JeffSurdej

One funny observation I always look at with college, and I know this goes against every idea of ability based skiing, and that is that in college we have just one ability group...mens slalom. No one ever complains about getting 74th place or complains that they got 1 buoy and they have to ski against freddy winter. But this is b/c of the team concept, it trumps all other formats and ideas. Team skiing was successful last year in certain areas and I hope that it only expands this year, but the key to team skiing is that every skier matters and they feel like they are a part of something bigger than their own score. 1 buoy matter as much to that team as freddy winter. The best part is that team skiing is self recruiting. Teams go after new skiers, they spent the time to get their team skiers better and take on events they normally would not. Traveling to events to ski against yourself only works for the best skiers. To the rest it is not worth the time and expense anymore, but team skiing changes all those dynamics. I hope states will really push the team concept this year and get behind it. I know when team Illinois left Nationals last year all we were talking about was how we had to get every Illinois skier to 2017 regionals b/c we definitely wanted to qualify for nationals next year. And I know Ohio and Minnesota are talking trash already so I'm hoping this really pushes regional particiaption this year.

Great stuff everyone. I've been reading it all and taking it all in. Everyone has good points, and there are pros and cons to every idea. I think we will never know until we try some of these ideas. If they don't work then we can always revert back. I would rather have AWSA try stuff over the next years and fail than do nothing and still fail. I do not see how in the world our membership grows without some changes to how we do things.

@ToddL here is the survey that went out to members that did not renew in the last 5 years. https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-WYKYMPRJ/

My personal opinion: I'm not a huge fan of seeing ability at level 8 and up. I think most top end skiers would rather go to nationals and compete in say mens 3 rather than compete in some 38 off group. That being said locally when I sit there and I'm the only skier in my division yet I see skiers in mens 4/5 that are close to me, I would much rather have fun and compete against them there. I 100% strongly agree that we need some type of ability group on the lower end of our sport, the entry barrier to enter AWSA is very intimidated. A college kid after running 3 buoys in college has to come ski against cole mccormick in mens 1? The last thing they are going to do is drive 2 hours, spend an entry to compete against skiers that much better. We have a broken system off ability for all skiers not running into short line. We need a place for them, like the good ole novice back in the day. So my belief is if we do anything we should come up with ability based groups for say Level 6 or even 7 and under, and then once you achieve level 8 perhaps you compete against age. I don't know the answer, or like someone said lets offer both. That way we don't upset the apple cart of what is working now for a lot of skiers but yet we provide a format and path for what's preventing new skiers from competing in AWSA events. Maybe we don't make any changes for juniors, and maybe we don't for age groups 6 and up. So let the thread begin on this subject :)

What we have so far: Right now it is in a very early stage of discussion, the spreadsheet that got out was just merely a look at how many skiers would fall into 6 buoy increments, it took the current 34 divisions (too many) to 19 (increases competition). But at this point that is all it was, just a way to see how many skiers are in the 50 buoy range vs 75 vs 100 etc. So yes it is the basis for a start but it is not a definite that we would go 100% ability and go 100% ability at reg/nat. Of course your feedback is very helpful but the committee would like to fine tune more details before we present anything for quality feedback. So far we have 2 ideas, 1) is 100% ability, with divisions every 6 buoys and the other 2) is to combine some of the current age divisions and then break them down into abilities, so we would take M1 and M2 together but then have 2-3 ability groups within them. Or combine Mens 3-4 maybe 5 and so the same. Once again we don;t have the exact breakdown, just discussing and like I said before what ever comes out would be put on a trial run on rankings and for running orders, lets people see it in 2017 and then see if its worth anything.

So first the why? Why is AWSA looking into this? Like any company or sport we have to look at ways to adapt, things that worked in the past don't always work for the new generation. If we don't try new things we can continue to see membership drop 5% a year. We have spend the last 10 years worrying about the top 1% of our sport and forgot about the bottom of the pyramid. For the top of our sport age divisions work just fine. The #1 answer in surveys last year for reasons skiers don't compete was that they didn't feel competitive enough so as long as we continue to make the guy who can't run the course or even run 22 off ski against 39 off in mens 1 just b/c he's 23 years old we are not going to solve that. In another survey when asked which new format skiers would like to see, ability based skiing as the #1 answer. And lastly we continue to be about the only sport in the world not formatted by some type of ability. The only ability divisions we have are open and MM and we do not even force those. Yes we have grassroots and that has helped but there is still no incentive for them to cross over into class C events when they have to go up against short line skiers, they say no thanks and we never see them again.

