JayShower

Anyone have a copy of this waterski mag article?

In case anyone else was confused why the tournament search wasn't loading, looks like they are aware of the issue and are fixing it: https://www.usawaterski.org/news/2023/august/13/some-website-sections-currently-unavailable

Yeah very confusing! See you all in Florida!

So I just want to double check this means I’m qualified for nationals, pending participation in regionals? And it doesn’t matter what score I get at regionals? I also just got a score of 86 buoys but don’t think it will be in the system for a few days.

@MISkier thank you so much for the quick and detailed reply!

Hi! I saw this description under the nationals qualification page:

”LCQ (Last Chance Qualification) - After the Cut-off-Date, 'LCQ' qualification occurs when, either: a) your Rank Value [Ranking Score] exceeds the 'Locked' COA for this tournament or b) when you get a score (in any of the specified qualifying tournaments that exceeds the 'Locked' COA for this tournament . Also see the Regional Web Sites since LCQ Qualification methods vary by Tournament and Region. ”

I wasn’t able to find online on the AWSA Midwest website what tournaments count as one of the “specified qualifying tournaments”. Was hoping someone on ballofspray could show me where these tournaments are listed or had the answer.

I was at Bennett’s last week and asked Anne if I could record the warmup she does in the mornings for ski school and post it here. If anyone’s curious here it is (sorry about the quality, this isn’t TWBC):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ktl5Z4nbXmI

I think doing warmups is definitely a good idea before skiing, and is something everyone should do.

Also I highly recommend going to a ski school at the start of the season! I was able to learn without my old habits holding me back. I had one set where I regressed to skiing the same as the end of last season, and contrasting that with the better technique they taught me was amazing. Shoutout to Casper, thanks for all the coaching. The trick will be to keep skiing with good form without Casper helping me think about what I did wrong each pass!

With another season of spraymakers out now, I feel like I keep falling further behind my goal of listening to all the old episodes.

It seems like some people have a few episodes they reference back to, so I was wondering what everyone’s favorite episodes are. Which old episodes are the best? I don’t think I’ll be able to listen to every old episode.

Thanks everyone for the tips! Flights are cheaper than I thought (at least right now).

Also I’m not sure I understand how qualification works. On the usawaterski rankings site for nationals qualifications, the COA for slalom is 85.67. My rank value is below that, but if I increase my LCQ High Rank Value by skiing in tournaments this summer above that would I be qualified?

Does anyone have tips on how to make traveling to (USA) nationals less expensive? Thinking I want to go this year, it seems like a fun way to meet lots of other skiers from around the country.

Some ideas I have: try to carpool from the airport with other skiers, split hotel, maybe camp in a tent like collegiate tournaments (idk where though).

This of course depends on me qualifying, which I think I can do if I keep improving. We will see!

These are awesome

Okay I just had a thought, does TWBC close entries for the contest after round 1 to encourage people to tune in and watch round 1 of the tournament? I might’ve watched it today without that rule, but it definitely helped encourage me.

Is there an up-to-date list of this somewhere?

@rawly I was able to find a couple helmets that speed skiers use after a quick google search: the gath neo surfing helmet - https://gathsports.com/product/gath-hat-neo/

and this rally helmet - https://www.stilohelmets.com/products/stilo-wrc-des-offshore-helmet

Ski racing Australia rules say helmets must be close fitting to prevent “bucketing” and also attached securely with a strap, not a “D” Clip (not sure what that means).

There was another ballofspray thread on helmets here: https://www.ballofspray.com/forum#/discussion/23751/helmets-for-slaloming

And they seemed to think something like a rugby skullcap would be good, like this: https://www.jobesports.com/uk/jobe-rental-softshell-helmet-orange-443721001/

Earlier @lpskier mentioned this helmet: https://www.burton.com/us/en/p/anon-merak-wavecel-helmet/W22-227331.html

Even helmets aren’t perfect though. One of my teammates who got concussed earlier this year thought he was good because he was symptom free, skied again- didn’t even crash, but he reaggravated his concussion and now he won’t get to ski at NCWSA nationals.

I don’t want to get off topic on thr COVID vaccine @Vernon Reeve , regardless of his specific situation we know concussions cause cognitive issues.

Also @thager while I see your point, being more safety conscious isn’t always a bad thing. E.g. stopping someone with a head injury from going back out and getting back to back concussions, which is even worse.

Here is the podcast episode on concussions that @kc mentioned: https://www.thewaterskipodcast.com/podcast/files/ep69-ski-talk-with-bruce-reid.php

@Jmoski there has been some limited research on this question of helmets for watersports:

https://boaterpal.com/do-helmets-help-prevent-injury-while-wakeboarding/

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12283-020-0321-6

In my personal experience jumping I’ve never had a jump helmet “bucket” the water and yank my head, but I don’t jump very far. I have worn our jump helmet when tricking though when I had a bad week where I couldn’t stop catching edges and I never had bucketing but it did stop my headaches after trick sets.

@S1Pitts what kinds of helmets do they use? I tried looking into this and it seems like there aren’t any great options for waterskiing. Maybe some kind of wakeboard helmet?

12:3 ski schools3 private lakes at tournaments1 private lake with course2 public lakes with courses2 public lakes w/o courses1 river w/o course

Idk if I should count butler chain of lakes as like 5 different lakes or not, I am just counting it as 1.

Should end up skiing at 3 more tournament lakes this year for a final total of 15.

@BraceMaker I mean that just sounds like the situation @jjackkrash describes, a team of university student water skiers, and if they tried to compete Iowa State university would pursue legal action, or at least they are threatening to.

I am just trying to understand the situation better in the event something like this would ever happen to my team (University of Michigan).

I skimmed through the NCWSA bylaws and wasn’t able to see anything that explicitly requires the club is sanctioned by the university, except for A team students must get a letter from the registrar attesting they have full-time student status, which I suppose the university could refuse to do. Just curious if someone else can point to the rule.

Here is link to the bylaws: http://www.ncwsa.com/resources-and-documents/

I am curious when they implemented the half-buoy scoring, what the reasons were. I agree that getting rid of the half-buoy score and giving the full buoy right there would lead to more runoffs and would incentivize continued skiing too.

Thanks, I will work on 34 -22 more.

Also I do listen to spraymakers a lot, I love them, but I feel like I am always falling behind on their episodes.