schroed

He's 8. He skied tournaments for the last couple years on 2 skis and now we're making the transition to 1.

My son just started running the slalom course on a single ski, but he needs a deep v handle to get up. I was trying to figure out if my son could use this deep v handle for a class C tournament in a couple weeks. The rule book has a dimension on the bridle of the handle at 11.5" +- 1.5". However, there's some confusing wording in the rule book. It states: "For skier-supplied handles in the Slalom and Jumping events, the tolerance on the bridal length shall be +2.5 cm/-10 cm (+1"/-4) with no tolerance on the triangular portion of the bridle." Does anyone know what this means exactly? It sounds like it means there's no tolerance on the length of the "V" or triangular length of the handle and hence a deep V would be acceptable. If that's the case, why even have a length dimension on the triangular length? I know I could probably just email Richelle, but I thought it would be more interesting to see what everyone has to say on this.

Terry's coaching is really good. I've taken a few lessons from him in the past and he's really helped me. I wish I could go!

@Horton - What wing angle are you using? I just increased my a bit to 8 degrees and the ski felt even better. I heard some others are running even more with this ski.

The way to grow nationals is to grow the participation in the sport. I just pulled up the ranking list for M2 slalom skiers and there is a total of 133 skiers listed for the entire nation. With the current qualification process for nationals that leaves about 33 M2 slalom skiers that could potentially go to nationals. If we spend all this time trying to figure out how to make nationals more appealing for the current skier base, you're still only going to get a maximum of about 30 skiers to ski in the M2 slalom division. In my opinion, that's a problem. Of course you could change the qualification process for nationals to make all those skiers eligible, but I don't think that's the right answer. If we grow participation in the sport we will be growing participation in nationals and from there we can make tweaks to make nationals better. Hence, I think our energies should be applied to growing participation. So, how do we grow participation? As others have discussed on this forum, it seems like there are three main barriers to growing participation. Those barriers are cost, access, and learning curve. I think we need to focus on finding creative ways to break down those barriers in order to increase participation in competitive water skiing and thus increasing participation at the national championships. From there we can figure out how to improve nationals.

I just rode the H2 for the first time yesterday and I was very impressed. It took me a couple passes to get used to the extra speed (especially at the gates) versus the Quest, but once I did it felt really good. My first impressions were that it carried more speed and turned with less effort than the Quest. The end result for me was that I was skiing at a more constant speed through the course and I had less upper body movement. I only took the one ride, but I'm thinking this ski will help my consistency and ultimately lead to higher scores. I'll update this thread once I've skied on it a bit more.

There seems to be a few problems with nationals that everyone is trying to solve here in different ways. Since I'm just a slalom skier I'm going to comment with only slalom in mind. With that said, here are the two main issues as I see: 1. The expense (both time and money) of participating in nationals for only one round of skiing. 2. The prestige and/or excitement of participating in nationals. For the first issue, I would recommend some small changes. I was thinking that instead of the host site running a "practice lake", instead eliminate the traditional practice and change to a "qualifier lake". On that lake, run a qualifying class C tournament for every slalom division. Those qualifying scores would then be used to seed the nationals main event. I would suggest that the qualifier be a voluntary round and cost something similar to the practice ride. I think this would solve a few issues. First, I've never really liked how practices are run at nationals. Although SMRR did a great job, it always seems like a pain to buy a ticket, put your name on the list, and wait around for a couple hours for your turn to practice. So, I assert that this "qualifying" tournament could basically serve as your practice. If it was run this way, you could have your qualifier be the day before the "main event" and you would know roughly were you would ski. If you don't ski the qualifier, you'll be out early in your event. If you want to pay a little extra money, you'll basically get two tournament scores while you're at nationals. Also, the "main event" wouldn't really change much from how it's run today, other than how the order is decided. Additional practice could still be held on the other lakes after the regular "main events" finish. The second issue is a much harder problem to solve. I completely agree that skiing at nationals with nobody on the shore isn't very exciting. I've had it happen to me a number of times for various reasons and it always feel like you're skiing in a regular "any weekend" class C tournament. In order to solve this, I think some larger changes will be needed. First, there probably needs to be some changes to the age group divisions so that divisions that only have a handful of skiers are merged with other divisions. That would result in larger divisions with more competition. Second, I would raise the level 8 requirement so that it's actually harder to qualify through the ranking list. I know this would reduce the number of people that could potentially go to nationals, but I think it might bring some prestige back to qualifying for nationals and thus motivate people to go who qualify. Next, I'd consider eliminating the MM and OM divisions for a national championship. The nationals has always been an amateur event and I believe it should say that way. For Open skiers I think we should bring back the US Open such that the world's best can ski there and for MM, they have the Big Dawg. Perhaps bringing some of the OM and MM back into their age division would bring back some prestige for winning the national title in your age group. Finally, we've got to find a way to make it more fun to hang out onsite. Live bands, bounce houses, more food booths, games to play, holding nats at places with better weather are a few of my ideas. I really enjoyed hanging out on the bridge at SMRR and watching the skiers, but there wasn't a lot to do. Maybe listening to a live band would have kept me there for longer.

