Tag: Mad-City Ski Team

Wisconsin State Show Ski Tournament Preview

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This coming weekend the show skiing world will focus on a tiny lake in central Wisconsin to watch the world’s largest water ski tournament.

The place… the red sands of Lake Wazeecha, just east of Wisconsin Rapids. 25 Show Ski Teams from the State of Wisconsin will compete, probably about a 1000 or so people receiving many thousands of pulls behind the boats.

The man on the street is probably wondering how you can pull that many people that many times behind the boats in one weekend? The answer is actually very simple… put a lot of them behind the boat each time it leaves the dock. 2 people, 4 people you might be thinking… No. More like 10, 20, 30 or more all behind one boat at the same time. And they aren’t just skiing. They are doing ballet, swivel, jump, barefooting and pyramids.

Your also probably wondering what the hell is a show ski tournament? Well, each team gets 90 minutes to do their thing. They have 20 minutes to setup their show, 60 minutes to perform it and 10 minutes to clean up after themselves. The show consists of 14 acts and is judged based on difficulty, execution, flow and crowd appeal. The judges write down their numbers and at then end of the weekend they add them up and a champion is crowned.

Last year, my team, the Mad-City Ski Team, took home the gold and we are working hard to repeat as champions. We know that our neighbors to the south in Janesville want the title back and are doing everything they can to put out a better show than us and we’ll finally find out what happens this weekend. We ski Saturday about 11am and they ski on Sunday. Word on the street is Badgerland is bringing it too…

The crazy part of this competition, as we watch the other teams, we’re cheering them on, even though they are competing against us. We want to win, but we want to beat them when they bring their A-game.

Meanwhile, this weekend we’ll see people ski on everything from regular old skis, to their barefeet and even see people probably ski on some toilets. Beautiful ballet lines, strap doubles and maybe even get to see some doubles girls get tossed in the water so the guys can make it to jump on time.

And at the end of the weekend everyone comes home with red feet.

This week we had good water every night for practice, but had rough practices on Monday and Tuesday… Wednesday we finally had a good night on the water. Everything (more or less) is ready for Saturday…. Game On!!!

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Goin’ to Portage

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The Mad-City Ski Team had a road show tonight in Portage, WI. Not even sure what lake we skied on, but we skied at the Portage Country Club. We put on just a small show, but we had a blast doing the show and the crowd loved it. Here are a couple pictures from the night…

A “Pryo” in Portage

The Crew that Stayed Behind…
Back Row – Wedge, Russ, Beau, Kelly, Paul, 7, Imse. Front Row – Ann, Joey, Bugsy

All of the pictures, granted there aren’t that many, can be found in my Picasa Web Album here.

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Busy Week of Skiing

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This past week I managed to get a whole lot of skiing in. Started on Monday night. I hit the water with T-Bell & Imhof. I mainly did a lot of footing, T-Bell hit the slalom course and Imhof worked on his flip turns. Nice relaxing night on the water.

T-Bell on the course in front of the Madison Skyline!

Tuesday night was a regular night of show ski practice… nothing major for me.

Wednesday night I was looking forward to stopping by practice for a quick jump set, but found out that no one could bring the boats down. Pretty much everyone that would normally be available to bring the equipment was attending a show committee meeting. So as I left work at 515 I started making calls. Rounded up T-Bell & the Bug Man for a quick jump set. Met them at the lake at 615 and we jumped. Not my best night of jumping, but T-Bells looked good and Bugsy did his typically super slow motion heli’s on my skis.

T-Bell and her crash helmet

Thursday was another typical show ski practice.

Next up… Friday. Met T-Bell & Imhof at the landing and then picked up Paul at the jump site. We started off with T-Bell & I doing a couple jump sets each. I went 4 for 5 on my first set and 2 for 3 on the second set. One of the things that people have been telling me is to stay on my toes when I hit the ramp as this will help keep me over my skis while in the air, instead of behind them. Well, lately it has felt like I was almost going out the front, which usually meant I actually had good position. Well, my last jump off the night felt like I was really going to go out the front. And I did. I’ll post some video of this soon. T-Bell took a set of ride overs and then tried some helis. I’ve got video of that too.

