ToddL

I completely agree with @Horton on the "Lock" style gloves. The moment you open your hand, they completely release from the handle. I have been using this product for many years due to a forearm issue and later a index finger injury.

I like where @BraceMaker was headed on this. I think it can be done, but I recommend a smaller geography. Something like the following solution would allow skiers to group and participate. "State of state name Collegiate Skiers Team"Do an unaffiliated team by state. NCWSA would validate collegiate student status and facilitate linking the skiers together. Each student would simply request proof of enrollment to submit to NCWSA without specifying why/what purpose. Students attending a college which has an affiliated NCWSA team may not participate in the unaffiliated teams. The skiers are still on their own to organize, practice, etc. how they see fit. This might even mean individuals skiing training alone. Possibly the state "team" might not be allowed to participate in team placement at regionals/nationals, but individuals can participate for individual placement. When there are more than X number of students in the state team, the students can electively group into NCWSA registered sub teams, (with other remaining state skiers remaining in the state team). The sub teams can be named using the local county in which the majority of those skiers reside. "Somewhere County Collegiate Skiers Team". Sub teams can participate in regionals and nationals placement.

BTW, this 06 found a home in Texas. I have always had the benefit of friends with boats or other arrangements. This is my first personally-owned boat. Crazy, huh, after 30+ years of competition!?! (Terry) & I met up at Lake 38 with Keith Albritton ( ). My wife, son ( ) , and I made the trip over. First time ever at Lake 38. What a beautiful site! The famous Lake 38 excuse list (see pic) was present in case one was needed during the test set. Keith hopped in the boat while I drove and my son skied. Keith gave some pointers during the set which have been put to use ever since then. Both son and wife took a turn at the wheel. Handshakes and signatures ensued. We were supposed to hit the road pretty quickly, but the friendly conversation kept us their for a good while. As with any new-to-me owner, there are opportunities for enhancements, etc. All-in-all, the boat is in great shape and skis & drives wonderfully. Terry was a pleasure to do business with. Thanks, Terry!

The real opportunity is legacy. What will your legacy be when you retire from competition? Will you have inspired, trained, mentored a few new officials in the tasks in which you have been so deeply involved? Will you have created two replacements who have benefited from your superior expertise and will eventually even surpass you as they continue to grow in the sport?

My young adult, collegiate son has been working through his assistant judge and now scorer requirements. He is encouraging others to do so as well. However, it is not just the kids who need to be invited to become officials. Think about a few mid-aged adults who are returning to the sport for the sake of their young kids' participation. They are good recipients for a tap on the shoulder and a work requirement sheet. Also, those former novice skiers who are now a few years into normal Class C competition are good candidates for becoming officials.

@lpskier yup

Anyone no longer jumping got a used switch they can sell? https://ski-it-again.com/php/skiitagain.php?endless=summer&topic=Search&category=Jumpers&postid=64755

@Broussard yeah, I know. You aren't wrong.

@Bruce_Butterfield that assumes a rule allowing for 2 attempts would also equate to limiting to only 2 by negating the opportunity for driver error. That should not be the case. Driver/official could and should still call driver error if/when it exists.

Driver error has been the default deepwater start mulligan for as long as I can remember. It seems silly that it isn't just a formal rule. I see no harm in it. If it is already happening, then legitimizing it as a rule would not extend tournament time at all.

For those who like to read rules... https://www.ncwsa.com/resources/NCWSA%20Tournament%20RuleBook.pdf#page=4

I truly hope that the unaffiliated students who attend Iowa State while independently practicing and competing in water skiing competitions will continue to share their love of 3 event skiing with new unaffiliated students for years to come!

What @Horton said. HR department at work is NOT there to protect the employee. It is there to protect the employer.