I just pulled my ski out of my ski bag last night and found out that United also broke my brand new Quest 45. The fin and the wing was also bent. My ski had a fin protector on it (also broken), was packed in a ski bag, wrapped in towels and packed in a larger snow ski bag with some other things. Although the snow ski bag is mostly soft, it is pretty sturdy and with wheels and a firm plastic portion on the bottom of the bag (much like the Masterline bags). I have traveled many times with this bag for both snow skiing and water skiing and I've never had a problem. I'm pretty sure the only way to break this ski and bend the fin would have been to run over the bag with a baggage cart or something similar. So far I am extremely unhappy with United. I spent a fair amount of time on their baggage handling 800 number with some guy in India who didn't even know what a waterski was. Now I have to repack my bag and drive down to the airport to file my claim. Did the baggage handlers in Austin get tired of lugging skis around and decide to start running them over?

How big was the crowd there on Saturday?

Thanks @MarkM . It would have been fun if you were there as well. I hope you get better soon and are back for next year.

Colorado definitely skis differently than California. My son seemed to like it and set a PB at his first regionals! With my son skiing on Wednesday and me skiing Saturday I had the opportunity to ski two practice rides. The first one felt terrible. Greg Badal told me to "ski every pass like it was a tailwind". That advice helped and my second practice ride went a bit better. During the tournament in M3 @Horton 's boat with Bob Hardeman driving felt awesome. Hardeman is the man driving those Centurion's. Judging by the scores I think our group may have gotten the best ride of the tournament with that boat, driver, and perfect conditions. Congrats to Dan Lafavor for winning his first regionals. He put up a big score of 2.5@39 and made me nervous on the dock. I thought I had him going into 2 ball at 39 only to see the handle going down the lake with my hands not on it at the end of the turn. Thanks to everyone at Laku. My family had a fun vacation to CO.

@OB - Good point about conditions changing over time. Perhaps it may be more fair to split the group to try for more constant conditions. However, I'm not sure that the benefit of possible constant conditions out weighs the other points I was bringing up. I know a number of M3 guys that were not that happy to ski on the turnpike lake at Okeeheelee in the past. Also, conditions can often change drastically in short duration events. Case and point would be the conditions I had during my ride at Okeeheelee in the MM division compared with the top seeds a couple years ago. Also, I do have my MM rating. As mentioned above, I skied in the MM division in regionals and nationals 2 years ago. This year and last year I decided to ski in M3 in order to be more competitive. Right now the cut off average for MM is 105 buoys and my average is 105.17. Hence, I'm barely making it into MM. Most of the top M3 guys that are already registered for nationals this year have averages similar to mine so I know I'm not alone. Funny thing is when I signed up for MM a couple years ago many people asked me why I wasn't skiing M3 and last year when I signed up for M3 many people were asking me why I wasn't skiing MM. Also, there's a long history of guys skiing in their age groups until they won the national title and then moving into MM. I know a similar problem exists between Open Men and the younger age groups. I personally don't have a problem with people staying in their age groups until they win nationals.

Why is USA Waterski continuing to split up M3 and M4 at nationals between two lakes? Judging by the amount of people signed up for regionals I don't think either of those groups are going to be all that big. I realize the need to do this back when there were over 100 competitors in these divisions, but I don't think they need to do this anymore. This always seemed a bit unfair to me, makes some fairly high seeds ski early (think of the first people to ski on the higher seed lake), and takes away from some of the fun from the lower seeds skiing on a different lake. Isn't it time to move away from this?

Nice skiing...

I rode in the 14 for the first time as a boat judge this weekend. I didn't notice it being loud, but this boat did have carpet in it. Greg Badal was driving it at the time and he was keeping the boat very straight (there was a deviation meter in the boat so I could tell how straight it was) while at the same time giving the skiers great rides. One 34 mph skier even said if felt like 32 mph. So, he clearly was having no trouble keeping the boat well within record tolerance and giving the skiers a great feel. Later in the day I skied behind one of my favorite drivers who was driving the 14 MC for the first time. I asked him how the boat was and he said "you're lucky you're not the first one I pulled, but I've got it figured out now". He then proceeded to pull me within 1 buoy of my PB, so I think he was telling the truth. He later told me that the boat had a bit different feel to it than the older MCs or other boats out there. He also said that he hoped more drivers would get time behind it because he thought that people would need to get used to it before they'd be able to give people great pulls. So my opinion is that the new 14 skis great but takes a bit of practice driving to get used to.

I don't remember where you dropped the handle, but I think you dropped it before you got back to the boat buoys. I thought we were just practicing anyways. Next time I'm going to pay more attention to practice if my reputation as a judge will come into question during a practice set..... Regardless of the exact score, I'm not sure I want you to start doing crack!

