jgills88

On 4/3/2024 at 11:29 AM, Skoot1123 said:

@drago - what octane where you using?

Fully leaded gasoline actually

To be a little clearer, if you could only work on one pass on any given set, would you rather work on trying to make your opener as perfect as possible, or would you rather work your way up to your PB and take as many attempts at it as you can?

@aupatking by ski, I meant the slalom ski itself. In your opinion, would the difference between an HO, or a Radar (with all other settings equal) be more significant than moving your bindings on the same ski? Or adjusting your fin?

I've heard some very good skiers claim that bindings matter above everything else, so I was curious what other people thought 

On 10/20/2023 at 12:12 PM, Cooper_Trelawney said:

The chart really illustrates how long the current world jump record has stood and I honestly can't think of when it might get broken.  254' seems unreachable considering Krueger and Dodd aren't getting younger (the only jumpers to ever go 250+).  Am I wrong?

This is something that feels incredible to me. For the first time in my life, I was able to go to a few Pro Events this year, and seeing jumpers go all out and *maybe* hit 230 in person made me realize just how crazy 250 is. In slalom we see attempts at 43off fairly regularly, and many trick skiers edge near the 12k mark at most events, but getting an extra 20-25ft in jump is crazy. Someone will break the record eventually, but I'm curious to see what it will take and how long

Many people talk about doing different things to set up their ski. If you could only change one thing with your equipment, what would be the best "bang for your buck" in your opinion?

I've seen a jump with a little barrier created by pvc pipes and this plastic mesh: https://www.amazon.com/OLDMACDONALD-Guardian-Warning-Barrier-100-Feet/dp/B07MMY52RJ/ref=asc_df_B07MMY52RJ/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=416949847877&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2124697657511094650&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9012393&hvtargid=pla-871390734641&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=94694114075&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=416949847877&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2124697657511094650&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9012393&hvtargid=pla-871390734641

They welded two small pipes to the bottom of the jump, and let the poles sit in there when not in use. When you go to turn on the ramp, roll up the mesh and pipes and toss it in the boat until you're done. Works really well, never seen a Goose on the ramp in the years since they added it

19 hours ago, Bongo said:

3. How do (MW) collegiate teams convince those water skiers who were at the edge of the podium in AWSA B/G 4-5 Regionals to ski in college?  I know of a couple skiers who attend college where they have a collegiate team and aren't skiing. My suspicion is either burnt out, too serious or "been there, done that".    One of the skiers would be a CW with nearly a 100' jump, slalom pass at 34mph and decent trick run. Chit, she'd be podium at all tournaments, except potentially nationals. And be the talk of the tournament.

4. How do (MW) collegiate teams avoid a caste hierarchy?  Not only who skis A-team / B-team, but who gets "good" water and "good" times during -vs- the left-overs.   I'm thankful my daughter is a rated driver, decent'ish coach to less skilled skiers and avoids actual class volunteers to skiers who show up. I hear from others I know  at hers and other colleges who expect only the good skiers will get the good times and water. Which alientates a lot of your skiers who didn't grow up competing

Just wanted to provide some insight on these points from I've seen from a collegiate perspective and as a high school coach (recently "retired" from the MW Board, have become active in the SAC, and have talked to ~30 teams throughout the country about how they run things, and coached HS Lacrosse for 4 years).

On the point of skiers/athletes deciding not to pursue their chosen sport in college, a lot of it stems from three major factors:

#1-- Burnout and change in scenery. From what ive seen, especially as a varsity sport coach, many kids finish their senior year and are just ready to stop playing their sport. Its not unusual to want a change in your life after doing something for so long. Some of the best lacrosse players i grew up with played from 6yo through senior year of high school, they just had their fill of the sport and moved on after graduating.

#2 -- Kids like to form their identities during their freshman/sophomore years of college, and often times that means they try new things and drop what they've done in the past. If kids only associate skiing with "boring" AWSA tournaments with their parents, of course they're gonna want to do something different. The trick solving this would be to find a way to create a more team oriented environment for younger skiers. (Show Ski teams thrive on having groups of 5-12yo and 13-17yos being in the same acts and associating skiing with each other rather than with their parents)

#3 -- There's also a number of people who go into freshman year wanting to (rightly) focus on school for a bit, and by the time they're comfortable adjusting the season is already over or they've made friends elsewhere and don't want to miss any events with them.

As far as ski hierarchy goes, from what ive seen in the Midwest teams follow a few different approaches depending on their ski situations: 

1) "Fun" teams with limited practice time -- A few teams I know follow a fairly strict whoever gets to the lake first, skis first. This is pretty great for ego-less skiing and getting more people in the water, however many of these teams typically don't compete as well.

