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WATERSKI MagazineThe employee lot at the Sea World park in San Antonio is where the glamour of professional show skiing is stripped down to buck-naked reality. You spend a day watching four shows. You see skiers flawlessly flip Air Chairs and ride wakeboards like they're single-engine Cessnas. You're amazed at the way they toy with the jump ramp, build pyramids and still have the savvy to race bathtub boats, dive out of bungee harnesses and not miss a dance step. It's 30 minutes of perpetual motion, four times a day.
Then they go to the clock and punch out.
You'd think they'd be sending out valets to fetch their Range Rovers, but they walk to the parking lot just like the popcorn vendor. There you see two of the best show skiers in America fiddling with a car door and wonder what in the name of Shamu they're doing. Matt Dance and Leza Bugden, named Sea World's best show skiers in 1996, are trying to force open the one functional door on the conglomeration of spare parts known as their compact car.
“We aren't here to get rich,” says Matt, stating what is suddenly obvious. The heap on wheels hiccups as it moves toward the exit.
Outside the Sea World boundaries are small apartments for Sea World skiers, who share milk, towels … and rides to work.
There are 23 skiers and performers at a typical Sea World water show. The park is their bond. Outside they splinter in twos, threes and fours. But inside the gates they become a 23-person family. They come from Wisconsin and San Francisco. They come from Sweden and Australia. “But would it be possible for one to come from the 12th row?” I wondered.
“If you like to ski and have fun, it's no problem here,” says Bugden.
That doesn't seem like such a tall order. So, out of curiosity I ask show director Jake Yetterberg what he's looking for in a new recruit.
“Number one is versatility,” he said. “You need to have boat driving and fixing skills, among other things.”
From what I saw in the parking lot, car fixing skills would be beneficial too. Even so, Yetterberg made it sound as if the guy from the grandstand might be able to handle this. Until he explained the “other things.”
“You could be a barefoot or freestyle specialist in an amateur club, but to fit in here you need to do both or you're useless.”
Useless. That word pretty much summed up any further notions of personal glory for a guy from the seats. But Yetterberg wasn't finished.
“Second, you have to be in good enough shape to run around for 30 minutes and still look good. Third, you have to have fun from the top down.”
In other words, it isn't enough that you could literally ski circles around a moving boat and turn cartwheels off the wake. You could be the walking definition of fancy skiing, smiles, and steel-belted pecs and wind up no closer to the stage than the 12th row.
“It isn't like when I started,” said Rob Wicall, one of the few skiers with roots in San Antonio. Wicall was hired in 1989, shortly after the park opened. “I couldn't ski that well, but they let me in a show where I was supposed to come by on two skis and pretend to crash into the dock. I fell behind the island before I even made it to the crowd. They let me ski again a couple years later.”
Wicall tells his story with his whole face in the shape of a smile. He helicopters off the ramp this way too. So does Rob Dorrestijn. And Jason Turner. Same with Tracy Cunningham, whose enthusiasm seems out of place in the engine shop, where he's grinding metal. He's fixing something, being versatile.
“I could barefoot and jump when I started here in '88,” says Cunningham, a Purdue graduate. “But it was my attitude that got me hired.” During the week Cunningham is a draftsman for an engineering firm. He could sleep in Saturdays, maybe visit the park and sit in the 12th row. Instead he spends weekends in the show and working in the shop with his Texas family.
Ulrika Alsen is here of her own free will. This despite the fact she has a degree in business marketing and could be decked out in Liz Claiborne back in her native Sweden. When it came time to find a job, Alsen chased the dream of show skiing, where she could haul around a push broom between performances and share 900 square feet of living space with a couple other transplanted skiers.
“To get a visa I had to prove I was among the best 5 percent of show skiers in the world,” says Alsen. “Sea World is like Broadway.”
At 11 a.m. the pro show skiers, Alsen included, are “setting the dock.” On Broadway this job would be divided among gaffers and grips. Here, the stars of the show neatly lay out all the equipment so it's ready to pick up when someone comes careening off the stage or jumps out of a boat in mid-show to start another act. There are three barefoot ropes, three jump ropes, skis, a wakeboard rope, three ballet ropes, six pyramid ropes, skis, a star swivel rope, a star doubles rope, two around-the-boat ropes and more skis. All of it meticulously arranged.
The skiers set the dock as many times as there are shows today.
“Sometimes you're finishing setting up the dock and the music starts for the next show,” says Yetterberg.
A few skiers, finished with their chores, are mentally going through the show inside the wardrobe room, which the men and women share. When it's cold outside the skiers might come inside between acts and catch a moment in the dry room, where the wetsuits hang to get warm. Wardrobe is also the hatching nest for practical jokes. Newcomers are subject to a minor degree of hazing. On this day one had his street clothes pulled from a locker stall, soaked in water and frozen as solid as a turkey platter.
“It's our way of bonding,” says Bugden. “We have a lot of people from all over the world, so this has to be like family. If you aren't the target of a joke, or you don't take it well, then it's not a good sign.”
Everyone in the locker room has been a target.
The bees are loose. Music has just popped out of the speakers in the backstage area. Boats are on the water. There are tumble-turns, three-man flips, Raleys, tower starts, swiveling. Wet skiers haul tail from the stage to the dock, quickly pull on fresh skis and are gone again. In the time it takes the average person to launch a boat and untangle the rope that was left in a wad under the bow, the Sea World show has started and ended with 20 acts in between.
“What it's all about,” explains Alsen, “is seeing the little kid in the front row or the lady with blue hair in the back row having a good time.”
On this particular afternoon every twitch has been perfect. As the show closes, the tired skiers mask heavy breathing by bounding across the stage like cheerleaders. They look into the crowd for the little kid and blue-haired lady. And a bunch of grumps stuffed with funnel cakes stare back.
“Sometimes,” says Dance, “they just don't respond to anything.”
Between the next three shows, some of the skiers squeeze in choreography practice. Others lift weights or stretch or eat lunch. The lunch is discounted to Sea World
employees, but most skiers bring their own.
“We try to find ways to save money,” says Bugden.
Even this is said with a smile. At 5:20, after punching out, she and her show skiing family weave among tourists to the parking lot. Nobody stops them for autographs. Nobody points or even notices the marquee performers. Bugden breaks away from the others to stand in line for a roller coaster ride. The bargain lunch was the last of her park privileges. She goes directly to the end of the line.
Later at the car, as Dance pries open the door, Bugden turns and repeats what she's already said three times this day. “It's the best job
in the world.”
The car sputters off. Best job in the world? Her words are convincing.
