Although she was a two-sport athlete at Augustana, Ashley Borah Gleason will be best remembered for her work on the volleyball court where she helped move the Vikings toward the top in the College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin. She arrived on the Augustana campus in the fall of 1994 as part of a recruiting class put together by then-head coach Liesl Fowler that would make history.
A team that had been 17-22 overall the year before Borah and fellow classmates Carie Baughman, Carrie Joyce, Sarah Bengtson and Mindy Morris arrived on campus received an immediate kick-start. With Borah as the catalyst from her outside hitter’s positions, the Vikings went 22-14 overall, 4-3 in the CCIW and placed second in the conference tournament in 1994, losing only to Millikin in the championship game.
By the time that group graduated in 1998, they had compiled a four year record of 88-51 overall and 19-9 in conference play. The Vikings won the CCIW overall title and conference tournament in 1996, tied for first in the conference regular season in 1997, placed second overall in 1995 and second in the CCIW tournament in 1994. Clearly the best four year run in Augustana volleyball history took place when Borah was piling up kills, digs and blocks.
Borah played in all 32 matches as a freshman and averaged 1.5 kills per game with a total of 90 blocks. During her sophomore year of 1995 she played in 31 matches and compiled a total of 315 kills for an average of 3.12 per game with 374 digs and 125 total blocks. When the Vikings won the CCIW title in 1996 she had 452 kills in 126 games (3.58 average) with 448 digs and 143 total blocks. Her senior year saw her play in 117 games with 344 kills (2.94 average), with 327 digs and 46 total blocks.
When she graduated in 1998 with a degree in biology, Borah was the career school record holder in kills (1,255), blocks (404) and digs (1,310). She also had three of the top five seasons in kills per game including the number one (3.58 in 1996) and two (3.12 in 1995) rankings on the single season list. She owned six of the top 10 single match kill totals in school history and her 44 digs against Illinois Wesleyan in 1996 was the second best ever posted. For good measure she was fourth on the career list in service aces with 79.
She was a three-time first team all-conference selection in the CCIW and was an all-tournament selection in 1996 when the Vikings won their first ever league title with a 15-7; 15-13; 15-9 win over Millikin in the championship game. She was the co-winner of the team’s Most Outstanding Freshman in 1994 and was the Offensive Player of the Year in 1995, 1996 and 1997. She was the Augustana MVP as a junior in 1996.
Injuries prevented her from contributing as much in basketball as she did in volleyball but she did earn varsity letters in her sophomore and junior seasons.
Fowler, who recruited Borah out of Springfield High School, had this to say about her former standout.
“Throughout a coaching career, you have many athletes who contribute to the betterment of the program and a few will even rise to a certain level of athletic greatness. Others provide a personal leadership branding that cannot be measured in statistics and never make the evening news, but aid in the overall shape of a team’s success,” she remarked. “Ashley Borah brought to the Augustana Volleyball Program a rare unifying of these exceptional qualities. Her subtle leadership could be mistaken for quietness by the casual eye. But when she pounded a kill in front of the ten-foot line or stuff blocked a girl five inches taller than she, there was no question of who was in charge at the net. Her intelligence on and off the court, as well as her continual demands of precision and perfection within herself was contagious to her teammates and classmates.”
Borah excelled in the classroom as well as on the athletic court. She was a two-time academic all-district honoree and in 1996 she was the winner of the Jack Swartz Award in the CCIW for her combination of athletics and academics. She went on to graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis where she earned her Master’s Degree in physical therapy. She worked as a physical therapist until the second of her three children was born. Ashley and her husband Brad live in Peoria, Illinois with children Elizabeth, Abigail and Jacob.
“Augustana was such a great fit for me,” said Borah. “I loved being able to play two sports at the collegiate level and I have countless memories that put a smile on my face and friendships that have remained important to me to this day. I was so blessed with a coach who could motivate us, challenge us, train us and encourage us all in the same practice.”
