JeffSurdej

@Jody_Seal Jody, Jody, Jody. I assume I am the past president you are referring to saying... 4. Does the leadership/membership really want to see some growth? any Growth in the sport? I don't think so as reading into our past AWSA president's comments. You were on the board with me the whole time I was president, do you honestly think I didn't want to GROW membership? I busted my balls 40 volunteer hours a week trying to make the sport better and grow. I felt I was transparent and listened, and god knows I tried a lot of things. Did they all work, hell no, was L10 a bust, yes, I admit it. Thank god I didn't get the ED job, you would have had a field day on here with me :) Now enough trashing and on to your reply which is spot on BTW 1) Safesport-I agree, coaches, ski schools, jr dev only...I am actually shocked this didn't kill membership more 2) Sliding scaling membership-freaking love this one, this was actually a proposal of mine when interviewing for the ED job, but yes Anna Gay who skis 25 tourneys a year should not pay the same as the guy going to 1 or 2 every year 3) Divisions-yes time to rethink them all 4) We have to find a value proposition for non-competition skiers 5) Magazine-couldn't agree more, go all in or get rid of it Why didn't I bring this up more as president, probably b/c I was too busy putting out fires like grievances, lawsuits, and so much other BS that leadership has to deal with day to day. And like you said many times, I don't think the issue is leadership as much as our current membership, our membership doesn't want the change, they like the sport as is.

A lot of good thoughts and ideas in this thread, I always love these discussions but we need to be a little realistic. Our sport will never be huge, let's just face it. I am not saying it can't grow and be better but we are naturally hindered by so many factors out of our control, factors that will always prevent it from being like other popular sports. Our sport was destined to shrink from the 90's no matter what anyone did or didn't do. And I always laugh at the comparison to the 90's, which was for sure our time, ESPN, huge crowds, but do you realize back then we only had 25,000 members of which 15,000 paid just for the boat insurance. So it's not like we were at 500,000 and shrunk to 14,000. USGA might have 700k members but how many play golf recreationally, 50 million? We have a great sport, but politics and policies will always play a role as they do in every sport and everything in life, I am sure the 90's of waterskiing had plenty of politics. So what can we do to make it better? I think we have to change how rankings work. Having a rankings list is important but when its made up of just your top 2 scores, and not based on competition, or some handicap, or how you did at Nationals, then it creates all this technology to assure scores around the world are the same. The problem is how do you create local competition when you can only fit 30-40 skiers in a weekend spread across so many ages and genders. The problem I see with rankings is that you only change your average or move up if you PB, I want to be able to go to a tourney, have a decent score and have it have some effect on rankings. I want some skin in the game each weekend. Honestly, if it wasn't for senior worlds I am not sure I would still be competing, our sport is so boring, we need competition every weekend on the water right at the event, I don't want to have to worry about getting a PB, I want to win or lose even if I don't ski great, I just can't figure out the way to make that happen outside of handicaps, anyone whos ever been to a handicapped event has the time of their life. So maybe we need to bring on handicapping outside of a few LOC's doing it themselves. IDK.

I heard it was a mid level ski, not a new top end version?

After slalom and trick prelims 🇺🇸 5516, 🇫🇷 5354🇨🇦 5280, 🇬🇧 4860.

@Cooper_Trelawney no placement stuff needed. Just put in scores into the formula for how they score team stuff and I used scores as if everyone skied what their iwsf ranking score is.

I have ran the test tourney for Worlds based off ranking scores. USA could bring back the Gold! USA-8465.40 Canada-8331.74 France-7956.95 GBR-7729

One of our jumps at Waters Edge doesn't pivot at the waterline and thus when we go from 5 foot to 6, I have to add flotation on the front and 10 gallons of water on the back to get full length/height. A pain in the butt during tournaments. I'm thinking of adding some sort of crank system or airbag system to make it easier to add and lessen weight on either end to accomplish this with less work and not having to swim flotation under the ramp. Has anyone seen some good systems for this out there?

@swbca great observation and something that has always perplexed me. Go look at scorebooks in late 90’s and early 2,000. All events all divisions the scores are so far down from back then especially trick and jump. yet the pros have greatly advanced. I know numbers are way down but you would almost think only the best would still be around. Really makes you wonder.

Website to buy these?

@Bruce_Butterfield I may have jumped the gun, its not official yet, you are correct. AWSA has 3 voting reps but their votes are worth 30 votes out of the 59.1 total votes.

@The_MS Agreed, was thinking the same thing. A lot of clubs don't know how to use the OLR email function, its easy if you know how to do it but yes to automate this based on who is entered would be a nice feature

@Golfguy pending risk management and board approval at end of Jan meetings, I would suggest contacting your voting reps to assure they are voting to remove this proposal.

