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For Katelyn Lehner, BKin’19, performance has never really been confined to one stage. Long before she was opening festival sets, recording music in Nashville or building a growing audience in country music, Lehner was chasing podiums as a high-level track-and-field athlete. The former national team and UĢ����ý Dinos student-athlete competed in combined events while balancing training, school, work and a second life that, at the time, often felt impossible to explain to people around her. 

“I specifically remember walking into a kinesiology final exam in Ģ����ý and thinking, ‘This isn’t helping my future country/pop-star career,’” Lehner says with a laugh. 

To say Lehner was a “good” athlete is an understatement. She was an outstanding track athlete. Highly touted coming out of high school in her hometown of Prince Albert, Sask., Lehner had already won multiple provincial championships and had been named Saskatchewan Youth Athlete of the Year and Prince Albert Kinsmen Female Athlete of the Year in 2012. In 2013, she represented Canada at the Pan American Junior Athletics Championships before coming to UĢ����ý to pursue a kinesiology degree and compete with the Dinos from 2013–17.  

During that time, Lehner trained alongside elite teammates Rachael McIntosh, BA’15; Rachel Machin, BComm’16; and Nicole (Niki) Glanz (Oudenaarden), BKin’19, under legendary coach and Dinos Hall of Fame inductee Les Gramantik. Together, the group accumulated more combined-event points at the U SPORTS level than any other university track program in Canada. 

“I showed up as the track girl from Saskatchewan, training with Les and his girls,” says Lehner. “Then, slowly through my time as an athlete, it started getting out that I could sing and that I wrote songs.” 

Lehner started singing national anthems at Dinos football games and basketball events like Pack the Jack. These moments surprised her teammates who had only ever known her as an athlete. While many people came to know her first through athletics, Lehner says music was always there first. 

“I had to explain that this was my thing,” she says. “I’d been doing music longer than I’d been doing track.” 

Now 31, Lehner has been performing for nearly her entire life, first stepping onto stages at just three years old. She took a break from performing during her university years to focus on the busy schedule of being a student-athlete.  

Lehner says Ģ����ý’s high-performance sports culture also fundamentally reshaped how she viewed excellence. Training alongside other elite athletes at facilities like WinSport and the Olympic Oval, she witnessed athletes training who were fully immersed in the pursuit of national team positions, Olympic standards and personal bests. Meanwhile, she watched musicians her age chasing careers in music full time. 

“I struggled with that a lot through university,” she says. “I saw the people who had moved to Nashville and were chasing the music dream, and I was like, ‘Man, I really want to do that.’” 

The break away from athletics was never supposed to be permanent. After completing her U SPORTS eligibility in 2019, Lehner stepped away from competition briefly while recording her first song Red, which she released in October 2020.  

Because her rise in music began during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lehner used the downtime to immerse herself in learning how the industry worked. She reached out to people across music, listened to podcasts, and taught herself the mechanics of releasing music, booking shows and building an audience through social media.  

“I loved learning about the industry,” she says. “I think understanding the business side is a huge reason why I’ve been able to grow so quickly.” 

What surprised her most? 

“That nobody knows anything,” she says, jokingly. “I just mean there is no road map. Nobody knows how to make something go viral or what’s going to become a hit.” 

Studio sessions turned into live shows, and after that weekends started to become choices between competitions and performing. Eventually, one opportunity in the summer of 2021 with an award-winning Canadian country artist made the decision feel impossible to ignore and led to Lehner’s retirement from track that year. 

“I remember getting the offer to open for Dean Brody (in Regina) and it was over the weekend of a track meet,” she says. “I was like, ‘I’ve got to go open for Dean Brody! This is what I want to do.’” 

In many ways, music became a softer landing than many elite-level athletes receive after retiring from a sport they spend years cultivating a career in. Rather than losing structure entirely, Lehner simply redirected the same competitive drive toward a different kind of performance. 

“If I didn’t have music, that transition would’ve been a lot harder,” she says. “Music gave me a really clear path into the next chapter of my life and I realize now that track was preparing me for it.” 

That preparation had less to do with performance and more to do with mindset. As an athlete, success was never built around instant gratification. Improvement happened slowly, often invisibly, over years of repetition, discipline and routine. It is a mentality that now shapes how she approaches music. 

“In track, you’re not planning for next weekend,” Lehner says. “You’re planning two years, three years, four years out. I think that’s really helped me as an artist.” 

That perspective matters in a music industry increasingly built around immediacy. Viral moments can create overnight stars, social media rewards constant visibility and artists are often pressured to grow and develop at an unsustainable pace. But Lehner’s instincts remain rooted in sport. 

“I’m very much a goal setter,” she says. “That comes from my life as an athlete. I still have goal sheets for music: small goals, long-term goals, dreams. I think track taught me how to be patient.” 

Still, some things about athletics remain difficult to replace.  

“I miss having a scoreboard,” Lehner says. “If you cross the finish line first, you win. You got the gold medal. Music isn’t like that.” 

