This is a blog about waterskiing right? Lets talk skiing then!
Waterskiing has seen itself go from ESPN (which is a cesspool now anyways) to OLN to no TV coverage at all. Contrary to what my boss believes the blame goes up hill in situations like this. The IWSF is a fucking terrible organization that takes 10 times more out of the sport than it contributes. USAWS is better...but not by much. They want new people in the sport, or so they say, and their method of getting new people is to shun the top of the sport and focus on....nothing it appears. The only real bright spot in our sport right now is the NCWSA and even that is only really bringing in new blood in the Midwest. The East and West have done decent jobs of building their regions, the South Central blows goats. The talent and incredible staying power of ULL and ULM are undeniable, the three Texas schools have stuck around and stayed fairly competitive year after year. But the fact that the south can only field 5 teams consistently is embarrassing.
Unless of course you are former regional chair of the SC region Joey Mc
Don't be a sore loser buddy. Those kids are absolutely pumped they are going to Nationals and yes, we are a six team region, but our five teams are consistently good, year to year. I'd rather have five of the best teams in the country with four other schools working to have teams, than 5 mediocre teams and 45 schools will tiny team.2012 Western Regionals had 10 teams. Midwest teams have to qualify for regionals and 16 teams qualified out of 34 teams that competed at their conference tournaments. The Midwest sent 8 teams to Nationals this year, 6 of which qualified for Division 1. The South Central Region had 6 teams compete, not including LSU that made it to nationals last year and prompted the Skifly comment board post from Joey above. The East had...I think 8 teams...hell I don't know because I can't find the final score sheets anywhere. Why would they post the scores on USAWS or NCWSA websites when its more fun to look at this nonsense and try to guess.
Note to Florida, just because you are in the East and I said your region is doing OK does not let you off the hook. Every university in your state should have highly competitive teams. Instead you field 2 teams...its just sad. USAWS promotes the sport so poorly that they can not even convince college students in the "waterski capitol of the world" to form teams.
To move skiing forward we need to push youth skiing as much as possible. But how do we do that? The same way we got hooked back in the day. We saw people skiing and said "holy crap that is bad ass, I want to do that", then we begged our parents to spend a fortune on a boat, skis and ski schools. We saw Sammy, Carl, Andy, Cory and the rest on TV or at public lake pro tournaments and got hooked. Skiing was in the public eye because there were people pushing it to be there. Not so much AWSA as private groups that took the initiative and pushed us forward. AWSA back then was not the driving force are it is unlikely that USAWS will be that force now. We have seen some positive movement in recent years, some private people getting things moving in the right direction. Lets hope that we can continue on the path that Dana Reed and others have started.
For fun go to ProWaterSkiTour.com and enjoy slalom ski mag...wait...what? What exactly is Waterski Magazine doing with that URL? Your guess is as good as mine.
/rant over
Lets watch hockey goalies fight! Hell yea
AAHHHH IM ON FIRE SHHIIIIITTTTT
ReplyDeleteI suggest a few dozen bottles of Shiner to put out those flames. That always works for me.
DeleteHaha, this is why I gave up on the www.skifly.com guys. Also, if you would like anything official, I would much rather be asked for quotes directly and not taken from an anonymous message board which could very well not have been mine (they were mine but still). In my defense of a pretty horrible gaffe that needs some context, I was referring to the leadership quality of the teams. The comment was directed at some anonymous skifly guy, I believe from the Midwest if my memory serves, who was unhappy that LSU got to go to Nationals. I was defending a small hardworking team that got handed an awesome opportunity based on the rules at the time, and they were receiving anonymous flak from some of skifly's finest. At the time, teams like UT, Texas A&M, and Texas State had very substantial B-teams (like 20-30 skiers deep). My point was that I would have prefer to build stable teams with depth of not just skiing skills but people who are really pumped about skiing. People who are going to seek out ski sites, fund raise, recruit members, host tournaments etc; Not simply skiers who are skiing just for skiing-sake. People who have never even participated in any kind of show skiing, AWSA, or any other branch of USA Water Ski and actually provide some new life blood to our sport. Its how I personally started water skiing when I started at UT, and a similiar represents about 80% of the South Central. Since then, we have started team a stable team at Mississippi State while trying to get teams like Arkansas and Baylor to maintain their programs. And also keeping in mind that this is the volunteer work of only a handful of people who work full-time jobs and could have easily walked away but stayed around to help out.
ReplyDelete3-Event Water Skiing is a sport with a very high barrier of entry and this barrier of entry is particularly worse in the East and the South due to schools like FSC, ULM, Rollins, ULL, Alabama,etc. To see someone struggle to run the course and the skier in front of you is skiing at short line can be slightly demoralizing... Plus schools like ULL and ULM are going to Nationals every year meaning only three schools have any sort of chance of making nationals. The situation is worse in the East with 3 guaranteed teams leaving only two spots.
And in the spirit of some inter-region rivalry and no ill will at all, I should also remind you guys that the South Central has been responsible for the last three nationals. More specifically, no other region besides the South Central and the West has hosted nationals since 2005. And if my count is correct counting next year's in San Diego, the South Central and the West have hosted 15 out of the last 17 nationals (back to 1997). The East has been responsible for how many All Stars? My goal while I was in the South Central was to grow self-sustaining teams. We have 3-event skiers at other schools who are working on forming teams, but more specifically we want them to be in a position where they can host tournaments and even consider hosting National level tournaments. Obviously, a team has to start with one or two people, and if we bend over backward to get these guys to tournaments, maybe they can recruit one or two more people. Its no different than other regions. If you have any more questions, shoot me an email below and I'd be glad to answer.
Joey aka Joey Mc
joey.mcnamara@gmail.com