After we jumped, Imhof worked on his flip turns, which he is making, and his back steps, which he isn’t. Then Paul busted out his new wake surfing board. Then we did some footing in the bay and finally ending up back out on the main lake as everyone else tried the wake surfing board. Here are some pictures from that night…

When T-Bell comes to ski, she comes to do a lot of skiing and brings a whole lotta stuff!

One of T-Bell Jumps

One of my jumps


Footing in the weeds


But the weeds mean it’ll be glassy calm

Close Up!


T-Bell on the Wake Surf Board


Imhof Surfing


Paul Surfing…


Paul was the only one that could actually surf without the rope


But we would have to throw it back to him now and then

I did make time to attend my cousin Lindsay & Jeff’s wedding. It was held at the Deer Valley Lodge in Barneveld, WI. Saturday was a very nice day for an outdoor wedding (or some skiing!)


Lindsay & Jeff


Me dancing with the Bridesmaids and one of the many margarita on the rocks that I had that night

My Aunt Louise and I at the end of the night…

The weekend ended with our typical Sunday night ski show. I was recovered enough to ski the opening and ending pyramids. My first pyramid start was a little rusty (I hadn’t done one in a few weeks) but I did make it.


Looking at my feet for some strange reason?
Photo from Jim’s Photos


I did make it though. By this point my legs were burning just a bit.
Photo from Jim’s Photos

My second pyramid went much better. Even though the girl I took off the dock in the ending pyramid wasn’t the tiny little lite girl I had from the opening pyramid, the start went world’s better as you can see…

Rock solid start!
Photo from Jim’s Photos

Landing at the “beach” with T-Bell
Photo from Jim’s Photos

And with the show over, the crazy week of skiing pretty much came to an end. We did go watch the Janesville Open show again and after that, I crashed. Exhausted and ready to sleep.

That’s what I am right now… ready to sleep so I can be back on the water tomorrow at 8am! And yes the time stamp on this post is accurate. It is a 245am.

There are more pictures and full quality versions of all these pictures over on my Picasa Web Album. Check it out.

Some of these photos, as noted in the captions, are from Jim’s Photos, one of the ski teams sponsors. You can contact him if you’d like a high resolution copy of one of the photos.

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Mad-City on the Web and Other Random Water Skiing Related Stuff

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The Mad-City Ski Team’s website has been undergoing a slow makeover these last several weeks, slowly evolving into something much more useful and modern looking from it’s previous incarnation. If you get a chance, check it out.

Meanwhile, I still have my google alerts scouring the web for anything water skiing, barefooting, show skiing or Mad-City related and this post came up today… Glad to here some more people enjoyed our show and are telling others about it.

I also came across this news story telling about Ralph Samuelson the inventor of water skiing. Even has a video to go with it.

And finally, some not so good news… seems a water skier was hit by jet ski. I’ve seen this almost happen myself and it isn’t good. A jet skier decides the waves of the boat pulling the skier are fun to play on and starts jumping off of them… then the skier falls and the jet skier doesn’t see them in the water and… not sure if this is exactly what happened, but it is a very likely scenario. I’ll bite my tongue and not keep typing what I want to type so I don’t get hate mail from all the jet skiers in the world, but I will suggest this: anyone who buys a watercraft (boat, canoe, sailboat, jet ski, or other PWC) should have to attend a boater safety course. It just makes sense. I attended one when I was 12. They’re not difficult, but they do spell out the common sense that some people seem to be lacking.

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Another Crazy Weekend

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This past weekend was a busy one. With all of the crazy windy weather last week, I hadn’t skied since Tuesday so by the time the weekend arrived I was going through withdrawal.

Saturday morning arrived and with it, so did the Clean Lakes Festival. I met Imhof to pick up the sound equipment and then on the way to the festival we drove by the lake and were greeted by this.