2) "Comeptitive" teams with limited practice time -- typically are trying to win tournaments and qualify for nationals. This situation will have more hierarchy, and A team skiers will get priority, and if there's time, B team will ski too! Typically B team will still ski, but their sets might be shorter during the season. -- This is how my first year went, I took 10 maybe 15 sets (including tournaments) from August-October. I loved it, but didn't actually ski much. I can absolutely see how an experienced skier who's on B Team might not see the value in being on a team with this situation 

3) Competitive team with unlimited practice -- usually a pretty rare setup, but this is where B Team skiers thrive. A team skiers still get priority, but the lack of urgency in lake time means that skiers are free to come and go as they can, which means new skiers get many more opportunities to ski and are invited out more because teams usually need to ski in groups of three. These B team skiers tend to ski more, ski better, and build up stronger relationships with their teammates as the practice environment is much less structured. 

Typically in all cases though, whoever shows up first will get on the water first, if someone shows up late, they're getting the last set of A team skiers, and if they show up when B-Teamers are skiing, they're likely getting pushed to the very end of the order

There is a bunch of interesting stuff here, the thing that I think is the most promising as a new tool for collegiate teams is the portal to connect high school skiers (although there are some risks there that will definitely need oversight). To date, I haven't seen any solid, consistent ways to have skiers be able to communicate with teams en masse, and teams with potential recruits. From what ive seen, it's generally just M/W1 skiers talking to B/G5 skiers at tournaments about potential to join their schools teams. This tends to lead to top-heavy recruiting for teams that are already solid, and teams who are trying to establish themselves build almost entirely based off of whoever walks past their booth at a campus organization fair in the fall.

If there were enough junior skier saturation in this program, with active participation from most collegiate teams, and active, focused support for team creation, we could see a very different collegiate landscape in a few years as juniors see more schools to ski at than just the 20 who make nationals every year.

On 8/18/2023 at 9:10 AM, Cammit said:

It’s Texas A&M. If I’m being honest, not the biggest fan of borrowing jumpers cause they get beat up a little. Would hate to break another teams jumpers. 

That's very fair, especially in a smaller region like the SCR. If you were a Midwest team, there would be enough old/established teams around that everyone has an old old pair of jumpers taking up room in the trailer that can be passed around with no issue. 

Back to the smaller bindings w/ soap, and socks suggestion then. Depending on your budget and saving plan, you could also consider eventually getting a brand new pair of Flyman skis for a little over $1300 with tax 

If you have the choice, grab some Medium bindings. You can use soap for the big feet, I'm size 13 and pop into mediums no issue with soap.

Have people with small feet wear socks (you'd be surprised just how much extra space a pair of socks takes up). You could also look into using elastic ties over the bindings when using them. Typically, they're used for very good jumpers to help stay in their bindings, but I imagine they'd have the same effect for someone plopping.

Which team are you with?/What region do yall ski for? Depending on where you are, you might be able to borrow a pair of jumpers from another team at the tournament, that's what my team did a few times when we were in the same situation

Depending on how far you'd want to drive, you could get an out of state permit for Okeeheelee, according to the parks website you can drop an out of state boat for just over $200 for the year. Of course you'd have to budget out lodging and towing costs.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://discover.pbcgov.org/parks/PDF/Amenities/OkeeSkiPermit.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjSo-Om7cuAAxWMsoQIHUnlAzsQFnoECBgQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3_UGv2pLT4JaQHS3fhQ8of

Ski School wise, maybe check out Swerve Watersports in Tennessee.  Mike Bullock is a great coach and offers reasonable prices throughout the year. You'd have to double check availability though, he likes to go snow skiing in the winter!

You could also invest in a good dry suit and ski at home rather than go anywhere else. 

Just saw on Waterski Nation's instagram that this happened this weekend. I have zero knowledge of cable slalom, but thought this was cool.

Anyone more in the know have more context for what this means for the sport?

- Has Levy competed behind boats?

- How does cable ski compare to traditional 3-Event?

- Any guesses at how well top boat slalomers would do on a cable?

How is your dock setup? You could hook your feet around his shoulders, gently lower him towards the water and "dock start" from there.  I've worked with a number of little kids on my show team who like the act of skiing, but don't want to get in the water. This works out pretty well and broke most of them from any fears within a week or two

On 7/1/2023 at 11:54 PM, Kiwiskier said:

As a skier and a ski dad I think overall is the best of the “4 “ events . Most skiers find as they grow that they are better suited to one or two of the events however I believe all should start out as overall skiers . 
 