@Mateo Vargas - I don't think you went out the exit gates. I scored you a 5.5. I'm with Brett that you deliberately messed up the end of that pass so that you wouldn't have to plunk down the dollars for a new ski!

Are all the boat manufacturers still using floats in the tank to determine depth and thus the level of fuel? That seems like such a 20th century low tech solution and, as we have all observed, doesn't seem to work very well. It seems like a better way to do it would be to use some sort of strain gauge load cell to measure the weight of the tank and use the voltage from the strain gauges to calculate the proper volume of fuel in the tank.

@markm - Good luck. I'm hoping I'll see you at regionals and nationals again.

@jody_seal - good post and good questions. I understand that the decline in numbers of participants in tournaments is nothing new. However, I think @Horton is making an observation that there is now a decline in sanctioned tournaments that I believe is directly related to the decline in tournament participation numbers. If the rate of decline in participation continues, then I would assert that there will be very few tournaments in all regions in the not too distant future. These declines in participation and tournaments also mean less revenue for USA Waterski and hence put the entire sanctioning and tournament system at risk. With that in mind, here are my opinions relating to your questions: 1) I don't think we really "need" to see the sport "grow in numbers", but I do think we need to stop the rate of decline in numbers for the reasons I mention above. Also, I think some growth (especially in the M1 and M2 divisions) would be healthy to have a larger and more competitive field at the regional level. 2) I don't think we want trick and jump to "fall by the wayside". I think trick and jump can be very exciting to watch and can bring new people into the sport. Also, I think it brings another area for some athletes to excel at when slalom may not be their best discipline. 3 & 4) I don't think we want the boat manufacturers or speed control manufacturers to "drive the bus". However, I do believe zero off was a good thing for our sport that allowed for very consistent pulls and course times. I'm hoping the effect of the transition from PP to Zero Off is starting to get behind us as more used boats with zero off at lower price points are starting to enter the market. I also think that it shouldn't be necessary to pull a tournament with a brand new promo boat. We used our 2010 MC with zero off to pull a couple class C tournaments last year. I'm not sure if we needed some special exemption to do that or not. I think it should be OK for anyone to pull a tourney with an older boat as long as it has zero off so that the playing field is level for everyone in the USA Waterski ranking system. 5) I think the sport needs a true "pro level", but I'm not sure how it can be pull that off.

Correction to my post: The 2013 M4 slalom skier number in the Western Region is 134, not 88 as I entered above. That's still a 45% drop which I would consider big in 8 years. @MattP - I know people move divisions, but I think the point is still valid. If you total the men skiers ages 18 - 52 (M1-M4) from 2005 there were 644 participants. The total for 2013 was 454. That equates to a 29% drop in slalom tournament participation for adult males in 8 years. That's a big drop and should be something we should be concerned about if we want to keep tournament skiing for the next decade. I agree with @horton that we should be worried about this and doing something to bring people into the sport. As a side note, my old water ski club near Sacramento is now a cable wakeboard park and is doing extremely well. Check out this picture from their website: https://wakeislandwatersports.com/observation-deck-beach/ Maybe we should be hosting free learn to ski days at our private ski lakes and allowing people to pay per ride rather than forcing people to buy expensive, year long memberships to private lakes.

I just pulled up some numbers in the Western Region using the USA Waterski rankings list and it was a bit disturbing. Here's the number of ranked skiers (meaning participated in a tournies): M1 2005: 58 skiers 2013: 43 skiers --> 25% drop M2 2005: 69 skiers 2013: 41 skiers --> 40% drop M3 2005: 192 skiers 2013: 88 skiers --> 54% drop M4 2005: 245 skiers 2013: 88 skiers --> 64% drop M5 2005: 80 skiers 2013: 148 skiers --> 45% increase It's interesting that the number of M5 skiers has gone up quite a bit. However, the M3 and M4 numbers are a bit scary. M4 had a 64% drop in participation in 8 years! I know people move divisions, but that's a big number. I would also argue that the M4 age is probably the most likely age to hold a tournament as people at that age typically own the sites and are motivated to hold tournaments. This reduction in tournament participation would lead to a drop in sanctioned tournaments.

@horton - you should come to nor cal more often. We've got some good tourneys happening up here this summer. LZ will have a couple good ones. The Redwood Shores tournaments that just started happening in the last few years are always a good time as well. I think they're holding a night ski informal "tourney" after the class C tourney on May 31st with glow buoys. That should be a good time.

@jjackkrash - you may be right. I can't remember. Who's the chic on the engine cover? I agree with @kstateskier!

@jjackkrash - It looks like the team boat, but I'm sure you know it's not exactly like it. I still have an old team picture with one of our Brendellas and the thing was a strange shade of purple. I remember Normy and Southam having those boats as well. They were pretty good boats for the price way back when.