@MISkier as I stated before its way to early to answer those questions but they are all good things to consider. It may end up being just for local events or extend into reg/nat. There would be a great deal of testing and simulating for at least a year to see if it has any merit. I did notice a few of your questions seemed more based around another topic up for proposal and that is zero based scoring which would allow any skier to shorten the line or go up in speed after making 6 buoys. Ability based divisions is separate from that. Right now there is not anything posted to review b/c it has not been finalized yet. We had a 2 hour phone call yesterday with the skier qualifications committee on this subject and the discussion was great and a lot of pros and cons were discussed. And rules meets this saturday which this topic will come up as well. I would predict that the membership will be able to see a more concrete proposal by the time the winter meetings hit this Jan, but even then the committees objective as of right now for 2017 will be to run a few formats of ability based skiing on rankings as a test, just to see how skier would rank and start to view where they would fall. And we would also like to have these test divisions as options for developing running orders at local events. So if a LOC wants to group skiers by ability we give them that quick and easy option. Note: they can do this now but it would be more beneficial to test if the formats are provided to LOC's

I'v been waiting for this post :) Yes I have information to share and I will respond to this post in a few hours, just need time to write it up b.c it will be a long post to provide all information leading to this idea. The truth is, right now it is so so early in the discussions of this idea and concept that I literally can not even answer any of your 8 questions. I love to get feedback but I was hoping to have a little more details before everyone started weighing in. BRB

It would be equal to 6 @ -32 / 36mph. Yes will be interesting. AWSA passed this for juniors this year too. Hoping if it works we go all divisions. Problem is as long as regionals and nationals is ran class L we can not do this unless IWSF changes. So with this being a class C only adoption I'm not sure how much testing will be done in AWSA but NCWSA will have a lot of testing and we will be able to compare scores from same skiers and see if 6 buoys is a true handicap per 2 mph.

Yes if we choose one of these we will make sure they have great looking skier, some of these are quite interesting to see what outsiders think of our sport. I'm torn to go simple or make sure we have awsa and 3 events. On one hand, lets face it, we are not selling a product like apple, doesn't mean our goal is not to get big and develop a brand, but right now we have 7k members in awsa, and there are 5 billion cars in the world so I don't think this is going to become a global brand via any logo. The truth is the brand needs to be at USAwaterski level, we are a SD under them, our goal with this logo is much more centered around letting waterskiers know that we are the 3 event side of USAwaterski, or if thats too crowded at least the slalom side. Yes it will be on clothing and possibly cars but I wonder if its more important to make sure the logo signifies what we are as sport division or get funky and make a branded cool logo? Keep the advice coming. We have 5 finalist designer now so now we can make those designers work on new logos, i will have them try more centered around simplier logo like ironman, but what we cant really use words b/c we dont have one word to describe awsa so we need to go the apply way if anything.

You can also see all 43 designs here if you think one should be in the finals. https://99designs.com/logo-design/contests/waterski-logo-nationals-governing-body-576082

Pending board approval we will have our first AWSA team event this year where the teams compete at Regionals and the top winner at Regionals go onto Nationals. Teams are 5 men, 5 womens, 5 juniors. Its based off of NOPS but then points are awarded by placement only like NCWSA. Should be fine...stay tuned for more info or contact your regional council.

dont forget to include MM in your total pool of skiers, the 3% is based off m3,m4 and mm skiers. not m5

If over 35 years old you are not forced into open just MM, unless they elect to ski open. So for russell gay he doesnt have to go beyond MM but once he skis OM he stays there through nationals.

Let me first say as new president I completely agree that this proposal is not the answer to our sport. We are working on a good strategic plan over the next few years, 90% of it has nothing to do with elite skiers. But lets talk about the reasoning for the proposal. In a nutshell simply look at the rankings list champions in the last waterskier magazine, nate smith, jon travers, zach worden, anna gay, april coble, scot ellis, and karen truelove are all rankings list champions. This is not right! These are high level (pro) skiers who should not be skiing age divisions, and they taking away nationals spots from amateurs. We are the only sport in the world not based on ability, yet we have 2 ability based divisions (open/masters) but unless they are mandatory they are worthless divisions. This proposal is not for elite but for the non elite. Could this be the start of ability based skiing, I don't know, do I think ability based is much more needed at the lower level... yes. @BRY the 3% will be done just as the Level 9 (7%) is now, it is not top 3 in each division but yet the pool of skiers used in that calculation. i.e it is a very very high mark and those in L9 will still have the choice to stay in age. @ToddL you are correct on overall, a score is a score but I'm worried about an age division finished on Wednesday having to wait until masters men ski Saturday to find who won age division overall. Sandbagging might happen, not much we can do. The key is open and masters must be more prestigious, NCWSA has captured this, all schools would rather get 12th in D1 vs 1st in D2 @BRY whats a hidden bump? Good feedback everyone, so far all elite elite athletes I have talked to are behind it, even Anna Gay said she would rather trick open than G3 but she wants to slalom and jump G3, Now we have found a way for her to do both and still ski overall, although I'm not a huge fan of the overall solution b/c it forces her to ski overall in Open where she might not belong. But help us find a better solution, overall has stumped us for weeks, we love the single event part of this all but overall is challenging.

the overall part has really thrown us for a loop Eric and is not ideal in my mind but help us if you can figure out a better way to handle overall. The choices are (using you for an example) 1) allow you to trick MM, slalom and jump M5 and then drag your MM trick score into M5Overall. I like this but what sucks is if MM trick is saturday and M5 tuesday then all the M5 overall skiers have to wait until Saturday to find out who won overall. 2) you ski twice, once in MM trick for placement, then again first off the dock in M5T for overall. 3) force you to ski all events in M5 or MM. None of the 3 choices are prefect.