Look at the glass calm water that I didn’t get to ski on!

Needless to say, knowing the lake was that nice made going to the festival that much more difficult, but it was important for the ski team. Spent pretty much the entire day outside as we arrived at 8am, run/walk started at 10, followed by the festival at 11. It ended about 6pm and then we had to clean up and then did our best to try and finish off the beer left in the half-barrels. The festival went very well… had nearly 100 people in the run/walk and had a decent amount of people show up for the first year.

The start of the 5K Run/Walk

A Bedazzled 7

You can see more pictures of the Mad-City Clean Lakes Festival over at Jim’s Photo’s.

After I arrived home about 10pm I turned around and headed to the Bells for what was suppose to be more drinking as that was where the half-barrels were going, but I arrived to just find John, Nick (aka Brad’s little brother) and Bartz drinking in the kitchen. John soon disappeared and then it was down to 3 drinkers. Then Bartz faded. T-Bell then arrived for a brief appearance before she to disappeared. Then I disappeared since I was planning on skiing the next morning at 8am.

Sunday morning arrived early, but it was a good one. Blue skies and very nice weather all around. I arrive at the lake and then T-Bell arrives with Nick (who was filling in for John). In my sets I do a multitude of laps around the bay that totaled nearly 7.5 miles through the weeds and even had my best one foot of the year so far, holding it for several seconds without get a face full of spray for a change. I managed to talk T-Bell into taking advantage of the glass calm water that is amongst the weeds. She puts on a show for Nick by doing some wake crossings, tumble turns and one foots and both feet. Then we get a call form Lisa asking if she can come take a run and 20 minutes later she joins us at the lake. Not really sure why, but T-Bel and Lisa started doing some stupid human tricks in the boat.

T-Bell doing a Stupid Human Trick

After arriving home about noon and eating some lunch, I took a nice long nap before heading to the ski show that night. Skied in 3 acts that night, opening, conventional doubles and ending. That night I realized I was sunburned from being outside pretty much most of the weekend.

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Clean Lakes Festival

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This weekend the Mad-City Ski Team is hosting the 1st Annual Clean Lakes Festival at Warner Park on Madison’s northeast side. In addition to raising money and awareness for the lakes we also wanted to get some PR for the ski team. It is still surprising to meet people that have lived here a long time that have never heard of us.

The Clean Lakes Festival kicks off the Take a Stake in the Lakes Week here in Madison. Besides the festival there are a lot of other water-centric events taking place which The Capital Times details nicely here. They also had a good article about the festival.

Stop down on Saturday, watch the 5K Run/Walk which starts at 10am or just come down between 11am and 6pm to learn about the lakes, eat some food, drink some beer and listen to the bands.

Links:
Clean Lakes Festival
Mad-City Ski Team

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A Good Night of Practice for Me

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Besides the cool temperatures tonight, the Mad-City Ski Team had a good night of practice. Already about 20 ladies in our ballet line that’s hitting the water. No really big pyramids, but we put a lot of them on the water tonight. Even did a little work on our “Big Act” but it isn’t really a big act yet. More of a mid-size act as this point of the summer.

What was good “for me” was I was in a lot pyramids tonight, made all my starts and only came back with a sore foot from when I dropped a ski on my foot. Funny part was the only start that I came close to struggling with was with the smallest girl at the end of the night. I seriously need to enforce my minimum height requirement.

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A Good Night of Practice

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Actually had warm weather, calm winds and calm water. Yes, you read that correctly. Calm water. It was almost weird.

After completely messing up my first flier by mistiming my jump badly, I nailed the second attempt and made a nice long loop (dock to the bridges and then looped back). Too bad they were only pulling me at 38 MPH. I’m six foot and 230 pounds. I need more than 38 MPH to be comfortable on my barefeet. While holding my position in the curl while going around the corner, I couldn’t see a thing. I was trapped in a ball of spray. Later, I did a couple of 3 highs to get my pyramid legs back underneath me. Both of those starts were much better than last weeks.

