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WATERSKI Magazineat 6 feet 2 inches with flaming red hair lighting up his personal space, you can't miss Justin Seefried. Good thing the top of his head is noticeable because he likes to keep his recently lowered voice at a hush. Plus, his face is likely to blend in with his hair if he feels his inconspicuousness slipping away.
Attention is something Seefried, 15,
hasn't been collecting. He isn't found at tournament lakes most weekends, but when he does show up, teenage boys feel smaller than usual. In his limited activity, Seefried has broken the Boys 1 national slalom record (1 at 35 in 1994) and the Boys 2 mark (2 at 38, 1997), and he has two more seasons to run the table and break Chris Parrish's Boys 3 record of 1.5 at 41. If, as expected, he clears the 38-off pass this season, Seefried will become the youngest to ever do it (Parrish did it when he was 16). He just won't have a bundle of opportunities.
“I'd like to go to record tournaments in Oregon, Washington and Arizona,” says Seefried, who ran 38-off 15 times in practice last summer near his home in Galt, California, “but we just don't have the finances.”
In a sport where most elite athletes can afford to fly to an instructor after one bad set or hire a full-time coach the way some people hire a nanny, Seefried is equivalent to the Little Leaguer who pitches baseballs into bales of hay while dreaming of the major leagues. He goes smooth-as-Skippy through the course, drops national records along the way and comes back to the dock to a chorus of: “What's his name?” Aside from Seefried's closest friends, most of the students he sits next to in school don't even know he's above average in anything other than height.
“I don't think of myself as anything special,” he says.
For now, Justin is breaking every record in sight under the tutelage of his dad Terry, a warehouse laborer. Every day after work Terry, Justin and 8-year-old brother Gavin pack into dad's 1987 Chevy truck with a jug of water and drive eight miles to the lake where members of the Sunset Ranch Ski Club train.
“That's what makes me feel good,” says Justin, talking quietly on a picnic bench just outside earshot of the better-known prodigies on the dock. “Being here with the best skiers in the world, kids that train all over the country and have the best coaches, and I'm just out there with my dad. I wouldn't want it any other way.”
He puts on a pair of headphones and ambles to the dock where he carefully sprawls into a chair five feet from the girl who could one day be the best there ever was.
Born: April 2, 1984 Hometown: Galt, California In practice I'm: Running 38-off Most memorable moment: Needing knee surgery at age 14 Water-skiing heroes: Bob LaPoint, Lucky Lowe When I'm not skiing I: Go through my football card collection Favorite Olympic moment: Michael Johnson breaking the 200-meter world record in Atlanta (1996) Favorite movie: Witchcraft Favorite music: Outcast, Brandy I could live on: Chinese rice Most awesome place I've seen: The green hills of Oregon On Friday nights I usually: Watch TGIF on ABC The person I'd most like to spend one day with: Jerry Rice
