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LAST SNIPPET
Ashlee passed away Aug. 10th, 2010 following an
injury accident doing what she loved. Most peope go
through life never having taken the chance.
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| ashleesokalski316.webs.com
or Mail - 29314 Shirah, Chesterfeild, MI
48051
Profile
For those of you who didn't know Ashlee
Sokalski, she was a 19 year old from Chesterfield,
Mi. Ashlee always believed in living life to the
fullest. She started riding bikes at a very early
age and began racing dirt bikes at age 12. Ashlee
was a natural born athlete, from setting records in
womens hurdles to playing college basketball. She
was pursuing her dream of becoming a pro women's
motocross racer while competing in a national event
at Loretta Lynn's ranch in Tenn. During her second
moto she crashed, she later died from her injuries
at Vanderbilt trauma center on Aug. 10th, 2010.
Ashlee had a true passion for life and motocross,
she was an inspiration for her family and friends
and to the motocross community. Forever in our
hearts #316
Ashlee Sokalski passes away
due to injuries after Motocross crash
The family of 19 year-old motocross rider Ashlee
Sokalski made the difficult decision last night to
pull Ashlee from life support after doctors told
them there was nothing further they could do to
save her.
Ashlee was competing in her second race at the
29th Annual AMA Amateur National Motocross
Championship in Hurricane Mills, TN when she came
down after a jump and was thrown from her
motorcycle, which ended up bouncing back and
landing on top of her.
Doctors at Vanderbilt University Medical Center
in nearby Nashville, did everything they could to
help the young lady, who was the fastest woman
competing from her home state of Michigan. Early
Tuesday morning, Ashlee’s kidneys failed and
her condition continued to deteriorate through the
day.
Fundraising efforts will continue to aid the
family through this difficult time. Donations
efforts and memorial events continue to be
announced on Ashlee’s webpage.
The family has not yet announced funeral
arrangements for Ashlee.
News
- Ashlee Sokalski of Chesterfield Township
recently became the only female in the state to
qualify for the 29th Annual AMA Amateur National
Motocross Championships, the largest amateur
motocross race in the world. The 19-year-old
racer competed against more than 20,000 people
from across the nation before earning one of
1,386 qualifying positions. “I’m
excited because it’s my first year going to
nationals and I’m ready to do good,”
Sokalski said. The races will be held Aug. 2-7,
and Sokalski is preparing to travel to country
music singer Loretta Lynn’s ranch in
Hurricane Mills, Tenn., which has been the
annual location of the championships since 1982.
"The Amateur Nationals at Loretta Lynn’s is
the event every motocross racer in the country
wants to compete in," said Tim Cotter, event
director. "A win at the Amateur Nationals gives
a rider instant national notoriety and can serve
as a springboard to a lucrative professional
motocross career." Sokalski, who has been racing
since she was 12 years old, said that she wants
to do well in the championships with the hopes
of going pro. “I’m working my butt off
saving money, and hopefully I can put it all
together and apply for my pro card,” she
said. “It’s a lot of work–you
have to ride a lot, train and make sure
you’re in shape.” She’s never
been to Tennessee, but said that she is
preparing to handle the heat. “I hear
it’s really hot and gets up to 110 degrees,
so I’ve been riding with a hoodie and
sweatpants trying to get myself ready,” she
explained. The course that Sokalski will race on
contains a variety of jumps, corners and other
obstacles designed to test the skills and
stamina of racers. She’ll travel to the
championships with her family, who have
supported her and helped her get to where she is
today. “I would like to thank my mom, dad
and mechanic, Michelle, for all of their
support,” she said.
- Ashlee Sokalski View and purchase photos By
Lisa Gervais, Assistant Editor Nearly a week
after a wreck that left her in serious
condition, 19-year-old motocross racer Ashlee
Sokalski died. Family members chose to take the
Chesterfield native off life support 8:30 p.m.
Tuesday after doctors at Vanderbilt Hospital in
Nashville, Tenn. informed them there was nothing
else they could do to save Sokalski. “She
held on for so long,” Sokalski’s
mother Tanya Burgess said. “She was waiting
for (her sister) Amanda to get back on a plane
and get here. I just kept telling her
‘She’s coming, she’s
coming.’” The L’Anse Creuse North
graduate had been racing at the AMA Amateur
National Motocross Championships Aug. 5 at
Loretta Lynn’s Ranch in Hurricane Mills,
Tenn. when she crashed while completing a jump
on the track. Family members think her brakes
locked up in mid-air, throwing her from her
bike. When she landed, the bike landed on her.
She had a series of injuries, including six
broken ribs, injuries to her right lung and
closed head injuries. Due to stormy weather,
medical personnel were unable to airlift her to
hospital and instead she was taken by ambulance
first to a smaller hospital in Tennessee and
then to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in
Nashville where she was cared for in their
trauma center. Tuesday evening, the family had
been told the outlook wasn’t good for
Sokalski. “They had told us a few hours
before that the ventilator was at the highest
settings and she continued to decline,”
Burgess said. “There wasn’t anything
more that they could do.” Burgess said, in
the end, Sokalski was surrounded by her family,
including sisters Amanda 17, and Adrianna, 12;
and 7-month-old brother Chance. She said the
support the family has seen since the accident
is tremendous. “For 19, I can’t
believe the effect she had on so many
people’s lives across the country,”
Burgess said. “She was such a good
girl.” Viewing arrangements are tentatively
planned for Saturday at Wujek-Calcaterra and
Sons Funeral Home in Sterling Heights. A service
and burial is tentatively planned for Monday at
Christian Memorial in Rochester Hills.
