kpickett

LeonL - Yeah. I think that's a good idea. But, I have been wondering if working on the gate is what has gotten me into the slump in the first place.

Skidawg - the water has been around 90, but it's a little cooler right now - mid 80s. What adjustment do you make?

I had a great lesson with Seth Stisher, and he was working on getting me to move my hips off the wake toward 2 ball - my offside turn - to get a better transition and help keep me from dropping my arm at the ball. We also worked on getting higher on the boat and letting my ski cast out on my turn-in for the gate. I've been getting a lot higher on the boat, but I feel like I'm now pulling too long into 1 ball.

Brent - I'm skiing at 34 on the Prophesy (but maybe back to the F1 tomorrow). I run 28 just about every time, and I was running 32 pretty regularly. Just started working on 35. Now, I'm even having trouble at 28, where I hadn't missed one for weeks before. Water has been around 90 throughout July. I'm running the slot fin on the Prophesy. I had a nasty fall just on a pullout a couple weeks ago, and I realized that my wing was just a tiny bit loose. When I run the stock fin, I get a little chatter on the ski, but the slot smoothed that out nicely.

Help! How do I break out of a big slump? Every set I'm skiing worse and worse. I know what I'm doing wrong - I'm not keeping my arms in, I'm dropping my hand on my offside turn, I'm looking at the buoys, etc. I've had some good coaching this year. I was skiing well, and now I'm sucking. I tried doing some freeskiing, which at least was fun. I've tried taking some time off. I think I'm falling out of love with my Prophesy. I went back to my F1, then back to the Prophesy, but it doesn't feel good. The F1 turns so nicely, but it makes me work so much harder in the pull. Got back on the Prophesy on Tuesday and took TWO out-the-fronts. Any advice?

Also, I love the idea of head-to-head tourneys that are handicapped for ability. Then, you get to ski against yourself AND really compete against someone else. I think that would be even more fun than the ability based grouping of INT.

I appreciate all the comments. This obviously stirs up a lot of passion. I think that if we didn't have two little kids, I'd really enjoy traveling around the state, meeting other skiers, and skiing at a bunch of different lakes, regardless of the competition. I'm hoping that my boys will get the bug to ski tourneys when they're a little older. Then I'll have good reason to do the circuit. I enjoy the INT, and I am going to do ours again this weekend. Maybe I'll hit an AWSA tourney before the season ends. Too bad we have to have two different sanctioning body memberships.

Thanks for the comments, everyone. I think this should be an ongoing discussion. Phil, I'll do the tourney with you, if my schedule allows. Thanks! You, of course, have moved into that elusive 38 class! I'm going to take this weekend off from skiing entirely before our INT tourney next week. Hope I can break out of the slump.

To everyone - I understand about the personal challenge and improvement aspect. I ran a PB of 1.5 @ 35 at our first INT this year. I was definitely psyched. My previous tourney PB was 1 or 2 at 28, but I hadn't skied the tourneys for 3 years, so obviously, I had been improving without the motivation of a tourney. I guess the real issue for me is - if it's just about testing myself, I can do that every time I ski. If it's about competition, what fun is it if there are only 2 skiers in the division? OR, what fun is it if everyone else in the division skis 2 passes better than you do? This board is great. I lurk here every day. I learn a lot from you guys. Most of you ski so much better than I do, that it would seem pointless to "compete" against you in a tournament.

LeonL - at our INT tourneys, we all pitch in and work - doing announcing, boat judging, working the dock, etc. It is fun, no question. It's just really hard to do a whole weekend of that when you have little kids.

Horton - every time I ski a pass, it's a challenge. These days, while I'm in a slump, it's more challenging than I want.