@klindy I'm very excited about the team rankings we have coming out and it is going to help but there is no substitute for actually competing by team on the water vs on rankings. Plus the team rankings is going to be handicapped so that will be fun and make the teams even but I think if we are to take this farther as in a new AWSA format you have to use real scores not improvement over average. This is why I fought this a bit when developing team rankings, I'm still not sold its the best way to handle it but time will tell and yes the team rankings will be a great start to whatever team format we end up with. I say we do state teams at each regionals next year, let the top state from each region go to nationals regardless of scores. this will motivate states to how up strong at regionals. Than those 5 states can ski at Nationals on behalf of the region.

@ShaneH I really think cypress should bid on US Nationals for 17 or 18, I have never laid eyes on a more prefect site for that event. 3 lakes-4 days, lets do it. I know your club is burnt out after NCWSA nats but I think you guys should add this to your bucket list of amazing events you have hosted there. US Nationals is tough but the length of it makes it tough, with 3 lakes you could do it in 4 days making the event easier and more profittable

Great topic everyone! In 22 years of being involved in NCWSA I have never heard a skier complain about being in the same division or event as pros. They eat it up and love it. Schools are happier to be in D1 to ski against the pros than to win D2, it has worked out perfect. The key to it all is the team aspect, Miami of Ohio had a jumper not land and it cost the team 250 points, freddy winter running 2.5 @ 41 vs running his opening pass of 32off was worth the same points. EVERY SKIER COUNTS AT ALL LEVELS. Its fantastic. Every single pro skier has come through NCWSA, I can not imagine it without them. These skiers have led universities to give waterskiing scholarships, it's great to see all these skiers be able to get a free education due to their talent. Waterskiing is not like most sports, most skiers are pro before they are college age, it's not a stepping stone like other sports. The pros have to stay in NCWSA. NCWSA membership is up 14% this year. It is working, now we need to figure out how to team ski in AWSA!

Lets talk team-after 2 months into presidency I have been thinking of hundreds of ideas but there is one idea that continues to stick out and it solves most of our problems with just this one change. AWSA NEEDS TO BE A TEAM SPORT NOT INDIVIDUAL. Think about skiing, we ski in groups by nature, ski clubs, family, etc. yet we go compete individually. 3 event skiing is a very quick, low ROI sport when skied individually. But when you ski for a team it changes that. It changes everything. Team skiing allows 39 off to ski with and against 1 buoy skiers b/c all scores count, and teams needs the lower skiers as much as the top end. It encourages teams to recruit on there own, we we ski individually we are selfish with our lake time, but if I want my team to win I'm going to find anyone I can to join my team and make my team better. Skiers will do events they wouldn't dream of doing normally in competition. One thing I notice in NCWSA is the lower ability skiers never complains about high end skiers skiing in their division. And how great is it to have just one event Mens slalom, not mens 1-14 slalom. Team skiing could change AWSA forever. But how do we do it, ski clubs vs ski clubs, states vs states. one idea we talked about this weekend was states so skiers would be trying to make their state team, and we could have individuals as well like independants at worlds but the team needs to be the focus and the way you advance,

Good thoughts @ToddL. We def need the liason relationships, awsa send ncwsa g3/b3 skiers, ncwsa sends them back when they graduate , but awsa needs to find a place for these skiers, they do not have to wait 5/10/15 years, they would jump right in if we can find the atmosphere that NCWSA provides. But none the less, I like the idea of capturing contact info, HQ does have all that already just not the parents, but they have university emails which will change in 5 years.

all great ideas gang, @GK I'm curious when you say you've been recommending it for years, as a board member I have never seen this proposal? @Bill22 this is a decent idea. I think we still need to allow skiers to go over max and get 6 extra buoys as well, I asked Freddy Kruegers dad this weekend if he prefers 30mph or 32, he says 32, but we make him go 30mph. We should accommodate these situations as well. He's going to retire from skiing due to not having fun at 30mph, so we loose another one.

@kfennell I'm not sure you are proving your point. The way I read your scenario is that you sometimes miss 28off @36 which means you pretty much make it and I would assume you get 3 or so at 32off@36. This is 6 buoys off. Granted in your case it might be 7-8 or but for others it might be 3-4. Either way it's really close to 6 buoys so why not let a bigger or smaller skier take advantage of their strengths. The rulebook has told us that @rq0013 is better compared to you but maybe that's not the case. Just food for thought.

@ToddL maybe you are right, we just need to get used to talking total buoy count not speed and line length.

M1skier can you expand on what you mean here? To mix up different types of competitions and tournament-level rankings would help keep skiers motivated to chase more than one avenue of accomplishment.