- Macomb Township Chronicle (MI) Teenage
motocross racer dies Friends and family ride in
her memory KRISTA BROWNING AND SARA KANDEL C
& G Staff Writers Published: September 2,
2010 CHESTERFIELD TOWNSHIP - She was a motocross
fanatic with dreams of becoming a professional
rider, but what her sister will miss most is
their long talks in the family garage, shopping
trips to Walmart and her passion to live life to
the fullest. "She was really crazy," said Amanda
Sokalski, 17, wiping tears away from her cheeks.
"She loved to make random dirt bike noises. She
would rather sit out in the garage and talk for
hours about bikes or work on her bike instead of
watching TV. She didn't really care about what
people thought of her." Ashlee Sokalski, 19,
died Aug. 11 from injuries sustained in a
motocross accident several days earlier. Amanda
described her sister as funny and quick-witted,
a petite girl with a big appetite for life and
bacon-topped Hungry Howies pizza. "We always had
a good time," said Amanda. "She was one of those
people that joked around about everything. I
never had a dull moment with her." Ashlee, a
L'Anse Creuse High School North graduate and
avid motocross racer, had been riding dirt bikes
and motorcycles since the age of 3, when her
dad, Mike Sokalski, would put her and Amanda on
his bike and ride around with them in the
backyard. Ashlee was given her first bike when
she was 12 years old. Motocross is a form of
motorcycle sport performed on enclosed off-road
racetracks. Ashlee was recently named the only
female from Michigan to qualify for the 29th
annual AMA Amateur National Motocross
Championships, the largest amateur motocross
race in the world. The race took place from Aug.
2-7 in Hurricane Mills, Tenn., on country music
singer Loretta Lynn's ranch. Her qualification
to the national competition was a dream come
true, according to Amanda, but her dream was
ended by an accident on the course that left her
in critical condition at Vanderbilt University
Medical Center in Nashville. Michael Sokalski,
Ashlee's 48-year-old father, said it's unknown
what actually caused the accident, but after
talking to two witnesses, he said, he thinks she
didn't clear the second hill on the track and
was hit in the head by another ride coming in
behind her. The tire of the other rider's bike
clipped Ashlee's head, knocking her unconscious
and throwing her from her bike. "She didn't see
the other rider," said Tanya Burgess, Ashlee's
mom. "I talked to one of the witnesses, and she
doesn't think Ashlee ever saw her coming. She
didn't have a chance to protect herself" She
died after sustaining six broken ribs, a broken
back, injuries to her neck and head, and a
damaged right lung. "Ashlee was never pulled
from life support," said Burgess, 41. "Her heart
gave out after a hard fight. Thank God we did
not have to make that decision. Typical of Ash,
it was all or nothing. The final cause of death
was multiple blunt force trauma." Mike said
Ashlee is the first girl to die from motocross
injuries or an accident while on the course.
Amanda, who has been riding since she was 10,
said Ashlee wouldn't want her to stop racing.
"She wouldn't want me to give it up, because it
was something we did together," said Amanda. "We
both loved it, so I'm going to keep riding.
She's pushing me to do that, even though she's
not here. We raced in the same class, so we
raced against each other. She knew she could
always beat me because she was always a bit
faster than me, but she never really gloated
about it. She was very humble." Ashlee was also
a high school and collegiate athlete. She played
basketball at LCN and during her freshman year
at Macomb Community College. Her teammate and
friend, Stephanie Garland, said Ashlee was like
an older sister to her. "She was just so crazy,
loud and funny," said Garland. "She was a super
driven person. We always competed for sprints at
practice. I respected her so much, and that's
how I became a better (basketball) player,
because she was so driven. She never gave up on
anything." Ashlee dreamed of "going pro," and
according to Amanda, she wanted nothing more
than to race against Ashley Fiolek, a well-known
professional rider. "She wanted to prove to
everybody that she knew what she was doing,"
said Amanda. "We were privateers, meaning we
paid for everything ourselves. Ashlee and I
pulled strings to pay for everything all the
time. She didn't care. She was out there
(racing) every weekend whether she had the money
or not. I don't know how, but she was. She'd
sell stuff on Craigslist. She'd do whatever she
had to do to make the money." Ashley worked
three jobs - at a doctor's office, a movie
theater and a gym - to pay to race and attend
college. Mourners filed in to pay respects at
her funeral in mid-August, sporting Tshirts
dedicated to Ashlee. She was laid to rest in
full motocross gear at Christian Memorial
Cemetery in Rochester Hills. "It was a casual
funeral because Ashlee was always in basketball
shorts and a Tshirt," said Amanda. "Each racer
that came also got a number plate with their
numbers on it and stuck those to her casket just
before she was buried. The funeral home said
they'd never seen anything like it." Donations
are being accepted to benefit a new foundation
created in Ashlee's name to help injured riders.
