Boise State’s Leia Chung returned from back injury with a win. Now it’s on to Red Sky.
- Boise State golfer Leia Chung won the Golfweek Fall Challenge after missing a year due to a lumbar spine injury.
- Chung set a new school record with a 14-under 54-hole total in her first NCAA start in over a year.
- She recovered from surgery in October and gradually returned to the game starting in February.
- Chung and her team are set to compete next at the Golfweek Red Sky Classic in Vail, Colorado.
Leia Chung certainly could be considered a numbers person. In fact, that’s perhaps an understatement considering the granular way in which she likes to set goals.
“I like to set mini goals for myself each tournament that I play,” the Boise State redshirt junior said when asked, one tournament into this college golf season, what her goal sheet looked like.
“I honestly kind of think of it as more of a statistic mini goal. I want to hit all of these fairways and greens – like a percentage.
“When I focus on those little things, they all add up to make the big picture better.”
That picture is head-turning. Chung began the season on Sept. 9 with a nine-shot victory at the Golfweek Fall Challenge. Chung’s 14-under 54-hole total (68-67-64) at Caledonia Golf Club in Pawley’s Island, South Carolina, set a new school record and led her team to a sixth-place finish overall. It was Chung’s second career victory at Boise State but, most notably, her first NCAA start in more than a year.
Chung injured her lumbar spine at the end of the 2023-24 season and took the summer to rest. When she returned to school in the fall and continued to feel pain, she underwent more scans and received a diagnosis. Surgery followed in October and over the course of her three-month recovery, Chung didn’t hit a shot. She gradually worked her way back into the game in February of 2025 with half swings and wedges.
A sidelined Chung was a big blow for Boise State and, as head coach Kailin Downs noted, just as devastating for Chung herself. But Downs watched Chung press on with grace. Throughout the course of injury, surgery and recovery, she can’t remember once hearing Chung complain.
“She’s somebody that loves the game more than anyone I can think of,” Downs said. “Her passion for it is off the charts. She’s a grinder, she loves to compete, so it was really hard watching her not only sit out from something she loved but then watching the team be able to do all the things she wanted to do.”
Even though Chung couldn’t post a score in competition, she showed up in every way she could for the team. Downs also thinks she absorbed a lot by watching her teammates play the 2024-25 season.
Downs noted that Chung, in her first two seasons, was always close to being all-conference or even receiving an at-large bid into the NCAA postseason as an individual.
“I think specifically with sitting out last year, she was able to see a teammate of hers get all-conference honors and I think it’s just there in regards to a little bit of improvement, little bit more consistent finishes in tournaments and these things could be possible,” Downs said.
Chung’s start to the season suggests she has moved significantly closer to those goals.
Even though Chung hadn’t been seen in a college golf event for an entire season, her Golfweek Fall Challenge victory hardly came out of left field. In her first tournament back after the injury, Chung won the Hawaii Women’s Amateur in June. It’s no small feat, though Chung still categorizes college golf as something altogether different.
“Although I played some tournaments back home in the summer, I don’t think it really compared to teeing it up with the team,” she said. “It’s a very different atmosphere. I was really excited and a little nervous just because I haven’t been in this position with the team in such a long time, but it was more kind of the excitement of, I’m so happy to be here and to have traveled.”
Boise State will tee it up again this week at the Golfweek Red Sky Classic, a tournament at which the Broncos finished second and fourth, respectively, the past two years. Chung last competed at Red Sky Golf Club in Vail, Colorado, with the team in 2023 and finished in the top 20.
Chung and the team have an even better opportunity to test themselves at Red Sky this year, as the field grew from last year to 20 teams and includes Power 4 programs like USC, Arizona and LSU.
The tournament at Red Sky is one the whole team talks about fondly, Downs said. The mountain views, the golf course and the general beauty of Vail feed into an experience that Downs said has captured her players year after year.
“I think I’ve found over my coaching career, there’s courses that tend to be a team’s favorites and there’s courses that seem to be team’s downfalls,” she said. “I don’t know how it happens that way because there’s change each year and I feel like it still happens that way.”
For Boise State, Red Sky is the former, and Chung falls firmly in line with that view, too. Tempering her expectations after such a big week at Caledonia will be important, she noted, but that’s where the good vibes at Red Sky come in.
“As a team, we work on a lot of short game so I think that course, although we are a very good ballstriking teams, around the greens we also did well,” Chung said.