wskierman8

...and then Auburn got smoked :)

Looks good for just starting out! 2 things I would focus on before anything else: 1st, the most important thing I tell anyone that is just starting out is to always keep their shoulders and hips in alignment. Pretend they're connected by a steel rod that will keep you 'stacked.' This will reduce your headers and cartwheels. What I would do is not worry so much about crossing the wakes yet, instead I would do a pulling drill where you pull out to one side of the boat trying your best to achieve the perfect pull position. (It helps if someone in the boat is yelling at you to get your hips up, shoulders back, knees bent etc...) Once you have it down on one side switch over to the other. Do that until dropping into a good pull position feels natural and anything else feels wrong. Then you'll be ready to tackle the wake again. 2nd You look like your trying to steer yourself with the handle (moving the handle in the turn). Try reaching the handle towards the boat and turning back to it this will help you keep better balance in your transition from turn to pull.

@JeffSurdej I'm going to give this a try next year with my wednesday night ski league I'm trying to put together. Might be a great way to 'guinea pig' the idea across a large group of competitors. wednesdaywaterski.com/

I'm working on this rule for my wednesday waterski league. The only problem I've come across is for example a person runs 12m @ 55k then wants to shorten to 11m and speed up to 58k and they get 1 buoy, essentially they would get a 6 buoy bonus for only making 1 turn. My way to combat that particular 'opt up', as it stands now is to simply go back to the last completed pass.

Website is up. Check it out! wednesdaywaterski.com/

@drewski32 It's going to be a mixture. Weeks 1&2 will be straight buoy count. Weeks 3&4 are going to be handicapped based on the averages established. Then the 5th and final week will be a mixture of both. i.e. 2 separate score books that will be combined to crown a champion. I simulated a 'mock' tournament yesterday while working on the score sheet. I used the usawaterski averages and latest scores from some of the people who I know are going to join and it's going to be some tough competition. Already there are 4 skiers with an average buoy count of 108 or better. So the handicap is going to be a great way to make sure everyone is on an equal playing field. Besides you'd be surprised how well a handicap score of 0 will actually play, in the mock tournament the handicap score of 0 actually took second place out of the twelve participants everyone else scored a negative buoy count.

@gt2003 I agree that the larger clubs will have an advantage overall but at the end of the day our goal with this will be to grow the sport and have some fun. So this will simply give the smaller clubs the incentive to go out and recruit some newbies who in all likelihood will end up becoming the ringers when it comes to the handicap scoring. @"Mateo Vargas" you're in luck! we're not going to bother with the class C sanctioning instead we're going to use only a boat judge for our scoring. (if a club wants to sanction the event they are more than welcome to do so.) Just have to make sure you establish who your 10 skiers are going to be. The plan scoring wise is to have 2 tournaments based on total buoy count to establish averages, 2 tournaments with handicap scoring, and the final "championship" week to be a mixture of both.

@smilinjim pick a date! Also the website is currently under construction.

Looks like another 36 since 9/8/13 on the rankings list including scores at 43 and 6@41 scores.

@nleuth How about each site can ski 10, and we'll use the top 5 scores of the evening towards the teams cumulative score. Similar to collegiate where you ski 5 and use 4. That way each team will get the chance to have a diverse roster when the handicapped scoring comes along, as well as backup scores to use for the inevitable missed opener. Also by only using 5 scores, we'll give some of the smaller clubs in rural areas a chance to compete.

@skidawg I've been thinking about the video thing. I thought it would be great if we posted all the vids on youtube or a cloud server of some sort and made them public that way everyone has the opportunity to go through and review them. Make it a peer-based review system. The only problem with that is it will require more work from each team captain to make sure the videos get uploaded. (It'd be awesome if someone designed an app that uploaded the videos directly after each pass... maybe we'll have something in place for year 2)

Looking for more opinions... First off, I talked to a couple of guys from various sites today, and they recommended teams of 5 rather than 10. Mainly because they don't have 10 skiers in their club or 10 skiers within reasonable driving distance for a week night event. Also, since we are going to leave it up to the site to decide whether or not they're going to sanction the events it only makes sense to drop the cost for the site to enter. I was thinking either $250 or $500 per site for the 5 tournaments. Just remember the more that gets put in the pot, the better the prizes will be :wink:

Now that we have a running dialogue going and there appears to be plenty of interest to move forward. Here's a continuation on what I was thinking. The point system will work as follows say we end up with 100 skiers across the nation, the top skier of the night would end up with 1000 pts for his team, the second place skier 990 pts, third 980.... all the way down to 10 pts (i typed 100 in the first post that's incorrect) for the low score of the evening. The winning site would be the one with the highest cumulative pts for their 10 respective skiers. My current plan is to run 5 tournaments throughout the summer and my best idea about how to go forward would be to run: The first 2 tournaments as total buoy count. Not taking any speed age or sex into account. I realize that there are going to be some 'ringer' sites that have a bunch of guys who run into 39/41. Then I would switch the rules so that tournaments 3 & 4 are handicapped based on the skiers average from the first two. The point system will be the same however the top score will go to the skier who skied the most buoys above his average and the low score to the guy who falls furthest from his average. So make sure you run the opener :smile: This is where as @nleuth said having a diverse team will be extremely helpful as kids and beginners are going to be the ringers here. And finally for the 5th and final tournament of the summer my best idea so far is to make it a composite of both high score as well as handicapped score. ie there will be double the points available and this way everyone on the team will have the opportunity to really contribute. Your average is going to be your highest two scores from the year so anyone competing in the final week will have to of skied at least two of the weeks prior. Obviously as @skihard said there is opportunity for sandbagging but hopefully we can keep that to a minimum. If there's anything really suspect we can always go check the usawaterski rankings and get to the bottom of it. Thoughts?

