ShererSkier

Someday I hope to be that good! I can’t wait for ski season, might be heading to Florida in April. Defiantly going to try to get some sets in!

Wow a triple panda, I was half expecting that when @PacMan started this thread. I agree that there are sports that could eventually lead to having slalom become more mainstream. I would prefer it not using a cable fow towing. It is still weird to me that a boat pulling someone would matter. I’m starting to jump more on the Xgames bandwagon. Wakebording is there, we need to get some of the Xgames officials to see how intense slalom can be! I do like to see there are other people trying to support the sport in other ways!

@Jody_Seal @Nando Thanks for a little back story. I have a couple questions for you. Do you think the AWSA is not doing enough for the sport or was bad for the sport back when it was established? NO OFFENSE MEANT TO ANYONE, just curious. Also, What do you think needs to happen for the sport to gain more popularity? Any idea is a good one if you think it can improve the sport! I wish everyone would give at least one idea, I get that it could be a hard task but nothing is impossible. Forgetting about the Olympic thing for a while, Since the Xgames have been stated as a good venue to introduce slaloming, what can be done to promote that front. If 3 event can gain traction on the Xgames, how many collegiate water ski teams would try even harder if it meant getting televised on the Xgames? Back when I was in school, I loved the Xgames and wished I had been good enough at any sport to be on them. Then can you image if other campus students started hearing fellow students were going to the Xgames to compete. I don't know...maybe a spark of interest. I also love what @MarcusBrown has been doing with Flowpoint TV. That's absolutely awesome! I would love to see some other YouTube channels devoted to just trying to attract people to skiing. So many young people nowadays are on YouTube constantly that videos that explain how hard the technique is, with video footage (including occasional wipeouts) all with a fun upbeat vibe that makes people see a challenge and how rewarding it can be. Or another channel that just follows skiers on their daily routine of waterskiing, strange as it may sound my young cousin likes to watch people just doing stuff and it has pulled him into a few hobbies (snowboarding for one). @PacMan and I have a skiing YouTube channel so friends of ours can watch. I work with 2 people that have asked to come out and watch us ski this summer after they overheard me talking about the channel and subscribed to start watching our videos we have online.

@liquid d and wouldn’t that be awesome?? @klindy thanks a lot for saying that. I can speak for the both of us when I say we wouldn’t be the people we are without water skiing. Can I PM you about joining AWSA and some of the things that would be involved? I’m also interested in learning about what happened and what would or could be done nowadays. Just to reiterate everyone, we were not trying to evoke anything other than back and forth about trying to get the sport back to more popularity. I get that a lot on here may have a bad taste left in their mouths about past attempts but it never can hurt to try to come up with ideas. The reason we are all on this great website is because we love water skiing!!!

@Nando do you mean that trying to get into the olympics caused the downfall of televised and widely popular slalom skiing? Serious question, I’m 30 and don’t have knowledge of this. This conversation @PacMan had about this wasn’t to beat a dead horse or anything. Just trying to explore avenues of trying to gain popularity in the sport. The Xgames sounds like a good thing but the real problem I see with everything is funding and time to promote this to officials. What bothers me is how althleticly intensive these sports (3 event) are and that the Olympics are supposed to be the “worlds best atheletes” competing in their sports. I dont like the “because your being pulled by motorized” excuse. That’s just bs to me, so is the variables in driver or whatever. Wind played a huge part in alpine these Olympics and you don’t see anyone trying to build a dome around a ski hill to prevent that, and judges will always make wrong calls in any sport. I agree with earlier comments about redundancy in the Olympics nowadays, there seems to be more and more sports cropping up that are basically the same thing, might get hate for that but variety helps. Add to the fact that competitiveness between countries helps gain support. Also, there are ways to attract people through informative advertising. When I saw the news feed of Krueger breaking the jump record I was surprised when most of my attention was on the scientifical explanation of everything going on in the jump rather than the jump itself. It may be hard to get it going but dismissing anything admits defeat! If I could I’d blow millions if it meant getting 3 event into televised Xgames or Olympics! Just the way I feel.

@WIRiverRat I’d definitely be down for that! Can you send a PM whenever you figure out the days you’re doing the tournaments?

@ALPJr these are the only 2 I have right now. I should take some nice ones sometime. It really shines in the sun though!! Just got a new interior 2 years ago.

@swc5150 Nice! I’m in Minocqua, ski on Mercer Lake. I’d love to get a group of people together for some skiing fun someday. I’d be willing to drive too. Do you guys hang out and run the course together?

I wish there were more non-pro events to go to around the entire country. I live in Northern WI and I haven’t ever seen events around my area. The closest pro event is the Malibu open which I was going to last summer for the first time until it was canceled. I still have never been to a tourney or a laid back “come out, ski the course and have fun” event. I would be interested in competing in a tourney but the problem is every time I look into getting a membership so I can run in a tourney and then try to find one, brush up on the rules/proceedings, it all seems a little too much just for a weekend of maybe a few runs. I just feel like it’s too hard to just go out and ski in one maybe once but who knows... I don’t think there is any one thing that will propel the sport back into the mainstream televised event that it used to be. There needs to be a lot of working together between the big 3 boat companies, all the ski manufacturers, and a lot of motivated skiers to spread the event around to gain interest. The BBB event is a great idea for people to come out and have fun. There needs to be more of those around, and easier entry into sanctioned comps for newbies. Plus a support brochure somewhere to be a “skiing tourneys guide” that explains the entire process, staging, what to do, where to be, etc. Maybe a email sign up for receiving tourney info within a certain specified area. Spread any info on Facebook, Twitter, instagram, wherever to get more exposure. Just ease of access does tons for people especially if they have kids and busy careers. Also, I’m still trying to teach everyone I can to ski every summer. That helps too, if you see someone watching, go up and ask if they ski or want to learn. My family has had a lot of people come out to watch us ski and I always ask if they want to run the course or just ski, but absolutely no pressure. I bet between my dad, bro and I we’ve taught more than 50 people to ski and a few to run the course that still come out with us occasionally!! Maybe they won’t be the next big pro or even stay interested forever but more people skiing will make a difference too, it spreads knowledge about the sport.

