Safesport requirement to renew USA waterski

[Buxrus]

I know I am probably treading on very thin ice. My question is not politically charged. I am obviously late to the table. When I got my renewal email from USA Waterski I considered renewing immediately. (Early Spring). I didn’t. About a month ago I learned that doing SafeSport training was required to renew with USA waterski. My question is why?

I cannot think of one legitimate reason as to why this is part of my USA waterski sign up.

I am not coaching young people at a tournament

I am not coaching young people at my ski lake

 

No, I am not renewing.

My ski partner skied states this week and I believe they had 4 participants in M5. 4!! 66 total skiers at a state tourney.

A friend texted me and said he was one of three skiers in M3 for his state tournament. 3!

There are several discussions on here regarding what’s killing the slalom skiing sport, etc.

My opinion is this certainly didn’t help.

I seriously would love to know the relationship b/w the two.

[skihard]

I was under the impression that was only if you were going to partake in tournaments?

 

[MattP]

It’s only needed if your participate in events.

[Broussard]

 

https://www.ballofspray.com/forum#/discussion/25196/what-is-your-reaction-to-the-new-usaws-safesport-requirement

https://www.ballofspray.com/forum#/discussion/25173/2021-is-my-last-year-of-usaws/p1

[scuppers]

What is the point of renewing or even joining AWSA /USA /whatever, if you are not going to compete in a tournament? Mandatory Safe Sport is just one more nail in the coffin.

Nationals @ Oakeeheelee next year - I would like to compete but Safe Sport Training is gonna be a hard pill to swallow.

[Buxrus]

Sorry @Broussard i did a search and nothing came up. I agree btw.

@MattP why else would I join?

[Dirt]

Just accept whatever ridiculous requirements they deem necessary and shut up, right?

[Lars]

@scuppers its required to be in AWSA to ski at my ski club's lake even if I never do a tournament.

[unksskis]

Why? https://congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/534/text

 

To summarize for you, any US National Sport Governing association where minors are included/involved must implement Safe Sport training and certification. Take this up with your state government representatives, they voted this as a requirement. Explain to them that you will no longer be participating in your organized sport because of this requirement they enacted.

 

 

[scuppers]

@Lars - required why? Insurance? Try and collect!

Luckily where I ski it’s not required and we are well insured.

 

 

[lpskier]

Watch “Athlete A” on Netflix and you’ll have a better understanding of why SafeSport is mandatory.

 

I’ve taken the training and the refresher. No academy awards, but I lived to tell the tale.

[Kelvin]

@Lars I'm pretty sure you can be a member of ASWA as required by your club without having SafeSport. SafeSport is only required to ski events.

[Hallpass]

Deja Vu all over again

 

[Buxrus]

Thank you for your comments and responses. As I suspected no legitimate “ski” reasons. If what @unksskis says in his post is true then it’s more government mandate stuff.

Again thanks for the insight. I will table my question.

[Jody_Seal]

I could get my second wind!

 

meh! I already predicted nearly a 40% loss in membership participation, I bet i am close!

[jayski]

Need @MS to chime in...and @bigtex2011

[Buxrus]

@Jody_Seal I would definitely think a poll is appropriate for this matter. I am NOT the person to do that but i will participate.

My expectation is that it will not make a difference.

[ski6jones]

What @Broussard said. I've more than had my fill of this.

[rfa]

Really? how about no one allowed to comment here without re-reading all 59 pages (59!!!) of the previous thread? ha

https://www.ballofspray.com/forum#/discussion/25173/2021-is-my-last-year-of-usaws/p1

 

 

[Buxrus]

Ok one more time….I did a search to see if this topic had been discussed. Keywords: safe sport, USA water ski, AWSA safe sport. NOTHING came up. The Nate smith stuff came up but my question was regarding membership to USA waterski.

Sorry to ask a question regarding skiing participation. I got my answer. Enough said.

I would opine that other discussions have been started that are much lamer than this one.

[BKistler]

Safe Sport is part of the baggage when a sport governing body is in any way associated with the USOC. One more pain in the ass.

[ski6jones]

@Buxrus don't take offense. You just happened to ask about a topic that was very contentious, and I think for many, is still a sore subject. Your initial post was on point. The actual reasons why it's required are lame.

[Buxrus]

Thank you @ski6jones . I appreciate your insight and your explanation.

[Horton]

honestly it's just not that painful. It's unfortunate & it's bullshit but if you want to support the sport and ski in tournaments it is what it is. I'm tired of hearing people complain about it.