@Dirt maybe we’ll figure them out. They already solved the background check. what are ALL the mandates? Are there any others besides Safesport?

Yes it is true that pending board approval in Jan that background checks will not be mandated unless officiating nationals or international level event. For those of you bashing the HELL out of USAWS you need to recognize how hard they fought to NOT make this happen in the first place and continued to fight after it was mandated to find a way to make it work so it didn't effect us negatively. Some of you think they don't care or that they sit back and do nothing or that they actually came up with the idea of SS and background checks for officials. Go sit in their shoes. Go deal with insurance companies who wont insure you without SS, parents mandating something be done, and all the BS. Got news for you, if AWSA breaks away from USAWS or USAWS breaks away from USOPC, were still gonna have to SS at some point I can almost guarantee it. I know it sucks but if its helps make sure our sport is around for decades b/c we are not being negligent and have insurance coverage then go online for 3 freaking hours. Hell you all spend 3 hours a day adjusting your fins settings. Love, ex-president looking for a panda :) Sorry, just tired of the negativity, lets just go ski people!

@markn @jayski I didn't mean to imply that the liability would shift to the individual. I don't think that's the case at all.

@dbressel Yes I would say for sure it would take some responsibility off the organization, that's the whole point, if we were doing nothing to prevent abuse we would be more liable, no different than taking measures to make sure our boats are safe etc.

@jayski it definitely decreases the possibility b/c we as an NGB have to protect our members and do the right thing. If we are taking the action to help prevent incidences we are way less likely to be negligent in a lawsuit. Same reason we have MVR now for drivers and coaching classes, and insurance at events.

I see both sides, I personally am not a fan of mandating this across the board, but I also understand the reasoning as one incident could shut down the organization for good. I would hate to have to make 30 guest members who come out for a ski for fun to learn about the sport go through SS. So maybe the real problem is that skiers can ski at worlds as guest members, but that's an IWWF thing, they mandate that a federation can not force skiers coming to ski worlds buy the membership. I'd be curious how many here at worlds have never competed in a US tourney and thus actually used the guest membership but I get the point, anyone can violate safesport even for 1 day.

@LeonL All active members will have to do the training – foreign or not. If they are a “guest member” – e.g. like we did with some foreign skiers for Worlds who are only skiing that one event b/c we need them to be members for the insurance that is sanctioned by USA-WSWS like World’s were then no. Guest members no since they are only participating for a day or two – all active members yes.

@LeonL I did not know that to be true so I am verifying b/c that does not seem fair.

over hits for 38's ran in WS prelims and we are not even into series 1

@Jody_Seal wow I'm behind on this discussion, couple quick comments 1) I agree 100% that safesport should only be for coaches, I can tell you that part of my resignation had to do with not wanted to deal with this mandate. This is not going to be pretty, cant wait to get 1200 NCWSA kids to take this course 2) I think the really debate is not starting a new organization but whether AWSA is better off on its own vs under the USAWS and IWSF umbrella. If there is a move to make I think that's it, if a new organization starts we are just splitting our resources and members which are limited as it is. Almost every comment/suggestion made here I can relate back to USAWS and/or IWSF 3) I don't want to debate L10 b/c its over, I know it failed, and I pushed to end it just as much as I was the reason it started but I always find it hypocritcal when someone says its not fair that a 6500 tricker had to trick against 10,000 yet its ok for a 1000 tricker to trick against 10,000 or same could be said for jump, its ok for 75 feet vs 180 but not 190 vs 220? L10 was about competition actually but like I said its over, agree to disagree. Love the conversation overall, hope to be able to keep up with it.

If skiers ski average, canada 8142, USA 8088, FRA 7984. Should be close one

@Jody_Seal I know you've never been my biggest fan, and that's fine. L10 was not crap, Anna Gay winning Masters and then tricking G3 at Nationals, Nate Smith winning M2 Slalom rankings, now that's crap. L10 had good intentions but was never implemented to work like it should. Doesn't matter, L10 is not the reason we are where we are. And yeah maybe the towboat decision was not the right call, although maybe Mastercraft would only have half the promo guys if we made that move, so what would be the gain, but I can promise you that we would be in this 3 event boat situation regardless of giving manufacturers more pulls at Nationals. Jody, I have asked you this before with no response, tell me, what 5 things would you do if you were president tmrw, 5 specific things, lets help Lyman do better and you cant use broad goals like "get on public waters" or stop the elitest mentally, give me 5 specific things you would do in this new organization.

Game on @Horton