The complex music business has become even more pronounced in an era where streaming, TikTok and genre-fluid music are reshaping how audiences discover artists. In many ways, Lehner’s rise has happened during one of the most unstable and rapidly evolving periods the music industry has seen. Artists are now expected to be performers, marketers, content creators and entrepreneurs all at once, often building audiences in real time through TikTok clips, livestreams and algorithms that can change overnight.  

For Lehner, who has amassed more than three million TikTok views and over 575,000 career streams, that shift has felt creatively freeing. Raised on both Shania Twain and Britney Spears, her music naturally exists somewhere between country and pop.  

Her first two EPs, 10 Bucks (2022) and Dirt Road Dancing (2024), both showcased that crossover sound, while her latest single and video, Howl (2025), leans fully into glossy country-pop, complete with choreographed dance sequences and white shiny cowboy boots that would feel just as at home at Nashville North as they would inside the Cowboys Tent during Stampede. 

Today’s audiences, she says, seem far more open to that kind of overlap. 

“There are no boxes anymore,” Lehner says. “I don’t feel like I have to stay in one lane because of music I released five years ago.” 

These days, the finish lines look different. Her world is festival stages instead of starting blocks. Streaming numbers instead of stopwatches. But the mentality, the discipline, ambition and constant pursuit of improvement remain largely unchanged.  

“It’s the live shows that really give me those pinch-me moments,” Lehner says. “Standing on stage at Cowboys Music Festival opening for Blue Rodeo and singing songs I wrote on my bedroom floor — that’s when I stop and realize I’m already living the dreams I had as a little kid.” 

The scoreboard may be gone, but the chase itself remains very much alive. 

Rapid Fire with Rising Star Katelyn Lehner 

In this rapid-fire conversation with Alumni News, Katelyn Lehner talks about how airports become racetracks, Hilary Duff remains untouchable, Project Hail Mary and how Nickelback still hits different driving through Alberta. 

Be honest: When you’re walking through an airport or down a hallway, do you still subconsciously race people? 

Yeah, 100 per cent. Nobody can keep up to me in an airport… You know those fast walkways? I still can’t get off one without making my last step feel like a perfect long-jump takeoff. That’ll always be ingrained in my head.” 

Stampede is basically controlled chaos for 10 straight days. What’s your survival strategy? 

Drink water. Like, guzzle water… I’m a big sleep girl and that has also transitioned and followed me from my athlete days. Make sure you’re sleeping at night or if you’re up late, sleeping in the morning. Make sure you’re well-rested and well-hydrated. 

Many athletes are notorious for being superstitious, do you have any specific pre-show rituals? 

I’m semi-superstitious, I’d say… Recently, in the last couple years, I have a quick little vocal warmup that I do. I need to have that, and I preferably like to do it when nobody’s around me so I’ll go find a little corner somewhere, put my headphones in and do my vocal warmup. 

I heard your first concert was Hilary Duff. With the full Hilary Duff renaissance happening right now, what Hilary Duff song are you defending with your life? 

Wake Up, for sure… It’s so funny my parents have been going through old videos and sending me clips of me performing her songs when I was a little kid. I need to figure out some way to get to her tour next year. Maybe I can just get on stage with her. 

I also understand you’re a little bit of a space nerd. Have you seen Project Hail Mary? 

I have. Incredible. Ten out of 10… What’s funny is I went into that movie not knowing anything. I didn’t watch a trailer or read a synopsis, so I had no idea what I was getting into. I love going into movies like that because I feel like trailers give too much away. I’ve been telling everyone it’s like Interstellar and WALL-E combined, which in my brain is the perfect movie. 

What’s your Tim Hortons order, and what song are you playing on the highway between Saskatoon and Ģ����ý? 

Oooo, I’m getting an iced latte from Tim’s and putting on Nickelback. Whenever I go through Hanna, Nickelback goes on… Usually Burn It to the Ground. 

If you could remove one thing from modern music culture: the algorithms, social media pressure, chasing virality, what’s going first? 

Maybe chasing one viral success moment? I love people who’ve put in the work and put in the years and grinded, those are the people I want to see rise to the top. 

You are a big TikTok creator, as well. What have you learned about building an audience, versus simply making music? 

These days, you’re really building this whole world alongside the music… You can really curate it how you want and make it uniquely individual to yourself. 

You seem like someone who always needs a new challenge. Is that true? 

Recently, I’ve been golfing a lot, and I thought my track background would transfer over better than it does… It really doesn’t. And, about a year and a half ago, I rented a violin from Long & McQuade having never played before and just decided I was going to figure it out. 

Last one: What brings you the most joy these days? 

Being surrounded by my friends and family. I’ve gone through a lot in the last few years and having people who’ve been there through all these different chapters of my life means everything. When I was back in Prince Albert for my induction into the Sports Hall of Fame, my family was there, my old coaches were there, teammates from Ģ����ý were there… It’s those moments outside of the chaos that bring me the most joy. 

Be sure to keep up with all things Katelyn Lehner on her website or on: | | | |