Let us know when you get some new video, @kirkbauer

@kirkbauer You have a bad habit of some fear of the wakes. You approach, back off, squat a little, cross, then lean again. Also, you start hard, but can't maintain it into the wake. That is the opposite of what we want in slalom skiing. This is what we need to address. There are two things that allow a beginning slalom skier to progress: Posture and correct effort. Posture is pretty easy to obtain, but easiest to lose once things get real or when effort is applied incorrectly. So both are needed together to make progress. Obtain posture: You can do this on dry land, then repeat it on the water while riding straight behind the boat. Stand up as tall as you possibly can. Think eyes higher than the Bimini of the boat. Now, while keeping your back leg strong and mostly straight, bend your ankles with focus on your front ankle. When you do this, your front knee will move forward and slighting down. Also, your hips will move over your front foot. You may feel your shoulders slightly forward at this point. Freeze everything from the waist down and simply lean your shoulders back to the point that they are straight above your hips. Use a mirror if you need to verify your posture. You should be standing with your hips over your front foot and your shoulders over you hips (or slightly behind them). You should feel like the majority of your weight is on your front foot. (You may even be able to exaggerate this enough to slightly lift your back foot off the ground for a moment.) Your ankles will be bent and your knees will also slightly be bent in harmony with your ankles. The focus is only on the ankle bend. These ankles are your "shock absorbers". When you flex your shock absorbers, your waist/hips should remain forward with no bend. It is almost as if there is a straight line from your front knee up to your shoulders. Do this posture drill on the water, too. Once you obtain it, then you want to freeze your body in it and explore very gentle movements side to side. Keep it narrow and low intensity. You have to stay within the realm of confidence whereby you can keep that posture. If you find yourself dropping, squatting, bending your waist/knees for the wakes, etc.; then you are beyond your confidence realm at the moment. Move back behind the boat and repeat the process to regain correct posture. With the above posture, you will be more stable and stronger so as to eventually be confident to cut through the wakes in a single movement. Explore this new posture's strength by gently crossing the wakes while focused solely on maintaining the posture. Which leads me to #2. Number two: correct effort. We need to progressively explore holding a lean and crossing the wakes in a single, fluid action. To get there, start about where the edge of the white water is (roughly 8-12 feet outside of the wake). Check your posture. Start correct/stay correct. Start to turn your hips slightly to point toward the other side and gently lean on the rope WHILE staying in correct posture. Stay tall while you start to lean. Don't excessively "absorb" the wakes. Only your ankles are flexing as shock absorbers. Stay tall throughout. The goal here is to move from one side of the wakes to the other side in a single, consistent, controlled leaning motion. Initially, this might be very slow and chill. That is OK. As you move from the start of the crossing to the point at which you are behind the boat, you should feel the load grow slightly in the handle. You are leaning only as much as is necessary to maintain your lean, and not let the handle pull you up and out of your lean. Since the load grows as your approach the wakes and centerline of the boat's path, so does your effort. This is what is meant by a progressive lean. The end of the turn is not the peak of effort. The start of the lean is not the peak. Rather, the peak is at the first wake to centerline. So, we start gentle and progressively increase as we approach. That is why this method is called a progressive lean. As we approach the other side of the boat's wakes, we need to also be progressive as we reduce this effort. This is how we move from the lean to the edge change. After the centerline we do NOT want to generate additional acceleration. Rather, we want to manage the speed obtained prior to that point. Thus, we start to ease off our lean intensity. (No 2nd effort pulls on the other side.) This process starts sometime around the second wake. We are still in our lean posture, but the intensity is going to slowly reduce to zero. This is a progressive release of lean. Doing this will reduce/eliminate slack, make the edge change more predictable, improve our ability to retain good posture through the edge change and into the turn. All of which means that the finish of the turn will be smooth, and the next wake crossing will start with good posture. When practicing correct effort, there is no goal of getting wide. It is about building confidence to cross the wake in good posture using a method that ensures retaining that posture while crossing in a single flowing event. As your confidence grows due to the above means of posture and effort, you will find that you will be willing to turn your hips more across the boat's path, lean a bit more, and thus generate more speed to cross the wakes. This alone will provide more width. Most importantly, it will be width with good posture and the ability to slowly initiate a turn with a tight line. I hope the above was clear enough to get you going. Find your posture, effort, and flow.

I hear there is a portable slalom course business up for sale. It already has a "Z" in the name, too! (again, lighten up. It's a joke.)

Up next! Introducing the new CZ Fin! Quickly followed by the Whizper Fin! (It's a joke. Lighten up.)

Yikes! 2 years later... :-( Hope it continues to improve for you.

@skiboyny - so how did things recover for you? I have a Lat insertion injury. Didn't MRI it. I am at 6 weeks of rest and home rehab. It still feels sore when I pull down (closing a rea lift gate, garage door, etc.) or pull something far from me toward me (reaching something on the far side of the table and pulling toward me). Doc says, keep R&R for another 6-8 weeks. Hard to be patient, since all other movements in all other directions feel normal and strong.

I am not in charge of any decision. I am just saying this is a topic that is playing out and likely happening in other areas. I wanted to get some discussions about how others have handled it and some idea of the frequency of the issue elsewhere.

Skiing was founded in the 1920’s, AWSA founded in 1939, and competitive skiing boomed in popularity with the population growth of the baby boomers. Now those founding fathers and mothers of the growth years of our sport are reaching upper ages and still have the fire, passion, and love of competitive water skiing. They have given their all and made countless contributions. They continue to serve as judges, scorers, drivers, and officials at tournaments. However, at some point the difficult decision must come. Is this person still capable of serving in an official capacity at competitions? I have witnessed great people decline with age. Their wisdom and intelligence are not in question, nor is their heart of service. However, their ability to ensure fair and accurate competition has aged as well. In a sport where “in the moment” actions and decision are the bare minimum requirement to serve, mental acuity and reaction times are a factor of success or failure. I have seen skier’s lose trick runs due to errors in capturing the tricks at the pace performed or repeated requested to see that pass “one” more time for the 3rd time. I have seen missed video capture of jumps due to failures to click the right button or in time. In slalom, I have seen repeated requests to review gate video or difficulties keeping up with times called into the scorer and so on. I am not talking about the occasional mistake. I am speaking about those folks we all know and love who still show up to work their 6-10 skiers for the sake of keeping their rating, but put those skiers’ performances at risk. I also know that there are methods to deal with normal mistakes, like DVRs which run the in the background, or redundant judges on computers, etc. Those are not always available to all classes of tournaments in all locations. Regardless of their presence, that is not the topic of this post. Rather, what do we do about the person who is repeatedly missing a performance, making an error, and therefore negating skier performances, some of which may have been a PB or critical goal for that day? How do you ask someone to step down when they love the sport so much?

