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Old     (johnm_ttu)      Join Date: Jul 2005       04-25-2006, 2:31 PM Reply   
Nick Heckerson has brought up a good point on collegiate waterski teams vs. collegiate wakeboard teams. Texas Tech will be hosting a NCWSA 3 event tournament in conjunction with a wakeboard tournament in Hutto, TX. The same weekend the SMU wakeboard club has scheduled a collegiate wakeboard tournament. These 2 events will suffer because of the piggyback scheduling.

There was some effort on the part of Barret Pearlman and Wes Kay to set up a national collegiate wakeboard association. I have not heard of any events being held under this organization.

I personally prefer the NCWSA which already has a solid foundation and Nationals set up. It will be very easy to insert a wakeboard competition to the collegiate 3 event. They want to see this happen. I would say at the Baylor Invitational this past weekend there were at least 3 wakeboarders for every one trick skier.

It would be so easy to make this work. The waterski teams and wakeboard teams need to collaborate.

I remember the 2002 AWA nationals at Aquaplex and they were a blast. The level of riding and the atmosphere were great. I would love to go to a tournament like that every semester.

Anyone who is interested in setting up a series for the fall of 2006 needs to start working on it now and produce a calendar of events. I am going to coordinate with South Central Region which includes NM, TX, LA, AR. To find contact information for the NCWSA teams go to www.ncwsa.com. I promise that you will be able to find plenty of wakeboarders on these teams.

This disscussion forum is always dead. I would really like to see that change.
Old     (dmcguirt23)      Join Date: Aug 2004       04-27-2006, 8:41 PM Reply   
THANK YOU!!! man, i thought exactlyy the same thing when i heard that TX Tech had a comp the same weekend as SMU. I thought that a bunch of Southern schools had just gotten through creating a conference? and then this happened. i dont get it. and ski tournaments are always a blast, i dont see why NCWSA wont start a 4th event for wakeboarders except that they are stuck in their ways and dont like wakeboarders.

All of the college skiers get along with the wakeboarders fine, its the older guys that run things that dont want to see wakeboarding in collegiate tournaments. I wish that could change, but who knows how long that will take.
Old                04-27-2006, 9:35 PM Reply   
NO!!!!!

Disregard that thought right now! Unless you have been involved in the actively developing collegiate wakeboard league, please stay out of it to avoid confusion for other schools looking to create teams. We were once part of the NCWSA and went to the ski tournaments and know all about that scene... The bottom line is NCWSA does not want to put in the effort or respect for the sport of wakeboarding. Even if they did, wakeboarding as a third event is a terrible idea. Collegiate wakeboard tournaments need a men’s, women’s and wakeskate division at a bare minimum. Just those events with the amount of teams that have been coming to these tournaments take up the whole weekend alone.
Old     (kstateskier)      Join Date: May 2002       04-27-2006, 11:23 PM Reply   
It's not that the NCWSA doesn't want to include wakeboarding, it is the fact that they do not have time. I know the MCWSA has tried before, but they are pulling 500+ pulls in a weekend and they just don't have time for wakeboarding as well. We have been around and around with this and it just doesn't work. When I was the president at K-State, we held one of the first ever wakeboarding events within a 3 event tournament, I think it would have been around the spring of '00, maybe '01, it was a failure. The skiers did all of the work to put it on, and the only wakeboarders that really showed up were friends of mine that I invited and that helped out.

I totally disagree that it is a respect thing. Maybe some individuals, but as an organization I think it is just a time issue. I do agree that wakeboarding needs it's own weekends and I think it will have to come down to tournaments on the same weekends, but I think for a long time, the NCWSA will win out with numbers, just because of the organization of the group at the national, regional, and school levels. Even though wakeboarding is much more popular, the tournaments are light years ahead in the NCWSA. I do wish the wakeboarding side luck, but I don't think the two sport bodies will ever come together in the collegiate scene.
Old     (johnm_ttu)      Join Date: Jul 2005       04-29-2006, 9:02 PM Reply   
LBSU,

It works just fine. I just finished the first day of my tournament. Basically the NCWSA steps out and we run the wakeboard event with the convenience of having all the teams at the site already. Without the 3 event we never could have afforded the $750 site rental. NCWSA has a communication infrastructure that just does not exist between the wake teams. There were 35 men and 8 women riders and we enjoyed riding on private water at the expense of the 3 event skiers.
I really think that if you went to an NCWSA tournament and you did not have fun it was because you went there with a chip on shoudler.

Nick,
It really is all about numbers. It just isnt worth it to host a collegiate wakeboard tournament if you are only going to have 40 riders. You can not cover your costs. An NCWSA tournament is an almost guaranteed success. As long as you have a two lake site there is not really a time crunch.

The teams need to communicate better. We can use the NCWSA to develop the wakeboard league and then spin it off into its own thing.