@BraceMaker yeah that’s what I really want to buy. Everyone I’ve talked to about that boat loves it. The wake looks incredibly small too. In any case I’m looking for slalom performance as a priority.

I used JJVs Best boat cleaner. Worked great on decent scum line. Acid free, so no worries about harmful effects. Spray on, let sit and spray off. No scrubbing. If your looking to make it shine after, (like someone said earlier) rotary buffer with wool pad and cutting compound. Then foam pad polish, and I use orbital buffer for applying and removing wax. Boat still looks really great for being a 86!

I will be searching SIA in a couple years for a used promo. Really want a Master Craft to replace the 86 pro star I have right now but might end up with centurion because of the price difference. New boats are a little too pricey for the 5 (maybe 6) months I get to use it.

@sunvalleylaw did you ever try the Stokes gloves? Pros/cons? I’ve been looking into trying them out. I tried a pair of the radar boa arama gloves last summer but went through them quick. I love the arama compared to Kevlar though. But I’m looking for a less pricey alternate if I’m going to start going through 2 pairs a year. Thanks!

My biggest piece of advice is to free ski as often as you can to work on technique. I don't get to course ski as much as I'd like but I ski almost daily in the summer and multiple times on weekends when not on the course. I'm thrilled at my progress in the past few years since starting on the course but wish I had read more threads on BoS to help start out. Another thing that really helped me start getting more comfortable was to slow down to 32mph. I felt too rushed at 36 and even 34 to really learn the course, but at slower speeds I was able to really understand how to get into the proper body position and start making improvements running the course. Every time I start to have trouble with something I use the search bar on the forum page of BoS and look for a thread to help. There are many great teachers on this website that will help out. I would recommend getting a new ski if you're not comfortable on yours. Then record a video of yourself skiing and post it, that's the best way for everyone here to see your current skill level and you'll get helpful tips for sure! Most of all remember to have fun!

April is about my average starting month but I ski every day...in my mind!

@6balls I get ya. I just mean that F1 seemed to hit a good blend for a while where the championships were really competitive for quite a few years and I was hoping it would keep it going and not fall back into one team dominant for years style racing. I would never want F1 to be all the same cars and come down to only driver but even when Vettel won it 4 yrs in a row, 2 of those came down to the wire. There was also more passing throughout the rest of the field. I just like seeing that more than seeing a driver clinch the championship with many races left or train racing. I also agree with what @Horton would change, especially the aero. I don’t like that a car destroys the aero of the car running behind it. I would like to see some way to ease the financial aspect on newcoming and lower tier teams. The amount of funds Ferrari/Mercedes have compared to Sauber/Renault makes it harder for smaller teams to stay afloat.

I hope Alonso gets a real run at the championship again. I think he's the most complete driver in the field if he had the right car. I'm just sick of hearing how Lewis is the best F1 driver. If Mercedes didn't have a car far superior to the rest of the field, I'm not sure that Lewis would be walking away with championships like this. Plus, winning only seems to inflate his opinion of himself, makes me wish he would retire. I think F1 needs to bring unlimited testing back and figure someway to make the cars have to pit more often. Back when there was refueling, there was so much more strategy and less management in the racing that it made a lot more passing on track and an uncertainty toward the end of the race. There are too many races that end very close to the staring order nowadays. Sorry if I went on a little rant, just another sport I love that deserves more than its current state.

I have two cousins (8 and 11yo), one wants to get up one two skis and the other wants to learn to slalom. Also a friend of mine wants to ski again as she has had health problems and hasn't skied in 10 years, and her daughter wants to learn slalom. Getting all of them to their goals is my resolution... And run 32 off this summer!

I wonder what the load rating on something like that is? :D

I think it's a balance of both. At the end of 2016 I hurt my knee not skiing or lifting related. At the time of injury I weighed 185, benched 310, squatted 440, and dead lifted 465 all one rep maxes. since I could not squat or dead lift the entire off season and stopped benching heavy, I lost a lot of mass in those regions but not any weight. What I did is start a stretching program every day and gained a lot of flexibility and agility and started the 2017 season skiing better than I had all of 2016 right from the first pass. However, I did a lot of reading on technique in the off season and I believe that helped a lot, but I also felt it was easier to get into the proper position with my reduced mass and increased flexibility. This sport is so complex that I think it really is important to have a balance of all physical abilities.

The only ski I've has whistle was an HO Coefficient. Only on glass and in pre-turn, never was a long noise just for a split second after edge change.

@oldjeep are those slots on the second picture on the side to hang glasses from? It looks fantastic!

That’s my biggest problem right now. Timing wise I edge change pretty good but ride a little flat and loose my outbound direction. I have to get to the other edge quicker but I have a hard time with it for some reason.

I had the worst crash I've ever had slaloming. 28 off, kind of an OTF and didn't come out of bindings. Didn't ski the rest of the day afterwards, a real bell ringer. I also ran 28 off for the first time a couple days before this.

@Horton next season buy a die cast car model and get a witch doctor to voodoo it. That way you can puncture his tires during race weekends!