I realized after I got my first boat that I love slalom. Sold it and bought a RLXi. Go every free weekend that I'm able to on the water with friends. Dry suits in March/April, ski until Nov. Worked on the course like crazy until I could run it, worked up to max speed & shortened at least a little. Am hooked and don't see that ending anytime soon. Imagine there are a lot of people like me. If I can't find a reason to join I think it would be hard to hook people even further away from the fence.
When I think about joining, what I think of is
- Everybody here always complaining about something (rules, growth, no growth, class a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,r,q, judging, no judging, awsa, uswas, some other acronyms, etc). Sounds like a headache.
- Going to a tournament would mean traveling 1.5h+, probably missing my gate twice and driving home, compared to another fun day on the water with my kids & friends.
- Competing for what? Age based even if I ski my best and actually hit my gates, am still just a 22off guy so I don't really care how it would look on the rankings. Ability based, maybe it would a little more fun? I've looked at INT and if there were tournaments in my area I would probably try those before awsa.
- What else would I join for? Insurance? I don't even know why I would need it. Maybe if we had a club and club level insurance, or we ran tournaments and needed insurance for that, but I'm already otherwise insured on my own and don't know what I'd get out of paying for membership.
If not joining for tournaments & competition though I don't understand what else it would even get me? If anything?
Things that made me my ears perk up a little
- Gordon's gate proposal. Don't need to rehash it but I don't really "train", just ski and probably miss 50% or more of my gates, but I don't really care. I guess if I wanted to compete I would spend more time on it but who wants to do that unless you're really into it?
- New zbs rule. I try to get to max speed as often as I can but being able to shorten a little slower might make it a bit more fun if I were to make it to a tournament. I don't know if that would get me out there this year though.
Things that sound like something I'd join for but probably hard to do in practice:
- Regular coaching/clinic opportunities. I'd much sooner drive that 1.5h+ 2-3 times a season if it meant a day of coaching, meeting new people, etc. If being a member meant I knew that a couple times a season I would get access to reasonably nearby, reasonably priced clinics of 2-3 sets with a great coach, I'd probably do that. I bet there are even opportunities at some nearby sites already, but they're locally coordinated or just coordinated by private groups so we never even hear about them. A few years back when Wade did his little tour of clinics I happened to see in WSM that he was doing one not too far from me. I signed up, had a great day, but never saw anything like it again.
- Even coached sets at a tournament instead of competing might make me go but I could see that being difficult to manage. Not a bad gateway to get people on-site to watch the tournament while waiting between their sets and eventually want to try it out, though.
- Some program to 'guarantee' sets at other sites. I know if I'm traveling somewhere, I could ask around for a pull and have done it before, but always feel like I'm imposing. Usually it's people who don't need me around and were just out for their sets anyway, so even if I chip in/help out/etc just feel like I'm taking up their time. If there were some well publicized clubs where having my membership card meant I could easily just coordinate a few sets without feeling like I'm putting people out of their way, hunting down names and email addresses,etc , I might join for that.