[bkreis]

it's no big deal and for some it's educational..just take it and encourage everyone to join and take for the sake too the sport

[Booze]

What Horton said... yeah, that sums it up for me.

It pi$$es me off as well, but I didn't put all this effort to improve at (and enjoy) slalom skiing, looking forward to take a shot (albeit a long shot LOL) at Regs/Nats each year, to be deterred that easily.

[Slalom.Steve]

I seem to remember my parents telling me "Well son, life ain't always fair." Even if the training is a total waste - and I actually don't think that but I doubt either side is changing their minds on that point - but even if, skiing is way too important to me to not sacrifice a couple hours for it. If I had to sit in a empty room for 2 hours, or run a mile backwards, in order to partake in the sport that means so much to me, I'd still do it. And the intention with SafeSport is at least valid, again even setting aside arguments whether it's effective or dumb or anything like that, it's at minimum nothing nefarious. Seriously, the number of hours we as a society waste on a daily basis doing meaningless things, spending 1-2 hours over an entire year for something that is at worst meaningless, at best helpful, doesn't even register on the scale, particularly when this sport that I love needs all the support it can get or else there eventually won't be any tournaments for us to argue about in the first place.

[Lars]

@scuppers yes I believe so since the insurance is through them. @Kelvin correct, don't need safe sport just to ski with the club, only if competing.

 

[JackQ]

Again really! Many have spent much more time reading the post than taking the training. The requirement is not unique to our sport, just a reflection of the time. The reality is you can either suck it up and take the training or stay home.

[thager]

Staying home.

[Wish]

I might start competing again with all the drop outs do to SafeSport. Less competition for me ?.

[APB]

It's a super short online course..... whats the big deal? We should be looking to protect young athletes, especially after the Nate Smith situation.

[ForrestGump]

I took it for BMX. But after taking it, I realized that I already knew how to be an abuser. It's all over TV and social media. So honestly, I got nothing good out of it. Dammit, I thought I was going to get some good pointers or something.

[lpskier]

@Wish My plan, too, but with me it’s age.

[LeonL]

@Booze not so much of a long shot. You're being too modest.

[Booze]

Thanks @LeonL. Regionals has been better for me the last few years but Nats is a different animal.

I need some deep 38!

[sheskis7]

You do not have to do Safe Sport to join and you have 30 days to complete Safe Sport after you join. So if you want to compete in a tournament in those 30days you can. But, your scores aren't official till after you complete Safe Sport. Now true Story my Grand Son joined In late June so the web site wouldn't even allow him to sign up for tournament in July. But they were notified he was planning on skiing. He did complete safe sport 2 days before. Skied on Saturday. Scorer didn't put him in, (don't know why) His score did not appear in scorebook. Check with AWSA and yes he was safe sport qualified. Scorer would not correct scorebook. So he lost his PB. But, the sad fact is it was a 3 event slalom and it was over in 4 hours. Where are the all the skiers?

[sheskis7]

Footnote: Our state memberships are down 50% from last year.

 

[MattP]

@sheskis7 you need to contact the Chief Judge as well. If your grandson was allowed to ski in the event and was eligible then his score should be added to the score book and ranking list. It can be done after the fact as an update. If you need to go to your region EVP. If the scorer did not do any paper documentation as back up while scoring that is a large oversight especially if a skier was on the water who had not been added to the computer yet.

[sheskis7]

That's my plan this week end at our Regionals.

 

[LeonL]

@sheskis7 sounds like a real cluster by officials involved to me, but let's be realistic. Why did he wait until 2 days prior to the tourney? What rule did the scorer invoke in refusing to correct the scorebook?

[ral]

@SlalomSteve ,

 

Seriously, the number of hours we as a society waste on a daily basis doing meaningless things, spending 1-2 hours over an entire year for something that is at worst meaningless, at best helpful, doesn't even register on the scale

 

Best sentence I have read in a long time.

[Phil]

We have 11homes on our lake and 9 owners did not renew their USA Waterski Membership because of this mandate ! including myself who is / was a very active Senior Judge and State Safety official, that's a lot of people from small lake . It would be interesting to know how many members they have lost because of this .

[lakeaustinskier]

As @lpskier mentioned watch "Athlete A" or if you want to go really deep "Spotlight". Watching those terrific movies just makes you angry at the abuse that happened. People knew about the abuse and they ignored it.

