How has skiing changed your life for the better?

[Oldkier]

Bringing friends and families together, changing health lifestyle, let's share how skiing has changed your life for the better.

[ALPJr]

Great topic. As kid growing up at the south Jersey shore In Somers Point I spent a lot of time on the bay and creeks fishing and crabbing with my dad and grand-mom. I was first drawn into skiing by watching the Wide World of Sports and seeing Wayne Grimwidch and the other stars of the day. In the summer of 1974 a friend bought a used 13 ft Whaler with a 20 hp Johnson and a pair of Cypress Gardens Bronco Combos and we learned to ski on the open water of Great Egg Harbor Bay. Later that summer I bought a used MFG Corvette II with a 40 hp Evinrude and a pair of no name wooden combos. The next fall, freshman year in high school I found the AWSA information in the school library index and have been a member ever since. The next summer I traded the 40 hp for 60 hp, got up on one ski for the first time and my life was changed forever... So family ties, friendships and boating interests pretty much took over at that point. By my early 20’s fitness and targeted training for skiing came into focus. At 29 I decided to drive to Jimmy Durhams Ski School in South Carolina to learn to ski the course and have been hooked ever since. From there things continued to blossom, Spencer’s Training Camp in NY, moved to CA and skied with Syderhoud and the Berkeley crew. Then moved back east and for the past 20+ years have been blessed to share the sport with my wife and kids, ski at sites all over the Northeast and train at a special pond with an awesome crew. In other words, water skiing rocks!

[503Kento]

Returned to chasing buoys a couple of years ago. It’s given me motivation to eat right and get in the gym (at my advanced age :) ) and gives me a reason to hang out with a couple of life long friends.

[6balls]

Too much to say...could write a book.

[DAKERS]

I grew up going to the lake. We had a 21' sea-ray cuddie cabin that we would use for our family time. We would hangout all day and sleep on it at night pulled up to a shore in a cove. We used to wally ski and kneeboard. Heck even did some surfing back in the day. Lot's of wonderful memories on the lake. I would watch skiing on ESPN as a kid, and I knew all the great men and women skiers back in the day.

I stopped going to the lake the summer of my jr year in HS because of sports commitments and really didn't get back to the lake until 2015.

In the summer of 2017 one of my son's teammates had an uncle that lived on the lake we went to and he stopped by. He said, hey we go skiing at 7am would you like to go? I let him know that I hadn't skied since I was a kid. He didn't care and said he had a ski I could use. I had some good wipeouts but I was hooked. What a great total body workout. Especially when you do it as wrong as I did and still do. However, that moment made me want to get better. I would go as much as I could. That day was fathers day 2017. I messed with the course a decent amount when I could that summer. I didn't ski after August of that year until New Years Eve. I was down in FL and tried out a ski school. It was at Eden ski lake. I made my first pass ever there @15/30.

I went from being hooked to obsessed and having these thoughts constantly going through my head.

How can I get better? How can I increase the speed and shorten the line? What type of equipment do I need? Which consisted of ski, bindings, tow boat etc...Where can I train and who can I train with? How do I expand my knowledge? Where can I learn to be a better driver? How do I truly learn what ZO does and why does it kick my tail? What is the best body type and how can I achieve that sort of body and train accordingly to achieve success on the water? What goes into binding and fin adjustments?

Everything I have learned in athletics has basically been counter intuitive for success on the water. I understand the physics of the movement but getting my body to do something it really hasn't ever done has been tough. But I love the challenge. Even if that means me tossing my ski halfway down the lake out of frustration.

The ski community is the closest thing to a locker room that I have found. Those who haven't experiences a real locker room I am sorry. That connection is the number one thing people miss when they are done with sports. Skiing has helped fill that void and I try to thank those that help with that as much as I possibly can.

 

So has skiing helped change my life for the better?!?!? Ummm, most definitely. Those that are on my "team" I say thank you and you are appreciated.

Thank you Griff Irby for that first pull on Father's Day 2017.

 

[gschorr]

 

1) mental health (way too many facets to list under this category)

2) physical health (same as #1)

3) social interactions (feed into #1 and 2, and damn important during this pandemic)

 

I'm still skiing with friends from 30 years ago. And I'm still meeting new ski friends every year who will be there with me 30 years from now. I used to work in the mountains as a pro ski patroller--you can downhill ski all on your own. You can't with waterskiing, and that completely changes the dynamic, for the better.

 

Here's to another year of unknown's, but a year where water skiers know they'll connect with a sport that always makes their lives better, regardless of how well you ski on an individual day.

[JordanOz]

Apart from the great people who have enriched my life through skiing, some of which have the same interests as me outside of skiing (creating fantastic friendships), I met my life partner at our club. She was one of the first people I met and we just hit it off. Skiing and going away on ski trips together as friends for 2 years and built the best base for our relationship possible. So yeah, definitely for the better.

[BlueSki]

I met my wife on a collegiate ski team, so my kids would say skiing hasn’t just made their lives better, but that they owe their very existence to water skiing.

[LK_skier]

I've been addicted to skiing since I was 7 when I first did it in the mid 80's behind my dads old outboard - I always thought back then that barefoot was the ultimate - Brett wing was my hero here in Australia. Got to hang out with my family and make good friends from the lake that I still ski with today - trips away etc... never got into the tournament scene - long story but the tournament scene where I live died a bit just as I was getting keen. Fast forward to when I was about 33 and I tried the course and loved it... a few injuries here and there but yeah I'm hooked at chasing buoys and the great thing is so are my kids!! great family time - but it is an expensive sport which is a huge barrier - also access over here is terrible... I've been lucky though...

[thager]

Exercise without sweat, great friends, and good times for a lifetime!!!! Who could ask for anything more?

[OTF]

It hasn’t, I now am obsessive compulsive, swerve around traffic cones in construction zones ( expensive), have handles tied to everything on the property and will only communicate with people that are between 47-37 feet in front of me.

[lpskier]

I used to have free time and could drink beer whenever I wanted. Now I hang out with engineers.

[skidawg]

Skiing has given me life long friends and the ability to harass @Horton endlessly! ?

[The_MS]

Without skii g I never would have met @thager @skidawg @jdarwin @teammalibu @Horton @Chad_Scott @ski6jones @jayski @ForrestGump @OTF @SkiOrDie @Razorskier1 @RazorRoss3 @6balls @gjohnson @sbink @Bruce_Butterfield @Wish @bigtex2011 and a bunch of others. I know I probably am missing some more Ballers. Thanks to all the southern folks that talked me into moving south. Luv u all

[teammalibu]

I don’t always agree with @The_MS but he nailed it right there! And without meeting so many folks I wouldn’t be sitting right here!

[ski6jones]

@The_MS @teammalibu

 

[The_MS]

Dang, forgot @lpskier

[Rednucleus]

Skiing is how my family became acquainted, and now good friends with @cougfan and Heidi. Enough said!

[cougfan]

@Rednucleus here is my own symbol for awesome for your post since I can only click once on the thread ????????

[usaski1]

It’s hard to think of something that has had a bigger impact than skiing for me. At 43, I’ve been skiing for 30 years. When I was a teenager, I thought if you lived on a ski lake, you were bigger than a rockstar. When I was 30, I made that happen for myself. When I was 22, in 1999 I won the disabled worlds in England. It’s given me this huge charge throughout my life, something that still pushes me forward some days. Through different jobs, different houses, different states, old friends, new ones, marriage, and divorce, skiing was there, and it still is! I’ve just never found anything in life that’s flipped my switch like skiing, and I’ve looked. I probably never will.