Jul/091
Show Skiing
The path to show skiing success has been going quite well. Joining the team a third of the way through the season has been tough, but it hasn’t taken long for me to regain the status I had left there two years ago. Now I am at the point of surpassing this. In the past three weeks I have relearned how to freestyle jump ski, which has always been my favorite part of being a part of the club. Currently I have relearned long distance jumps (which are currently closing in at 100 feet), helicopter spins (a 360 degree spin with a wrapped handle) and front flips. I am also on the verge of teaching myself to throw the elusive gainer, which is a backflip while moving forward. After many failed attempts I managed to successfully land this last weekend.
Another great thing about the club is the untapped talent of the other skiers. I just recently taught my friend Adam to land his first front flip off the jump. This will be a great addition to the team jumping we do in shows. I have also taught many young skiers the basics of water skiing and they should be working on to get spots in the show and out of the beginner training. Teaching these young skiers brings such a good sense of accomplishment for myself. I love seeing the excitement in their face when they have accomplished that next step 
So for future posts I’ve decided to focus on show skiing technique. I would love it if this spawned a network of show skiers offering advice and making posts in their respective talents, as there are many facets of the sport I don’t even touch. I am currently getting ready to head to the midwest regionals tournament this weekend and I am excited to meet some of the other talented clubs in the area. In the meantime, check out this video that encompasses the freestyle jump skiing world.
Jul/091
First Day Back At Sioux Falls Water Ski Club
Two Man Heli
I’m finally back to doing what I love. Today was my first day back at the Sioux Falls Water Ski Club, aka Catfish Bay. Unfortunately the practice was called off early due to severe weather in the area. However, I did happen to get a jump set in. This is definitely my all time top favorite stunt to perform in the show ski world. It has been two years since I’ve been able to hit the jump and surprisingly things went quite well. After successfully landing two ride overs on the jump, I decided to go for the heli (a wrapped 360). Lo and behold those two years of rust did not phase me and I landed the first one. I got two more chances to try again, and only failed at one (but two out of three ain’t bad). To give you an idea of what this looks like I pulled an old photo from a few years back out of my facebook photos. In the future I hope to post video footage of the kind of stunts I perform as well as what some of the other amazing performers at the bay have to offer. I also have posted another photo of me in the barefoot line from about the same time period. This is probably one of my favorite pictures ever captured of a barefoot line. Looks
pretty rough, which it really is. I typically enjoy being on the outside of such a stunt, since a face full of water while going 40 mph is not typically comfortable.