 

I'd be curious to see how this topic falls out among age groups. I'll bet that the older demographic is complaining whereas the younger people take the course and move on. FWIW I'm 56.

 

I've been involved in Boy Scouts for over 20 years and all adults are required to take a similar course. As the parent of a three kids I just don't understand the resistance for this requirement. Issues such as lack of tournament boats are more important.

 

 

 

[usawaterskiHQ]

For those into stats:

 

USA-WSWS total members thru June 30 = 13,935 (up 1,409) from the same time period a year ago. USA-WSWS membership with the SS requirement has actually gone up. AWSA membership is 6,668 (up 702 from the same time in 2021)

 

A total of 6,207 members (out of nearly 10,000 adult members) have taken the core or refresher training - more than 62%.

 

To someone's earlier point about age - yes, the older demographic is the one mostly complaining. Those under 30 are used to doing things like Safe Sport and have no issue with it.

[jjackkrash]

We just got back from a fantastic Western Regionals. It was well worth driving 24 hours in 100+ heat (round trip), suffering a flat tire in the middle of nowhere while suffering in said heat, and paying through the nose for diesel while getting 7 mpg's.

 

Taking a short online course that might help (and certainly won't hurt) kids seems like a strange place to draw a line in the sand as far as all the sh*t we put up with to enjoy the sport we all love.

[jayski]

@usawaterskiHQ perhaps compare those number to pre-covid times, an increase over the last year or two does not really show a true representation when lots of people were still not participating because of covid

[Bruce_Butterfield]

@usawaterskiHQ all of us got the "SCAM" email asking us to "verify our membership information" that was done by an outside organization. This scam had nothing to do with verifying our membership information, but want to "tell our story", then either pay to have the story told, or they would help with renewing membership.

 

 

To be charitable, this type of activity is dishonest and should not be used.

 

So how many members were renewed with this scam that otherwise would not have renewed? Call it what you will, but anyone recruited or renewed with this method would not be a regular tournament skier.

[JackQ]

The is the same vendor that University’s use to “Entice alumni to tell their story” and then encourage them to purchase a catalog of alumni stories, similar to a post graduate yearbook. Distasteful at best, and I am tired of the numerous postcards and spamish emails. It would have been more value added if they spent this amount of effort informing members of the forcing functions, options and pending decision for SafeSport

[usawaterskiHQ]

@Bruce_Butterfield - the email and Oral History project you referenced has nothing to do with membership renewals.

 

We partnered with Publishing Concepts (PCI) on this project as they produce publications for hundreds of military and veteran associations, specialty organizations, colleges and universities, high schools, and Greek organizations. We are using this to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the sport and they are working on our behalf to collect stories from our members. Here is an example of book they created for Purdue University - https://content.publishingconcepts.com/pubhub/PurdueAlumni/index.html

 

In addition, they are also helping to verify and clean up our membership data when they have members on the phone. Since moving to a new membership database, we’ve noticed a lot of our member data is not accurate (phone, address, etc.).

 

I apologize if you feel this project is a scam but it is not. We simply want people to verify their data and more importantly share their story for the book. There is no purchase necessary to be included in the publication. Full disclosure, USA-WSWS does receive a small revenue share from each book sold ($10 or so) but fundraising is not the intention of this project at all. We benefit from having a keepsake book celebrating the 100th anniversary of the sport and from crowd sourcing all of the member stories which we’ll use later for member spotlights on the website, magazine and social media platforms. For us getting this content is the real value. We've gotten more than 1,300 stories to date that we plan to repurpose over time.

 

As an FYI, this project was communicated to membership via an email on 5/31 letting everyone know that you may be receiving an additional email and/or postcard and that the project is legitimate. It was also posted on the website - https://www.teamusa.org/USA-Water-Ski/PCI-Oral-History-Project-FAQs. We did our best to give everyone a heads up.

 

This project is to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the sport.

 

For those asking about pre-Covid membership numbers, we are down about 500 from where we were in 2019. But the good news is people came back in 2021 and even more came back in 2022 (despite the addition of Safe Sport).

 

I have an open door policy for anyone who has questions about Safe Sport, the Oral History Project, membership trends, financial health of the organization, etc. Drop me an email and I'll answer any questions and/or address any concerns you may have nboudreaux@usawaterski.org.

 

Feel free to also check out the minutes from all Executive Committee meetings (monthly) and board meetings (quarterly). Our organization is fully transparent.

 

https://www.teamusa.org/usa-water-ski/about-us/governance-documents