After reading through the thread, "Is skiing dying?" there was a lot of discussion of serious skiers who do tournaments and those who don't. So, I have an honest question (and I'm not trying to start any sort of flame war at all). If I'm not even close to being good enough to ski nationals or even regionals, why should I ski tournaments? I'm doing the INT this year, but mainly because it's hosted at my lake. It does feel a little silly, though, since everyone (more or less) skiing the tournament is a member of the lake, and I'm just skiing a tourney with the same folks I always ski with. Plus, there are only a couple other folks in my division. I thought there might be more folks at the AWSA tournaments, so I looked up scores from a couple local AWSA tourneys and found there were only 2 or 3 other M3 skiers per tournament there also. As an M3 skier who can only get a couple at 35, I am not really competitive in my age group, so it's hard to see travelling to tournaments and paying entry fees for a couple passes, when I could ski all weekend at my home lake, where it's fun for my wife and our 9 month old and 4 year old. My wife is not going to ski tournaments - period. Some day my kids might, and that would make it more attractive for me to ski. So, someone talk me into it. Why ski tournaments?

I'm in Juneau 2 months out of the year, and there's really no skiing in Southeast. I finally got someone to pull me in the channel behind a skiff. It wasn't private lake course skiing, but at least I got on the water. I think that's all you can hope for unless you get up to TW's area. Kyle Pickett

MS - yeah, when I bought the boat, I couldn't even get through 22 off. Last summer I started running 32, and 35 is my goal this year. I never thought I'd be at these line lengths. The spray is especially brutal in a head wind. Rumor has it that on the ProTour models in '94, there was a little pocket cut into the spray rails to knock down the spray. I'm thinking of trying something like that. I'm just not sure which way to go with it.

Another vote for the ACME CNC props. I've got a 94 190 no slot (same hull as the 93). I do have the LT1, so there's more holeshot than anyone needs. I'm running the ACME 13 x 12. Can't beat it. Here's a pic of the wake at 34 right after I changed to the ACME.

I had a couple lessons with Terry right at the beginning of the season a couple years ago. I was worried, because I definitely wasn't in mid-season shape, but the lessons were great. I got good stuff to work with throughout the season. Terry is a great coach. In my experience, he was pretty quiet the first couple sets, because he was watching closely. Then he really nailed what I needed to work on. I got a lot out of skiing with him. Try to watch him ski from the boat. That was a lesson in itself!

One more of the skiing:

It was a good day skiing. We had a baby in September, so Alice was out the whole season. She was pretty bummed. We got out last weekend for our first ski of the season, and then she wanted to go again today. I'm pretty proud of her! Richard - as requested. Kyle

I'm a lucky one. Today is my wife's birthday. (It also happens to be about 65 and sunny out.) I said, "What do you want to do today? We'll do whatever you like." So, she says, "Let's go down to the lake and take a ski." Pretty, pretty amazing.

I have a question about costs. I've skied the INT a couple years. Now that I'm getting a bit better, I'm thinking about trying a couple AWSA tourneys this year. I've always seen folks say that the INT is more expensive than the AWSA tourneys. Can someone shed some light on this for me? If I ski all five nor-cal INT tourneys at $30 a pop plus the $50 membership, it's a total of $200. If I ski the five AWSA tourneys closest to me at $50 a pop, plus the $70 USA Waterski membership, it's a total of $320. Am I missing something here? I was thinking of skiing some of both, but with two memberships, that gets a lot more expensive, fast. I guess the deciding factor will be if my wife wants to ski the tourneys this year. She'll definitely want the INT over the AWSA because of the mulligans.

I was looking forward to reading about servo conversion, too. Anyone else taking up this project?

My wife is about the same size and was in the same situation two summers ago. She was on an older 64" KD 7000. After a lot of advice and trying a few combinations, we found a 65.5 D3 X5. She is really happy on the ski. She started running the full course at 26, then 28 in just a few weeks. The longer ski for slower speeds worked really well.

Way back (like 1990), my school didn't have a ski team. My buddy skied for UCLA, and I skied a couple tourneys with him. I just entered the tourney as a one man team from my school. I wish I had skied more tourneys then.

Yeah. I like the virtual tournament thing. I'm a member at Villa Lagos, near Red Bluff, CA. I'd go out and video for the virtual tourney this weekend, except Villa Lagos is hosting the INT Western Regionals, so the lake is going to be busy. I just bought Jason Hutchins's Prophesy (advertised on the BOS Classifieds), so I'm anxious to get out and ski.

I've posted 33 times, so I guess that's not a lurker, but I still don't think anyone here knows who I am though... I read the site a couple times a day.