CLOSE
Sign up to get news on contests, pro events, new products and special offers.
WATERSKI MagazineEvery decade the music industry tries to pick a rhythm capital for everyone with ears. It can't. Clevelanders might be big on the Goo Goo Dolls, but they'll ship Box Car Willie back to Nashville. It's the same with water skiing. We have as many capitals as the former Soviet Union. Slalom skiers call West Palm Beach their Eden, but if you show up with a kneeboard you might as well be standing in the middle of Times Square with a pitchfork. Kneeboarders do, however, claim a Shangri-La. So do barefooters, show skiers, wakeboarders, disabled skiers, hydrofoilers and jumpers. Sure, we can all coexist, but there are lakes around the country where each discipline flat-out rules.
It's politically incorrect to say anything derogatory about barefooters in Winter Haven, Florida. Former mayor and current city councilman Dave Dershimer used to show up at the office with his hair wet, not from the shower but from taking a sunrise barefoot set.
“Some people move here because of [major league baseball's] spring training,” says Dershimer, who sealed the Canal Commission race in 1992 with a..businessman-as-a-barefooter promo. “But others move here for the barefooting. They can surround themselves with it and become a national champion.”
Ron Scarpa didn't even know how to barefoot until his family moved to Winter Haven in the mid-70s. He's simply gone on to become the greatest barefooter ever. Then along came Jennifer Calleri from the Chicago area in the mid-80s. She only became the best woman footer in history. In 1992, all but one gold medal from the Barefoot Worlds went home from England in bags bound for Winter Haven (the luggage belonged to Scarpa, Calleri and Lane Bowers).
The most recognized water skier in the world is Banana George Blair. He's seen on billboards in Brooklyn, Puerto Rico and Cuba. When he isn't doing an exhibition somewhere on the globe, Blair can be seen barefooting outside his home in Winter Haven.
Every skier who has come out of the bindings and stood for a couple of seconds can trace his footing success back to one man, A.G. Hancock. It was 1947 when a 17-year-old Hancock experienced before anyone else the surreal sensation of moving across water on bare feet. He did it on Lake Howard, where Scarpa now runs his barefoot school.”It wasn't that big a deal,” says Hancock. “I went home and told Mom I'd skied without skis, and she said, 'That's nice.' I didn't think it would lead to this.”
One more thing about Hancock's water-breaking run: It was the only time he ever barefooted.
Other barefoot kingdoms:
Jacksonville, Florida:
Recent junior stars
Jason Lee, Wade
Bramlitt, Jennifer
Harris and Matt Wright hail from the area.
Otter Tail County,
Minnesota:
Drowning in lakes
and barefoot crazy,
the town of Fergus Falls drew some
20,000 fans for the
1996 Barefoot Worlds.
You don't have to fly on a board or belt out 200-foot jumps to blend in at One Leg Lake, 20 minutes from Griffin, Georgia. The only required act of brotherhood is to throw your fake limb onto the heap of prosthetics that sits on the boat floor at training time.
“When someone brings a friend down to the lake, they'll look into the boat and turn real quiet for awhile,” says David Bethune, one of three leg amputees who helped build the lake in 1993. Named as much for its shape as its demographics, One Leg Lake has sent six skiers to the Disabled Worlds. But perhaps more important are the dozens of amputees who have found a new passion here for the water.
“Everyone at the lake can relate to what it's like to come out of the hospital after an amputation,” says Rhonda Van Dyk, president of the Waterskiers with Disabilities Association. Bethune and company called the place One Leg Lake to eliminate any notion that you might find a sympathy fest here. “Nobody waits on you,” he says. “I have one leg. So what? Look around. So does everybody else.”
Other disabled capitals:
Birmingham, Alabama:
Home of the Magic City Waterski Club, which
has spearheaded grass-roots disabled development and was recently named USA Waterski's club of the year.
Sandy Hook, Connecticut:
The Lake Zoar Waterski Club specializes in lessons for the blind. Two club members, Allan Golabek and Mark Hieftje, are world championship disabled skiers.
On Lake Sammamish near Seattle, there's room for everything under the water-skiing sun. But one group creates a scene wherever it goes, which is usually right down the middle of the lake. Slalom crews pause to gawk. Wakeboarders stop and stare. Riding behind three boats abreast is a hydrofoil squad that gets funnier looks than The Monkees.
“We try to be as obvious as possible, so we'll do fly-bys with three of us doing inverts at the same time,” says Bill Kinnison. Kinnison is co-founder of the Air Junkys, a group of about a dozen hydrofoil riders who participate in the impossible task of bringing a lake as big and active as Sammamish to a halt. It's common practice for a Junky to take an artful spill near a boat brigade and then recruit one of the spectators for a ride. “We're always trying to bring in new riders,” says Jake Kinnison, Bill's brother. “All we require to be a Junky is that you try to go big and you put a sticker on your boat.”
When they aren't sitting high above Sammamish behind their specially dressed MasterCrafts, they're sitting at computers hawking stickers, T-shirts and hats over the Internet. During weekdays, though, they're sitting in offices as software writers, Boeing mechanics, engineers and bankers. Their preferred seats are obvious.”Some of us would eventually love to tour the country as Air Junkys,” says Jake Kinnison. “But for now it's just a fun thing to help push the sport and be known around the lake.”
When skiers talk of getting out the boards, it's assumed they're talking about wakeboards. That's not the case in the Lake Norman area near Charlotte, North Carolina. This is one place where kneeboarders don't submit to their stand-up friends.
For instance, Billy Rossini was a world-class kneeboarder in Sacramento four years ago but couldn't get a blink from the water-sports hordes along the 1,000-mile Delta. So he moved across the country. “I knew if I wanted to make something of my kneeboarding, I'd have to move here,” says Rossini, now a full-fledged Carolinian.
