From gymnasts to trapshooters, these Kansas City area athletes are taking their talents to the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
From the Currents to the Olympics
This summer, two Kansas City Current players will join their home countries in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Forward Nichelle Prince will represent Canada as part of the 18-player Olympic team. Born in Ajax, Ontario, Prince was drafted 28th overall in 2017 and played for the Houston Dash for six years before joining the Kansas City Current soccer team this past January.
The 2024 games will be her third time on the Olympic stage. She has 97 caps for her country, and with her help, Canada has won bronze and gold in the 2016 and 2021 Olympics.
Meanwhile, center-back Lauren Eduarda Leal Costa, known professionally just as Lauren, will serve as one of four alternates for the Brazilian National Team. Born in São Paulo, Brazil, Lauren started playing professionally with São Paulo FC at 17 years-old. She transferred to Madrid CFF in 2021 and then to Kansas City in 2023.
While this tournament will be her first Olympic experience, she has already made 21 appearances for Brazil since 2021, including a spot on Brazil’s team in the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
The USA Trapshooting Team
Meanwhile, Team USA is not without its share of local faces. In fact, two of the four members of the United States Trapshooting Team are from the Kansas City area.
Staff Sgt. Rachel Tozier grew up in Pattonsburg, Missouri and managed the Kansas City Trapshooters Association range in Smithville. She later joined the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit in Fort Moore, Georgia and will be making her Olympic debut this summer.
The goal of the competition is to hit a 4¼-inch disc out of the air from five different positions. Tozier has been shooting since she was 12 and competing since age 14, winning two silver medals at the 2019 Pan American Games in women’s trap and mixed trap events.
Her teammate Derrick Mein grew up on a family farm in Walnut, Kansas, but now lives about 45 minutes from Kansas City in Paola, Kansas. He will be competing with Team USA for the second time this summer.
In addition to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Mein has also competed in the 2022 World Shotgun Championship, where he won gold, and the 2023 ISSF World Shooting Championships, winning one gold and one silver medal.
GAGE Center’s Olympic Gymnasts
Three gymnasts from Blue Springs’ GAGE Center are also headed to Paris.
After finishing seventh overall at the trials, Overland Park native and GAGE gymnast Leanne Wong will serve as one of two alternates on the USA team with the likes of Simone Biles and Suni Lee.
Wong was also selected as an alternate for the Olympics in Tokyo, but was quarantined after exposure to another athlete who was infected with Covid. She has since won gold with her team in the 2022 and 2023 World Artistic Gymnastic Championships and is ready for another opportunity to support the Olympic team.
Aleah Finnegan, a Filipino-American gymnast who resides in Lee’s Summit and also trained at GAGE, will be representing the Philippines.
Finnegan is no stranger to international competition, having competed for the United States team and helped them win gold in the 2019 Pan American games. The Gymnastics Association of the Philippines offered her an opportunity to honor her mother’s roots and compete with them at the 2022 Southeast Asian Games. She proceeded to win two gold medals for team and vault events and two silver medals for all-around individual and balance beam events. This summer, she’ll be the first female Filipina gymnast at the Olympics since 1964.
Another gymnast from the GAGE Center, Lynnzee Brown was born in Independence and raised in Raytown, but she will soon represent Haiti in Paris.
Before making the Haitian team, Brown competed for the University of Denver on a full-ride scholarship from 2018-23 and worked as an assistant coach for Penn State’s women’s gymnastics team for the 2023-24 season.
While this will be the first time the Haitian-American gymnast participates in the Olympics, she has already represented Haiti throughout 2023, first in the Pan American Artistic Gymnastic Championships, and then in the World Artistic Gymnastic Championships.