LBSU,
I have seen very little participation in collegiate wakeboard events that are not a part of an NCWSA tournament. Are the events that you are having in California better attended?
Old     (kstateskier)      Join Date: May 2002       04-30-2006, 9:42 PM Reply   
Another huge problem that wakeboarders are going to run into as the collegiate side of the sport grows is access. Water skiers are having some site issues because of the party atmosphere that seems to go along with a lot of the NCWSA tournaments. Just college kids being college kids. But when you add in the fact that many traditional three event skiers that own a lot of private sites are not open to wakeboarding on their lakes, this narrows the options even more. Many skiers are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a perfect lake with perfect shore ratios and are not wanting a 2k lb.+ weighted boat destroying that perfect shore line.


I just got back from a NCWSA tournament in Missouri and noticed that many of the trick skiers were not riding wakeboarders. Seems to be a trend that goes back and forth.

John, from my discussion with some key people in the past, the NCWSA will not develop wakeboarding. They will help the wakeboarding arm of USA WaterSki develop the sport, but they are not going to take the initiative anymore to get the sport rolling, as they are too busy with their rapidly expanding 3 event program. Things could have changed in the last 1-2 years, but I know this was the stance a couple of years ago.

Another thing that is going to kill collegiate wakeboarding before it can even get rolling is the lack of true determination to get the sport rolling. While we were in full rain gear fighting 50 degree temperatures to help run an NCWSA event, K-State cancelled their wakeboarding event because of weather. I think to succeed you have to do these events no matter what and just keep building a stronger base of riders. Just my opinion again.
Old     (kstateskier)      Join Date: May 2002       04-30-2006, 9:46 PM Reply   
Another huge problem that wakeboarders are going to run into as the collegiate side of the sport grows is access. Water skiers are having some site issues because of the party atmosphere that seems to go along with a lot of the NCWSA tournaments. Just college kids being college kids. But when you add in the fact that many traditional three event skiers that own a lot of private sites are not open to wakeboarding on their lakes, this narrows the options even more. Many skiers are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a perfect lake with perfect shore ratios and are not wanting a 2k lb.+ weighted boat destroying that perfect shore line. And as far as having to have 2 lake sites, you are correct that this allows for 4 events, but finding 2 lake sites is some parts of the country is difficult. In the Midwest, where the NCWSA has by far the strongest of it's regions, the majority of private sites only have one lake. Of the top of my head I can only think of a couple 2 lake sites within 5+ hours of where I live in St. Louis, one being Dream Lake Estates hosting the NCWSA All-Stars in a few weeks north of Des Moines, IA, and then Water's Edge in Wilmington, IL. I think there might be at least one in Illinois as well, and then a new 2 lake site in Wichita, KS, which is 6-7 hours from here.


I just got back from a NCWSA tournament in Missouri and noticed that many of the trick skiers were not riding wakeboarders. Seems to be a trend that goes back and forth.

John, from my discussion with some key people in the past, the NCWSA will not develop wakeboarding. They will help the wakeboarding arm of USA WaterSki develop the sport, but they are not going to take the initiative anymore to get the sport rolling, as they are too busy with their rapidly expanding 3 event program. Things could have changed in the last 1-2 years, but I know this was the stance a couple of years ago.

Another thing that is going to kill collegiate wakeboarding before it can even get rolling is the lack of true determination to get the sport rolling. While we were in full rain gear fighting 50 degree temperatures to help run an NCWSA event, K-State cancelled their wakeboarding event because of weather. I think to succeed you have to do these events no matter what and just keep building a stronger base of riders. Just my opinion again.
Old     (johnm_ttu)      Join Date: Jul 2005       05-01-2006, 11:26 AM Reply   
We are never going to get sponsors to through good money our way if we continue to cancel events and poorly promote others.

I am not trying to flame anyone, but this is an example of just not enough effort being made towrds promotion:
By leo lasecki (malibuboarder75) on Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - 8:17 pm:

April 30th at Lake Bryan from 11am to 6pm.

11 days notice is not long enough and where are the details? Lake Bryan is not an appropriate place to host a tournament.

I know there is interest in these events, but know one is even going to the trouble ask questions or make posts about them.
Old     (kstateskier)      Join Date: May 2002       05-01-2006, 9:34 PM Reply   
I totally agree with you John. You have to have better planning. An NCWSA tournament is due at least 6 months in advance and get posted usually on ncwsa.com, mcwsa.com, and in USA WaterSki's Regional guide. I think the same could be done with wakeboarding, but someone has to care enough to step up. Skiing gets a lot of help from more responsible alumni that step up and do tremendous amounts of work. A great example is Jeff Surdej, the Midwest Regional Director for NCWSA and a Purdue alum. The guy does tremendous amounts of work to promote and produce a great producton the water.

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