake,” says Liesmann. “But the tides are definitely turning.”

Author: Kyle Wayne Stewart is a frequent contributor to Terrain.

Top image: Kirby Liesmann wakesurfs. (FunLake.com)