After the ski team’s state tournament victory, we actually received some nice press coverage from Channel 3 WISC-TV. With Ronée pushing, I put together a short video clip that I dropped off at the station and they played it while interviewing our show director on July 24, 2007.
Thanks Channel 3 for some nice coverage. It probably contributed to one of the largest crowds I’ve ever seen at one of home ski shows on July 29.
Not sure if you’ve noticed or not, but the USA Water Ski website has undergone a drastic redesign. And they did a good job. There are now RSS feeds for the announcements that they post. Each sport has a section and their own individual RSS feed as well.
The Show Skiing section is pretty decent too. Underneath the About Show Skiing there are two links to some very good articles about show skiing. The first link Show Skiing Background provides a very detailed history of show skiing starting with its origins and the beginnings of the tournaments. The second link A Guide to Show Skiing tells about how teams compete and are judged/scored in tournaments. If you’re going to your first show ski tournament or if you’ve been competing in them for years and never really knew how the scoring systems worked, this article provides an excellent background on what you’ll see and how the system works. Both of these articles are worth a reading… be sure to check them out.
They also have a nice little article about Mad-City’s recent state tournament victory.
Congrats USA Water Ski on an excellent site redesign. It’s been needed for a long time. If anyone knows when the new site came up, let me know… I’m curious.
I gave Kara my camera during the show and she had a nice seat right down front on the beach and she managed to get some good pictures. I’ve posted them out on the net, here’s the link. If you browse the rest of the Picasa albums, you’ll see a whole bunch of pictures from the rest of the weekend. Here’s a couple from the show…
Here’s a brief clip of the highlights of our state show that I put together for the local TV stations…
Probably the funnest weekend year has come and gone…
It started early Thursday morning with a quick ski set on the water with T-Bell and Imhof. I hit the ramp working on my heli’s and it probably would have been better if I hadn’t. Three heli attempts, 3 falls, each one worse than the one before. Main problem was rotating only 3/4 of the way around. That dramatically increases the difficulty of skiing away when you land on your side. Last landing really hurt too! Still feeling today. Here’s are the videos… enjoy my agony!
After putting the boat away and eating lunch, I crammed my car full of stuff as I packed for the long weekend and then headed up to Rapids… Took me longer to pack than I expected and I arrived just a little bit latter than I wanted to. As I opened the car door, I heard the beginning of Joey’s swivel song so I hauled ass to the beach to catch her routine. Then I sat through a lot of other swivel ski routines. As they were finishing up, I stopped by to see what the jump team was planning on doing and that is when I was asked what their music was going to be. I was dumbfounded… I’ve never been involved in team jump before. We had a quick discussion and we settled on the song On the Edge by Dee. Problem was, it was an MP3 on my computer, only 3 minutes long and there were on the water in minutes.
I ran up to my car, popped the trunk, flipped on the laptop and started working my magic. 5 minutes later I had a 6 minute version of the song and it was being written to a CD. As I shut down the laptop, I heard the beginning of Ann’s swivel song and once again hauled ass to go watch her ski before I handed the CD to the sound guy.
Then I did the photos for team jump and based on what I’ve heard back so far, I took some good ones. After a little time in the beer tent, we headed to our respective hotels or cottages to get settled. I checked in, unloaded my stuff and then made my way to Lake Sherwood Lodge for a nightcap.
After enjoying a very good pizza and a Stella Artois beer with some friends, others began to arrive… and more and more drinking was done. Here are some pictures from the evening…
You can find more pictures from Thursday night in this album.
I headed back to the hotel late, wnating to wake up early to catch some ski shows, but was just too tired and too sore so I slept in. I did make it down to the Beaver Dam show and was very impressed with it. I also took a ton of pictures of it which you can find here. Yes, they one D2, found their holy grail and are now a proud member of D1.
After the Must-Skis show I headed back to the hotel to wash up quickly and then we headed to the Heilman Cottage for the team meeting and something I’ve been waiting for all summer… the delicious turkey sandwiches. I managed to limit myself to 5 of them this year. After eating, we practiced intros, danced, did the fills and then headed back to the hotel… show time was quickly coming.
Morning came early… left the hotel a little before 7 and headed to the ski site… quick meeting, then I wondered… more dance and skit practices and then I wondered… ate some breakfast and then I wondered… just couldn’t sit still. Finally, show time was arriving so I grabbed my trusty laptop and headed to the sound area. After a quick setup and mike test, I cranked up the volume to 11 and started the pre-show dances. First up the guys and then the ladies.