Of the 20 riders on Hydroslide's national team, 10 are from the Charlotte area. All three of O'Brien's pro riders live in the vicinity. “I try to look for riders in other states, but our plate is full with Charlotte guys,” says Hydroslide brand manager James Balam. “Most of the riders I'm turning down are from the same area. It's unreal.”
Yates Perry and the McDonald brothers, David and Jonathan, helped turn tobacco country into a smoking flip-out region during kneeboarding's heyday in the 1980s. They'd learn tricks from one another and take the information back to their respective lakes, where recreational riders would be willing to give up their shins to be next in line for the newest moves. While kneeboarding's high-end flame is left to flicker here and there, it's still blazing around Norman and nearby Lake Wylie.
“Doing flips is usually impressive, but not around here,” says David McDonald, the first rider to ever complete a double flip.
“All these guys just keep going bigger and bigger.”
Other kneeboard kingdoms:
Keller Lake, Minnesota:
Site of occas-
ional cash-prize
tournaments.
Defiance, Ohio:
Lots of unpub-
licized talent
It is the eighth wonder of the water-skiing world. Why is it, when you cross from the north Chicago suburbs and land in southern Wisconsin, that every township, village and hamlet is turned upside down over show skiing? The bank teller in Kenosha spends her evenings in a swivel line. The short-order cook at Denny's in Waukesha helps anchor a nightly barefoot pyramid. Homes in Whitewater are empty after dinner as entire families practice their routines.
“That's just what you do in the summer around the smaller Wisconsin communities, ski in a show,” says Hall of Fame show skier Skip Gilkerson.In no swath of America is there such a commitment to show skiing as there is in southern Wisconsin. Some clubs number 200 skiers. They practice four nights a week, three to four hours at a time. High school football teams don't put as many hours into learning the playbook.
Where the first seed was planted is hard to say, but Tommy Bartlett's Ski and Thrill Show in Wisconsin Dells certainly had something to do with the germination of show skiing throughout the state. Bartlett's used to let show teams in for free and send performers around the area for clinics.
The bottom line is show skiing took to southern Wisconsin like rice to China. Every year the Wisconsin State Show Tournament in Wisconsin Rapids draws roughly 2,000 competitors. When the nationals are held in Janesville, there are normally 20,000 people in the grandstand. A southern Wisconsin team has won the national title 21 out of 24 years.
“If they had a competition today,” says Gilkerson, who skied at Bartlett's from 1960-83 and who has judged every Show Ski Nationals, “Cypress Gardens or Sea World would not win at Nationals. But you know, most of their skiers come from Wisconsin anyway.”
For show skiers, if Dairyland isn't the place to be, it's at least the place to be from.
Other show-skiing kingdoms:
Minocqua, Wisconsin:
Nation's first
amateur show team, the Min-Aqua-Bats, still performs, as
do a dozen others
in the area.
Rockford, Illinois:
One of the select places that has both hosted Nationals and been home to a team that's won it.
Okeeheelee Park in West Palm Beach, Florida, is the Visa card of slalom skiing. If you go there, you better bring your butter turns and calluses as hard as quarters, because the ski club takes passes through the slalom course 18 hours a day, but they don't take kindly to anyone toting a wakeboard.
“The sheriff's deputies know the place well,” says Nancy Hamilton, mother of world wakeboard champion Tara Hamilton, who trains at Okeeheelee when she isn't being questioned by authorities. “They know most calls from Okeeheelee Park are slalom skiers tattling on wakeboarders for being over capacity or for whatever it takes to get them off the water.”
There's a reason the slalom heavies are as territorial as border collies: The site might just be the best water-skiing playground in America, and that, if anything, is an understatement.
“Half of Europe is over here during winter,” says ski club member Thelma Salmas, reluctant to draw any more outside attention to the park. She's one of at least 10 national champions who train here year-round. But all the amateur champs are mere extras on a scene that sometimes includes world-ranked front-liners Wade Cox and Steve Cockeram and one of the most respected slalom coaches on earth, Chet Raley. Yet most ski club members react to the all-star cast as if it were the Navy testing subs in the slalom course.
“Anywhere else in the world, people would take the day off work to watch these guys ski,” says one longtime Okeeheelee user, “but here they're just in the way.”
Wakeboarding history doesn't even date back to the beginning of the Clinton administration. To wit, riders have been turning Lake Pickett (30 minutes east of Orlando) into a wake pool for just the past three years, but it's already known around the nation as a classic “stomping” ground.
There's no telling how many photo shoots Pickett has hosted in that time or the number of moves that have been trademarked. It isn't like news helicopters are hovering or drivers are braking to take a look. Pickett is set back in the sticks and is only accessible to homeowners or renters. On some days, not a single fin will pierce the water. On others it stays perfectly calm until a pack of 20 riders and four boats comes unleashed after breakfast, around 2 p.m.
“It's nothing but cows and rednecks out here, but all the pros have touched the lake at one time or another,” says Pickett resident Markham Gross, co-founder of Hardline ropes and handles.
Gator Lutgert and Scott Byerly are two notable riders who lead their own galleries onto
Pickett. Pro jumper/rider Freddy Krueger moved from Louisiana to the Pickett area earlier this year in hopes that some of the innovation would seep into his repertoire.
“I needed to get around more wakeboarding,” says Krueger. “It makes sense to be here where it's happening.”
Other wakeboarding kingdoms:
Lake Alfred,
Florida:
Favorite place for
the Bonifays, Zane Schwenk, Dean Lavelle and Sonja Scheffler.
Canyon Lake,
California:
Most boats are
now sporting
towers, despite a movement among some residents to
ban wake-enhancement systems.