Haha I'm working on the beer aspect still. It makes it tough having the competitors so spread out but I'm sure with enough participation, we can get something done. I mean, beer is the driving force behind this thing.

@John Brooks if we can get enough participation I am all for that.

@gginco I would love to put a prize on it some how. The only two questions that come up with that are 1. would it affect the integrity? and 2. If we get awsa involved can we get them to give us a break on the sanctioning fees? If we don't end up getting awsa involved then cash prizes will definitely be in play.

@skidawg at this point I'm thinking straight up scoring for the first year just to try and get it off the ground then the second year get more in depth with handicapping, junior division, women's division etc. But since this is all speculation at this point, I'm open to opinions. @OB1 I'm hoping that if we can make them all sanctioned tournaments our current method of the honor system will be enough to suffice. To further that, in order for a site to qualify, they would have to have hosted an awsa tournament within the last two years. Making it more likely that the courses are legit.

Definitely would set up a national ranking system for both the site vs site competition as well as the individual competitors rankings.

We had a similar scenario two weeks ago with a skier who had just switched into M3 but wanted to stay at 58kph. He was on the cusp of having his open rating; only a buoy or two away from the cut off and he skied open anyway and there were no issues.

You can ski open in the tournament, and your scores will be recorded like normal in the open division on the rankings list. however (I'm assuming you are a men's 3 skier) your scores in M3 will be recorded as if you were at 34 mph. For example: running 28 @36 would give you a total score of 90 buoys in the open division, but for your M3 ranking you will only be credited with 84 buoys

So disappointed I didn't know about this in time. What are the 2016 dates?

Ok, I have spoken to 3 different sites that tell me they could easily pull this event off. If you think you and your site could be interested leave a comment. I think if we could get upwards of 10 sites involved we could have something really fun to work with.

Slalom skiing has been trending towards larger, wider boats. ie the SN 200 and the new MC prostar. (Both 20' long aprox 8' wide.) The reason these larger boats are providing an advantage is because they have a lower density than the older SN 196's and MC 197's. (proven by the new boats having higher weights while maintaining the same 22" draft.) What this lower density has done is made the wakes flatter, wider and softer than what they were. Personally I still give the 200 wake a slight advantage over the new prostar but it is really close. These comments are only directed towards slalom skiing at 34/36 mph as that is what I am most familiar with. Some other factors that affect the wake include rpm, 3 blade vs 4 blade prop, weight in the boat (the wake tends to be harder when you have 3 fat guys in the boat vs 1 skinny driver. This goes back to my density argument.), and one last thing is that you want to make sure the boat is balanced. If the boat is tilted one way or another, the wake will also be tilted one way or another.

Hey ski community, recently I have been thinking about different ways to expand our sport and make it more fun. I've kicked around a couple of different ideas and after talking with several competitors throughout the summer this is the one that seems to have garnered the most interest. As I write this I intend it to be directed towards slalom although it could of course be expanded to trick and jump. (I'm hoping to eventually use this post and its responses as my unofficial market research to bring to usawaterski) What I want to do is get a nationwide site vs site league going. Now that our sport has the technology for live scoring and up to date rankings lists I think this idea could really take off. The idea would be to run the league similar to collegiate tournaments. That is to say the people that ski at your site become your teammates against the other sites that compete. For those of you who are unfamiliar with collegiate skiing; the way it works is: say we end up with 100 skiers across the nation, the top skier of the night would end up with 1000 pts for his team, the second place skier 990 pts, third 980.... all the way down to 100 pts for the low score of the evening. The winning site would be the one with the highest cumulative pts for their 10 respective skiers. The way it would work is that it would be a week night event (maybe wed or thurs) 5 weeks over the summer. Each site signs up at the beginning of the year for a set fee; lets call it $1000 and that would cover your club registration as well as the 5 class C tournament sanctions. For each of the 5 tournaments, each site can have up to 10 skiers compete for the site vs site competition (the site can truly run the tournament as they please ie. have as many skiers as they want; but only their top scores from the first round will count towards the competition) What I think this type of competition would accomplish is two-fold. First off, it will take care of one of the two major problems with our sport... time. By only utilizing 1 round from 10 competitors, these tournaments can easily be run in two hours or less, certainly more manageable than the typical all day affair. Second, I think this type of tournament will provide much more fun for its competitors. As an alumni of collegiate skiing, I can truly say those tournaments were the most fun I've ever had at a waterski event and it's not close. Sorry for the long post but I certainly look forward to and appreciate any and all feedback.