I guess the main question is, what insurance will a seperate 3 event organization supply and how will splitting our pool of payers in half cut our rates at all? Does the governing body really need to supply insurance? Should this be something that lake owners handle?
Do I like the direction USAWS has been going? Not at all, I think the entire organization from top to bottom needs to reevaluate what they want our sport to be and how best to serve the paying members. Does that mean I think we should leave? Of course not, because we are not children who can just stomp off and pout in the corner when things don't go there way. You fight to fix it, you buckle down, do some research and come up with a proposal to fix what we have. If you think AWSA is not representing you then go and push for greater autonomy. Breaking up just causes us to lose even more of what little clout our sport has in the eyes of legislators.
I don't know exact numbers (I could look it up but wont because...f doing work when hungover), but we have something like 15-18k members right now, which is pitiful as it is, but you break that in 2 and you end up with two groups that become more polarized against each other and have less respect in the eyes of the legislators that USAWS should be lobbying lawmakers to put forward laws that help us as a sport.
@Horton there are many injuries every year in water skiing. We are competing in a dangerous sport, if some how an extra 10 or 20 bucks a year is going to bankrupt participants in our sport then they really need to reevaluate their life decisions. We are adults that play with 50k dollar boats, 2 thousand dollar skis, and burn 100 bucks in gas for a day on the water. I know of the one death on the Southern Extreme show team, I believe there may have been another serious injury on a team in Alabama, but I do not know if that was during a sanctioned event or not. I can not remember another death in years before that.