Road racing goal = find the smoothest line. So, looking farther ahead is beneficial toward that goal. That is akin to driving the slalom course. Looking further down course results in a smoother, straighter path vs. the driver who is judging each boat guide as it passes. @Horton - so the unstated assumption above in your post is that the goal is a level head position. You then draw a connection that focus increases the body's desire to level the head. So why does a dog tilt it's head to try and figure something out? (I digress...) I find that when I focus (too long) on the buoys after the edge change, it can cause my gaze to drop and so my shoulders do, too. When I am looking down course as I make my final approach to each buoy, my head (and shoulders) stay up and I finish with more stack. So, by your definition, low res helps me. I do look at the buoy during the centerline transition so as to judge my timing and rate of edge change, cast, reach, and commit to the turn.

If I were to manufacture a slalom skier buoy with reflective paint (silkscreened), I would locate it around the equator and up an inch or so, such that some portion is always above the water line when the buoy was properly inflated and adjusted to the surface. So, if you attempt to paint one, maybe try that location. I wouldn't want anything on the top of the buoy where my ski or body might graze it while rounding it. I wonder if a brand new buoy (deflated) could be silk-screened/inked.

What @Bbrandau said. I know you are not a new skier. However, I teach beginners to slalom quite frequently. A few more pointers that have helped them include: 1) What ^ he said 2) Be patient. Come out of the water squatting. (only begin to stand up once you feel air on your arms) 3) Stay behind the ski at the start. If you did #1 staying behind the ski will ensure no more "over the front" falls getting up. 4) Follow the ski. If the ski starts to head off to the left or right, go with it. (See #3) Many skiers come out of the water at a slight angle and move in that direction as they come up. 5) However, focus on being centered on the pylon. My this, I mean your ski, your rope, your sternum are all centered together with the point of connection to the boat.

@ScottScott - "[the boat] has to speed up above the set speed to maintain the proper time from buoy to buoy". Yep. That is what I hated about all of the published ZO setting charts. They didn't express this fact visually. Imagine a graph where the horizontal axis is time and the vertical axis is speed. Assume as the skier rounds the buoy, the speed is perfect and the time starts there. The next thing we'd expect to see is the impact of the skier loading the line. This would mean the graph would move lower in speed a dip under the perfect reference line. This dip would continue to get deeper if nothing happened. Based upon the ZO setting, eventually the boat would sense this reduction and would start to correct it. Initially, the correction will just "flatten" this negative curve and then eventually bring us back up to the perfect line. However, the process is not yet done. The area under the perfect speed line represents the amount of lost speed/time. This has to be countered with a equally sized area of time and speed above the perfect line so as to cancel it out and get a total perfect speed/time segment. The shape of this correction area/curve above the line doesn't have to match the other one. Only the area does. So, now consider a larger, crank-the-turn skier with an A1 ZO setting that is late to react and doesn't react with a lot of throttle intensity. The skier's effort is a big deep curve under the line. The corrective action is delayed and ramps up slowing. Thus, it will take a long time to negate that, meaning the throttle is elevated for a much longer period, possibly all the way to feet before the next buoy. Let's consider the opposite scenario: A light skier barely pulls the boat down and the C3+ ZO setting is one that reacts quickly and powerfully. This skier might create a small area/curve under the line but the boat will recover abruptly and quickly, possible back to true speed before the centerline. The literature on ZO settings also describes the throttle response in terms of symmetry or asymmetry. B is considered symmetrical in that the rate the throttle comes on is the same rate that it comes off. (Depth of throttle used is based upon what is needed to recover and counteract the skier's force.) The A setting is asymmetrical in that it ramps up the throttle slower than B, but will ramp off the throttle faster than B once the corrective event is completed. The C setting is also asymmetrical. but it ramps up faster than B, but then will taper off slower than B at the end of the corrective event. The numbers are actually harder to understand. It is the gforce target at which the throttle starts to back off on its corrective action. Some think of this as intensity. I think of it as the timing of the throttle release curve. "The lower the number, the sooner the skier will feel a reduction in the intensity of the pull from the boat." (taken from USAWS Speed Control Zero Off Presentation) In other words, it is the accelerometer sensor that tells the speed control that the skier's load has dropped to the level indicated by the selected number and thus the throttle roll off curve of the selected letter can begin. This is the one that takes a while to wrap one's head around, and I may not have it exactly correct. Still, to me a number 1 setting means the the throttle roll off curve will happen later because the skier's force has to be negated more before that can happen. Referenced above: USAWS Speed Control Zero Off Presentation See slides 18-30