The team also managed to get the docks straightened out again by moving the anchors and did some work on the jump to get it straightened as well. Plus, our triple rig made an appearance as well.

This made for a good night of practice.

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Long Weekend Update

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I guess the weekend really started on Thursday night when I caught POTC3. For the uninitiated that’s Pirates of the Caribbean 3. See my quick review in the previous post.

In reality, the weekend started with some frantic calls on Friday afternoon to arrange some water skiing for after work. As I sat in the dentist chair getting my teeth cleaned (literally) I managed to finalized the arrangements. About and hour latter I was launching the boat at Olin Park waiting for Sandy and Teri to join me. I figured since I plan on competing in the Mad-City Dual next weekend I should do at least one step off. Since it was a calm late afternoon we started in the main lake. I (surprisingly) made my slalom start and tried to do a step off but the constant wally rollers made it impossible for me to get comfortable. Finally, seeing no end in sight, I punted. I then decided to give it one more go in the main lake. Once again, I surprised myself by making my slalom start again and then managed to make my step which felt clean and according to Teri, looked clean. After going through some rollers and seeing more, bigger rollers coming up, I decided to make it a very brief run. Also wanted to go back and pick up the drop ski. After Teri & Sandy had skied, we headed into the bay so I could do a couple long runs. First run started with another step-off (once again after making my third deep water slalom start of the night and in a row) and ended back at my ski after making the loop in the bay. After handing the ski into the boat, I took one more run and made another loop around the bay.


Finally warm enough to go sleeveless. You can also see the weeds we are constantly footing through.


Me after my footing sets.


Dr Sandy driving the boat.


T-Bell posing for the camera.

After putting the boat away, I headed to the Stadium Bar to watch some friends play vball and then ended up staying there till about 11 before heading to the Dane for some more drinks. Finally made it home as the hour approached 1am.

Saturday morning I woke up to a cool, overcast day and headed down to practice planning on helping repair the dock with John. In all honesty, I didn’t do much other than move the docks or hold them in place as John worked on anchoring them. After spending an hour or so in the cool water, we had the docks back in place as best they could be.

The rest of the day was relatively low key. A little TV, a nap, inspected the trailer brakes, making calls about skiing the next day.

Sunday morning arrives and I finalize plans at 8am for skiing at 9am. I hit the lake with 7 & Lori. I do some more loops around the bay which is now nearly weed filled and 7 does some footing too. He’s been working on his deep water sense last summer and finally has it figured out. He’s had a lot issues with “cheeking out” and after getting a tip a few weeks ago from a UW skier he now makes more than he misses. Still took him 3 runs to get 2/3 of the way around the bay, but he’s making his starts now. In his defense, on his 3rd run, moments after standing up he hit some fishing boat rollers which ended his run.


That’s me in the ball of spray and those are the weeds in the background.


7 on his “Police Evidence”

After lunch and a nap, I headed down to the ski show. The show was a little rough, but a good start.

Sandy and Teri doing fliers in the show.
Photo from Jim’s Photos.

Afterwards, grabbed some pizza with Bugs & Scott and then headed to a bonfire for some drinks. Stayed out way to late even though some people thought I was leaving early. But getting home at nearly 2am, I stand by that it was way too late.

Monday was relaxing. Did some work around the house, mowed the lawn and visited with the neighbors. The evening turned really nice and would have been good to the hit the lake, but it was nice to relax too.

For full size versions of these pictures, you can view them in my Picasa Web Album here.

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Old School Mad-City Ski Team Video

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One of my Google searches found the following video out on YouTube. Some people did a promo video for the Mad-City Ski Team in 2003 which is the year our theme was The Resurrection and finished 2nd at Nationals. OK, it really isnt’ that old, but it’s amazing how much the ski team has changed in 4 years. Enjoy!


Funny part is as I write this post the song Superstition came on the radio… spooky.
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