I am competitive water skier, a competitive golfer and snow ski racer. The latter two sports have it figured out when it comes to providing a format that engages everyone competing against one another. A format that doesn't have one person in a division. A format that is fun and involves "everyone" competing against each other. Golf has it's handicap system and I've been employing that type of system at the New England Slalom Championship for years. We have only 2 divisions. To use a golf term a Gross score division which is a group of the better skiers skiing with no handicap adjustment and a handicap adjusted group or "Net" score group which encompasses the rest of the skiers and they are usually comprise of 2/3rds of the entries. This system works great.
I think most people are competitive and enjoy a chance to win or place and win prizes which we provide in the form of gift certificates. Now couple this with an national handicap system like golf and Nastar and you have a system to now have "ABILITY BASED" tournaments and rankings.
The one big difference with golf is that all your practice rounds are entered into the handicap system and that's how golfers can compile so many scores towards their handicap. With Nastar all the runs go into the system and the races are timed and sanctioned by Nastar officials. You can only get Nastar scores while in competition but at a Nastar race there is usually time to take up to 6 timed runs so you can accumulate quite of few runs in a season. Much like waterskiing, Nastar takes your top three or lowest times to calculate your handicap and the times must be from 3 completely different races.
With waterskiing we only draw from tournaments but maybe some rules could be drawn up to allow for "some" practice runs to be entered for handicapping. Maybe a run or two a week could be scored for handicap. A verification system like the one used in golf where your golf/skiing partners would sign off that the practice run was conducted to a class C standards in order to obtain more scores in the system. Understand the last sentence is very general and don't spend to much time on it.
The point is to develop an ability based system with gross and net scoring.
With a national handicap system you would be able to state your level with your handicap. Nobody outside waterskiing knows our scoring. Nastar rates everyone that way and it is primary expression of stating the measurement of your ability. The top skiers in the country are under a 5 handicap and it goes all the way up to 60 or so. Golf ranges from the 30's to a negative handicap for the pros. They really have to do it that way because snow ski and golf courses are not the same so it's the best way to summarize or express it. Nastar seems to employ some sort of a NOPS type system as well with regard to age. If you are 10 years older than someone and you scored the same race time the older person will get a lower handicap. So keep that in mind.
Golf has a formula. They take the average I believe of the 10 best scores running, average it, multiply it by that golf courses rating which brings it up or down a little then I believe multiplies it by 96% to get your handicap.
At the New England Slalom we take the skiers National rank average and multiply it by 95%, then subtract that score from the Men's open rating score and we call that par and the difference is your handicap. In short order your average is say 95 and the open rating is say 105 then your handicap is 10. I've tested it and it works good throughout all handicap levels. The 95% of the handicap reduction makes it work good and equitable. You have to have 3 tournaments to participate in our handicap system. We have skiers with handicaps up to 50 and sometimes more.
One thing that waterskiing has going for it to make it's scoring system simpler is that all the courses are the same unlike golf and snow skiing. The speeds are set so the only variables are score and age should you decide to overlay it with NOPS.
36 can ski with 34 mph skiers as well. We give a 36mph skier a +6 buoys start with to even the numbers out. We feel that 6@35/36 for our purposes is equal to 6@38/34 mph and it works pretty good with the +6.
Tournaments can have gross and net divisions. Nationals and regionals could be run that way as well but I think you'd have to take a poll on what the majority of skiers would like as far as that goes.
I know this has been talked about allot over recent years and there are many tournaments doing their own creative tournament formats. I would like to see a poll taken and would like to see what an ability based handicap system would do for tournament waterskiing. It's a big problem if you think about when you have skiers going to a "competition tournament" and they don't have anyone to ski against. Really?? The system has not moved forward with the times.