NEW ORLEANS – Apprentice jockey Ashley Broussard points to several factors behind her recent run of success at Fair Grounds. “More experience and a lot stronger now than when I first started,” Broussard said. “Better horses. A little bit of everything.” A 21-year-old native of Youngsville, La., Broussard is having the most productive month of her young career. Entering Friday’s racing, she had 5 wins, 2 seconds, and 6 thirds from 22 mounts in March. Last weekend, Broussard won four races, including two on the March 8 card. With the splurge, she increased her win total for the meet to 11, one more than the goal she had set, and she has a few weeks to pad the total. She is the track’s leading apprentice and is tied for 16th in the overall jockeys’ standings. “I think she’s got a bright future,” said agent Fred Aime, who over the years has handled the business of many outstanding jockeys, including Eddie Delahoussaye, Randy Romero, and Pat Day. “We brought her along at a slow pace. I didn’t want her to start her apprenticeship [which begins with a rider’s fifth victory] until she got to the Fair Grounds.” Broussard, whose father was a Quarter Horse jockey and whose mother was a pony girl, grew up with horses and was a champion barrel racer as a child. “It was in the blood,” she said. She said her father took her to the racetrack when she turned 18. “They kept me away from the racetrack, not from the horses,” Broussard said. She galloped horses for two years for trainer Steve Asmussen at Fair Grounds, the Evangeline training center, and at Keeneland, and later she was an exercise rider for trainer Kellyn Gorder in Kentucky. She rode in her first race last June at Churchill Downs and rode her first winner Aug. 16 at Ellis Park. In 2013, she won six races from 101 mounts. This year, she has won eight races from 95 mounts. Rosie Napravnik, the track’s leading rider, has been a valuable mentor, Broussard said. “She helps me out tremendously,” Broussard said. “She stays on me. We watch every race in the jocks’ room.” Workouts directed by personal trainer Lionel Lechler enhance muscles used for riding and balance, she said. He’ll throw medicine balls at her while she’s balancing on a flat part of a half-ball called a BOSU ball. Or, she’ll pull heavy ropes up and down and sideways while balancing on the BOSU ball. That exercise mimics a jockey’s movements during a stretch run, she said. In the first race last Sunday, Broussard was involved in a tight finish on the 3-year-old filly Elaine Kowaleski. Stretching out to a mile and 70 yards in her second start, Elaine Kowaleski opened a clear lead in the stretch and held on, winning the maiden special weight race by a nose. Broussard retained the mount after riding the filly to a second-place finish in a six-furlong race. “She got run out of her,” trainer Steve Margolis said. “Like [owner] Al Gold said, we could have taken her off. ‘Let’s give her a shot.’ ” Broussard is “a hard-working girl,” Margolis said. “Looks good on a horse. How she handles horses in the morning is very good.”