Then it was show time… Things didn’t go as well as we wanted, but we still skied a good show and the show portion wasn’t matched by anyone that I saw. Backfoot line had some falls, OP made it up, but had some falls coming back to the beach, montage had falls (but both Bells stood up for the first time at the same time), one act show was money and girls ballet rocked as well. Jump 1 had some falls, star swivel was great. Big act also had some falls and then the jumpers nailed Jump 2. Ending pyramid made it up, slowly, and then had some falls on the way down. One man jump wasn’t all we hoped and big ballet blew up. Crowd was on their feet after the SNL and Evolution of Dance 2 fills. Here are some pics from the show, courtesy of Jim’s Photos.
Back foot line!
Opening Pyramid!
Adam and Matt
The Bell Fliers!
T-Bell pointing to the crowd!
Paul on the Wakeboard
One Act Show!!!
Shoe Skier, 4 High Pyramid, Doubles and a Pin Wheel!
Doing their thing!
Best Ballet in the State!
Adam the Parrot and Matt the Pirate
Super Sized Pin Wheel!
Adam and his hot friend Taryn
Triple Fours for the Ending Pyramid!
Catching the rope with the ski on the second 720 attempt…
Notice one foot point one way and the other the other… not good!
Guys Ballet
The Hot Pick!
The Crowd!
After the show was over, I stuck around and watched the Aqua Skiers (click here for their web album) and Badgerland (click for their web album) shows. Then after a little beer tent time, it was off to get some dinner and wash up for the annual bus tour around Rapids.
I enjoyed some quality Little Ceaser’s and then watch a little TV. About 915 I get a frantic call form T-Bell… when is the bus coming? how do I get there? will I have time to change? I managed to talk her through driving into Rapids to the hotel. She arrives as the bus does and opts to follow it to the first bar so, like any good water skiers, she can change out of the back of her car and then come to the bar. As usually, the bars were a blast. We started at Johnny’s and then headed to Gooses. Here are a couple picks from the night…
Sandy and I
Sandy and T-Bell
Kristen and I
Holly and I
Joey and I with my trusty Margarita on the Rocks…
Laura and I… surprisingly it took 3 attempts for this picture… I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
Saturday night ended way too late and Sunday morning came way too early… After going to bed at 3am, I woke up at 630am to try to reclaim my humanity and then head to the ski site to catch the RAJ show (pictures of that coming soon). Arrived with some time to kill so I ate breakfast but was very disappointed that they had run out of milk to go with the pancakes.. I guess the disappointment was evident in my face as my pancakes were discounted because of the lack of milk.
Watched the RAJ show. As usually, they have good skiing, but like our show, too many falls here and there throughout the show… didn’t really bring either pyramid through the show course completely (opener a 5-high but ended up being a big 4-high, closers lost a pyramid). Jump acts had a scattering of falls as well. The whole show just seemed flat to me. No real energy to it.
My initial comparison between our show and theirs… skied about the same, but we had the better show for entertaining the audience throughout the entire show. I took a few pictures of their show and you can find them here.
Then it was the long wait till awards… watched a few shows on off, but was really just to anxious to find out what happened.
Finally, the awards arrived. First off, congrats to the Beaverland Must-Skis on their repeat as D2 Champions. Welcome to D1. The show you skied would probably put you near the top 5 in my opinion.
As you’ve heard by now, Mad-City took 1st and also won best ballet, best jump act, best boat drivers, best female skier (Kristen Heilman) and best audio. It was a hard couple weeks before state, but it paid off. Now on to Nationals!
After the awards we reconvened at the Lake Sherwood Lodge again. More pizza, more beers and many good times.. Poof pants, One Act ‘fo Show, watching the video, chaffing, cheese curd discussions and what they look like when they leave the body… fun in the little blue rooms, or green rooms as they were this weekend. I laughed for a long time that night before finally heading home at 1215am. Called Sandy at 2 to let her know I made it home safe and talked to a very drunk person who was laughing her ass off too. Unpacked, slept and slept some more…
Links to Web Albums mentioned…
Thursday at State
Beaverland Must-Ski Show
Mad-City Ski Team Show [Jim’s Photos Pictures]
Badgerland Ski Show
Wisconsin Rapids Aqua Skiers Show
The Bus Trip
Janesville Rock Aqua Jays Show
Awards
Watch for updates to this post… I have more pictures to post from ski shows and I likely forgot something that I wanted to include. I’ll put a comment down here indicating when I update it.
[Updated 1046pm on 7/25 – Added albums for Aqua Skiers and RAJ, Added RAJ Barefoot Pyramid Picture]
Here’s a link to the article from the local Rapids paper… there are some good quotes. Check it out.
Here’s the article from the Janesville Gazette.
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!!!
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…
All of the pictures, granted there aren’t that many, can be found in my Picasa Web Album here.
The Lake City Skiers of Warsaw, Indiana have put together a very slick “commercial” for their ski team. Definitely go check it out. Here’s the link.
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.
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.
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…
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!)
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.
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…
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.
Mad-City Wedge 