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WATERSKI MagazineChange everything and rearrange your life. Oh, and forget water skiing.
Scot Ellis' knee burned, but the doctor's blunt advice burned more. It forced him to question his vocation, which had seen him land a pro tour jump record (207 feet) two years earlier and capture the pro title in 1990 at the age of 19. Now, following a gruesome crash at the 1995 Indianapolis tour stop, he had a dislocated right hip and knee and nerve damage that left his right leg completely numb.
What Ellis needed was a timetable for a return. He didn't need some local doctor spinning yarn about an old high-school injury.
“This doctor tells me he had to stop playing football because of an old injury, and that I should think about doing the same,” says Ellis, 25. “This guy needed a course in motivational speaking. I said, 'Enough of him.'”
A few days later, Ellis consulted a second doctor for another opinion. He was told the feeling in his right leg might never return. The doctor told Ellis to take it easy for 12-18 months and that he might be able to ski again. He made no promises.
“At first I was devastated and ready to give up,” says Ellis, who lives in Lakeland, Florida. “I was just starting to reach my peak. I'd never been hurt and I was crushed. I've never gone at anything slow in my life, but here I was on a couch all day. I lost 25 pounds. I was miserable. It felt like I was sticking my foot in a red-ant pile every day. It was killing me.”
Instead of surgery, Ellis opted to see a local chiropractor, Chris Cheatwood, who began easing his pain and reshaping his psyche. In April 1996, only seven months after his injury, Ellis decided to begin skiing again. He wrapped his ankle with 10 yards of silver duct tape, strapped on a heavy knee brace and started to slalom.
But slalom wasn't enough. Ellis, nicknamed “Rocket Man,” needed to fly. On June 4 he dragged his duct-taped leg down to the dock, slid his braced ankle into his binder and started jumping all over again.
“I only went about 60 or 70 feet, but I was doing it,” says the man who had scaled 200 feet more than 20 times in his career. “And I didn't have any pain.”
Just four days later he caught a plane to Shreveport to rejoin the tour. He went 172 feet and finished last. Healthy, an awful distance. One leg, a miracle?
Says Ellis' training partner, John Levingston: “I don't know if it was miraculous, but you have to know how determined Scot is.”
In Shreveport, the rest of the jumpers acted like they'd seen a ghost. By the end of the season they just feared him. Ellis finished third at each of the final three stops to finish an amazing sixth for the season. Then, in September, he went 203 feet in Seattle. All this, and he still can't feel his leg from the knee down.
“A lot of people see me limp down to the dock, jump 200 feet and limp back, and they wonder why I'm doing it. People ask me all the time how I can jump. … I don't know. Hey, the leg doesn't hurt. [It] just doesn't work.” – Kevin Wells
