Jump to content

Jimbo

Baller
  • Posts

    26
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    2

Posts posted by Jimbo

  1. @lpskier and @Clydesdale have it - at least for the teen competitor. My son, who has the competence @Luzz found to be important (national level skier) and identifies with the competence he has in the sport is increasingly driven by the author's point #10, Social programs - he continues to ski because he has friends who ski. If he didn't have several skiing friends who attend tournaments, I believe he would not want to ski. While he practices to achieve the competence, I believe he finds his identity in the sport from the social relationships *and* the competence. At most tournaments we see our son for 5 minutes at each event and then he is gone. On the golf cart with his friends, riding bikes with his friends or whatever else catches his eye.

     

    Teens are driven by their social relationships - so making skiing social is extremely important to prevent the "tumble," at least in my opinion. Camps, social events all are an important part of retention for teen athletes. Heck, even inviting his non-competitor friends to ski or wakeboard or surf with us helps prevent burnout and loss from the sport, but I have no idea how to do this on a wider level. Make some rec pulls at smaller tournaments for a chance to wakeboard or ski on two skis? Something to bring out the non-competitive friends and keep teens social, perhaps? I truly believe we need to find a way to draw more teens to tournaments to make them as social as they are competitive.

     

    As my wife often says - we can't keep thinking that what worked when we were kids 30-50 years ago is going to work today. The days of "because I said so..." are long past.

  2. Yep found it with your direction. Thanks! @disland

     

    The proposal to lengthen the jump surface and reduce the angle for Open Men was further discussed. It was felt that it was not practical to have a different surface length for different divisions in that it would create too much of a problem in ramp change between divisions.

     

    The council decided to accept the proposal in the following form. The specification for surface length will be changed from 6.4m-6.8m to 6.4m-7.1m. This will allow existing ramps to remain in tolerance with no change.

     

    The Open Men angle ratio will change from 0.271+/- .003 to 0.266+/-.005. In Rule 13.02 b) the recommended setting will change from 6.75m-6.8m to 6.75m-7.10m. In Rule 13.02 h) a 7.10 length marking will be added if the jump is capable of extending the length beyond 6.8 and still keep other required parameters, e.g. length under water of 50 cm.

     

  3. I've seen some tidbits lately about possible changes to jump ramps, but I can't seem to find anything specific in the AWSA rules or with google. Did I miss a memo somewhere? Or is this speculation at this point?

     

    Thanks!

  4. We were at Kirtand for 3 years - the skiing was pretty much limited to Elephant Butte. Its all open water and about a 2 hour drive, but we made the best of it and went often in the summer. I never saw a course there, but plenty of folks to ski with!

     

    Lots of opportunity to snow ski...even right on the top of Sandia Peak off of the tram.

  5. @skiinxs - I have a horse in the race and I agree with you. I've got a 12 year old currently in B2. In fact, I am in favor of the U14,U16,U18, U21 Jeff described (or something close). I think this is important for the sport.

     

    A lot of posts and discussion about how to keep kids in the sport, and I think that making the 14-18 year old age range more competitive is very important to that goal. The size and maturity difference between a 14 and an 18 year old is huge. If you want kids to stick with the sport, they need to feel competitive and not become disillusioned. Perhaps that is not how it was when we were kids, but every sport changes with the times.

     

    2 years is a reasonable spread in age divisions. I suspect AWSA has numbers, but I wonder how many small 13-14 year olds give up when they get to B3 and are faced with competing against a 6 foot 200 lb high school senior?

  6. Interesting thread - my wife and I are already contemplating building a house on our local "ski ditch" next year, so while we're doing it...I'll run 220 to the boat house. I'm sure it will happen sooner or later. If I win the lottery I'll cover the boat house in Tesla solar roofing :)
  7. Oh man. Sorry to see this! That's a bad one but the surgery result looks great. If your surgeon is ok with it, get yourself a knee scooter. It will help save your sanity once the initial pain is over. Waaaay better than crutches. I broke my tibia about 10 years ago and the scooter was extremely helpful. Particularly the basket on the front to carry things (don't judge me :)
  8. My two cents as a Dad of a first time nationals skier.

     

    Location was fantastic. You can't get much more central than Maize - 180 miles from the geographic center of the United States. I played with google maps and it seems drive-able from just about anywhere. 900 miles for us, but doable in a day. The development is gorgeous - loved the sandy beaches in front of the houses and the ease with which you could walk from parking to each of the lakes. We actually stayed in downtown Wichita, and the drive was maybe 20 minutes to the site. Plenty of great inexpensive restaurants and lodging very close by.

     

    The people were great. My B2 skier was completely jacked after Nationals, even though he wasn't even close to a podium. This was his first nationals (and he qualified a week before), but I can't say enough about how supportive the entire community is to our young skiers.

     

    As @Horton said - only negative I saw was lack of on-site food. A food truck court in the parking lot would have done very well.

  9. One more plug for the Radar TRA, since it is closeout season...my guy started slalom last September on a closeout 63" TRA with primes that I think cost ~250 bucks. He was about 70 lbs at the time. His first tourney was 19 long line and since then he's used the same ski to go 30 -15. He'll need something else in the next year, but we have definitely gotten our money out of that little TRA.
  10. Not sure its actually the case here, nor can I claim to be any kind of expert, but as I read your story I immediately thought about the Yips in baseball: when a catcher can suddenly no longer do the most mundane task of throwing the ball back to the pitcher. I guess the newer terminology is "misplaced focus," but it sure sounds like the slalom equivalent of the yips. Lots of thoughts out there how to fix it but a lot of the thought seems to be that the underlying cause is focusing on the simple task in too much detail to the point that failure becomes inevitable. Some of the approaches are relaxation\letting the mind drift and so forth.

     

    Might be worth a google and a read on a few sites on yips to see if it fits your situation and if any of the approaches might help.

  11. @Chef23 - absolutely. We started working with a jump coach a few months ago, but quickly realized that to progress he needed more reps on a well maintained, consistent course (both slalom and jump) - so we're moving our skiing to a private lake with well maintained jump and slalom courses.
  12. So my 12 year old son is a beginner B2 3 event skier. I have really only ever been a rec skier, but I have been pulling him for jump on our public lake (which actually has a ramp). We are moving his training to a private lake setting and I need to get serious about jump paths. He attended Bennetts this summer and we were told his current jump parameters are RTB-C, "in-course narrow," but honestly I have no idea what that means for the boat path. I understand the ZO settings.

     

    I have looked far and wide for information about various jump paths for the boat, but I haven't found much. Does anyone have a resource to help me understand the various paths, or widths from the ramp? Collegiate split, in-course, in-course narrow vs wide, etc?

×
×
  • Create New...