Can you expand on what your 4th event is? The college joke is slalom/trick/jump/drink, but if there's another kind of skiing that we could bring attention to, I'm all for it

10 hours ago, ETskier said:

Yes, agree with pro women starting at 32 off, men at 35. Mostly that will be down and back twice for most pro skiers. Worth the excitement if they get to their 5th pass. Shoot, jumping finals should be 2 passes. Seems like very few times the event is won on the 3rd jump.

For 2 jumps, safety might be an issue if skiers feel like they cannot pass because they'd only have one more attempt at the ramp. If we really want to try and cut down on jump time, maybe compromise and say skiers get 2 trips over the ramp, and up to 3 attempts. 

On the topic of views, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it already has more clicks than Igor Morozov's Inflight documentary that came out a couple years ago! It's the closest comparison of projects that I can think of and it's awesome that almost double the people have clicked on this in under a week!

https://www.waterskiprotour.com/post/the-case-for-jumping

Hey yall, I wrote a little editorial to add some variety to the Waterski Pro Tour articles during the pro season! I'm definitely not an expert in any sense, but I think this is a fun thing to read and hopefully bring light to different aspects of skiing! Let me know what you think, and be sure to check the WSPT website periodically for up to date info on the tour!

Off the top or my head,  there are some skiers who are amazing at one event (usually slalom or jump) and a few who are great at all three, but might not win. When watching the Pro Tour, who do you root for more?

Which would you rather have more coverage?

For what you're looking for, don't be afraid to contact the OWSA (Ohio Waterski Association)! They do junior development clinics every summer and have a bunch of good coaches who can help teach kids on a boom. They're on Facebook, or you can go to their website: skiowsa.com 

If you are in Northeast Ohio, you could also contact the Chippewa Lake Waterski Show team. Every weekend they teach new people how to ski on their booms. https://chippewaskiteam.com/contact/ or dm their instagram account: @chippewa_ski_team

For ski schools specifically, the closest one I'm aware of would be McClintock's Ski School in Ontario, Canada. It's under 5 hours away from Cleveland. Next closest would be Swerve as mentioned above which is a little over 5hrs away from Cincinnati 

@ScottScott in a vacuum, you're right, but whats happened a couple of times this season is one skier hits 6@41 and does not continue onto the 43 pass because they don't need to, either for seeding or placement. 

Based on this pattern, we'd need one skier to run -41 as a lower seed in the finals of a tournament to see an attempt at -43. Otherwise what happens is the top seed will attain the score to beat and ski away with the win. 

We see attempts at -43 when two skiers run -41.

To give another example, more than once Freddy Krueger has gone 1 and done in jump events after hitting the winning jump at 230ft. He could take his next 2 to go further and further, but he often doesn't. Now,  if the 2nd place jump were in the 240ft range, odds are he'd take more attempts at the ramp and possibly break a record

In line with what was said in the first comment, a couple years ago Nate had a 3@43 score disallowed due to some sort of boat issue (it was either a bad time, or bad path, I don't remember).  That tells me that the pass is possible. 

Running it in a tournament has the major hurdle of needing at least two people to run -41 for an attempt at -43 to happen. But I think that if we gave the top skiers as many attempts at -43 that they wanted, someone would turn 3, and maybe even hit 4

Based on the pricing and reactions from people here, I gotta wonder, who is this for?

It sounds like the main slalom demographic (the only people who *might* pay this premium specifically to ski) is currently being served by a couple of lakes within 20min of this one.

If they're gunning for rich people who just want a country club and might be interested in skiing, why build in Sacramento? Why not build further south and try for that demographic closer to LA? I imagine that type of demo is much larger down there, and as far as I can tell, ski lakes are basically non-existent near the city

Good luck to them, but this seems weird just looking at it

I've flown United with 3-event bags as my checked luggage a couple of times over the years. I've never had to pay an oversize bag fee, and typically it's hassel free. Most recently (last August), I had a bit of resistance, but after some polite conversation it was all figured out. Just make sure to have the policy up and ready on your phone just incase you get any push back. 

To add another angle to this discussion, while course slaloming not necessarily dying, I could see the lack of growth as a symptom of the natural siloing that the various watersports communities seem to have.  Individually, I've never met  3-eventer, wakeboarder, show skier or any other person involved in a towed watersport who wasn't absolutely excited to teach someone about their niche, but what I always see is friction from those same people about doing another type of sport.

Of course everyone is free to pursue their passions, but it might be a good exercise to take a look at what your own attitudes are towards trying something new, and maybe try and dissect the reasons you might hesitate to hop into something like a show pyramid, or try your hand at doing a barefoot trick run. These conversations occur at every level in every variation of watersports, it might be helpful to speak to other parts of the whole to try and figure out deeper, long lasting solutions to grow out all variations of waterskiing, rather than just your favorite

Tournament Preview Article: https://www.waterskiprotour.com/post/may-madness-waterski-pro-tour-stops