Family, friends and fellow racers will ride in
her honor at the ninth annual Baha Brawl at Baha
MX, located in Millington. T-shirts, finger
cozies and wristbands will also be for sale. For
more information, visit www.ashleesokalski316.
webs.com. You can reach Staff Writer Krista
Browning at kbrowning@candgnews.com or at (586)
498-1068. You can reach Staff Writer Sara Kandel
at (586) 498-1030. Caption:Above:Ashlee
Sokalski, 19, poses for a photo in her motocross
gear. Ashlee died Aug. 11 from injuries she
sustained in a motorcycle accident while
competing in the 29th annual AMA Amateur
National Motocross Championships, the largest
amateur motocross race in the world. Photo
provided Below:Ashlee's siblings Amanda, 17,
Adriana, 12, and Chance, 8 months, stand with
Ashlee's motocross bike. Her racing number was
316 and Amanda's was 317.
- Ashlee Sokalski View and purchase photos By
Lisa Gervais, Assistant Editor Friends and
family of 19-year-old motocross racer Ashlee
Sokalski say she is in the race of her life. The
Chesterfield resident is in critical condition
after crashing Thursday during the AMA Amateur
National Motocross Championships at Loretta
Lynn's Ranch in Hurricane Mills, Tenn. "Ashlee's
a fighter," her mother, Tanya Burgess, said from
Vanderbilt University Medical Center in
Nashville Monday morning. "This is the race of
her life. You can just hear Ashlee saying, 'Just
give me two more laps, I can do this. Just give
me more time.'" Sokalski was going over a jump
during a race Thursday afternoon when the
accident happened. "She was on her second day of
racing and she was doing really, really well,"
Burgess said. The family thinks her brakes
locked up while she was in the air. Traveling
about 50 miles per hour, when she hit the
ground, she was sent flying off her bike, which
hit the ground, bounced back and landed on her.
Burgess, a trauma nurse, didn't see the accident
happen. "I knew she was going through that part
and all of the sudden I saw the medic flag go
up," she said. "We actually met up with the
paramedics coming off the field at the same
time. We went right into the trauma trailer and
they couldn't get her intubated." Storms in the
area that day prevented medical crews from
airlifting Sokalski to a hospital, so she first
traveled by ambulance to a smaller hospital
between Hurricane Mills and Nashville. En route,
her father, a paramedic and firefighter in
Oakland Township helped work on Sokalski in the
ambulance. After arriving at the hospital she
was then transferred to Vanderbilt University
Medical Center in Nashville. The trip totaled
around two hours. "It's been touch and go,"
Burgess said. "They didn't expect her to make
the first night...She pretty much shredded her
right lung." In addition to lung injuries,
Sokalski has six broken ribs, a closed head
injury, skull and possible neck fractures and
had 30 units of blood transfused into her the
first night she was in the hospital. When the
accident happened, Sokalski's sister, Amanda
Sokalski, was hundreds of miles away in the
middle of a shift at the MJR Chesterfield
Crossing movie theater when a friend ran in to
tell her the news. "We all know it's dangerous,
I race, too," Amanda, 17, said. "But we never
really thought it was this life threatening."
Amanda travelled to Nashville to be with her
sister. "I saw her the first night, about 1
a.m., she wasn't even recognizable," she said.
Sokalski has been racing since she was 12 years
old. She had been preparing a long time for the
national championship, beating out more than
20,000 people from across the country to earn
one of 1,386 qualifying positions. "I'm excited
because it's my first year going to nationals
and I'm ready to do good," Sokalski said in a
previous interview with The Voice before heading
to Hurricane Mills. Now her family and friends
wait, "minute-to-minute," according to her
mother. "She hasn't woken up at all," Burgess
said. "At times she'll move her head a little,
she's flexing her arms once in awhile. She
hasn't opened eyes yet...we're really not sure
her full neuro status. She almost arrested again
yesterday." A few years ago Sokalski fell off
her bike and shattered her leg. Doctors told her
she'd never ride again, but she defied the odds
and got back on her bike. "Ashlee is such a
fighter; that little girl is tough as nails,"
Burgess said. Her family is now relying on
Ashlee's strength, their faith and an outpouring
of support from friends, family and strangers.
"Facebook is the most amazing prayer network
I've ever seen," Burgess said. "There's people
all across the country praying for her." Amanda
Sokalski is now spearheading a fundraising
campaign for the anticipated medical and travel
expenses. A Paypal account has been set up.
Donations can be made by visiting paypal.com,
logging in and using the e-mail address
carrie130j@yahoo.com. Amanda Sokalski has also
ordered T-shirts and wristbands and is trying to
organize future benefits. More ways to donate
are also being set up. For more information on
how to help, call Amanda Sokalski at (586)
854-7985. "We just hope that everyone keeps her
in their thoughts and prayers," Amanda
said.
* * *
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