You can now view the Mad-City Ski Team’s 2009 National Championship show online right here. Just press play below.

2009 Mad-City Nationals Show [video]

For the full results of the 2009 tournament, click here.

In the future, a higher quality version of it will be online, but for now, enjoy.

NBC 15 Morning Show Weekend Live from 6/20 [video]

For those not in the know, EOD is the Evolution of Dance that Adam (our announcer) has done for a few years. In 2006 he started off with a solo dance using many of the songs our ski team has used through the years, in 2007 he danced with with his co-announcer Matt and in 2008 they did what they (Adam and Matt) called the Evolution of Dance 2.5. In this version, they still danced, but in a completely different way.

Many people have seen EOD 2.5 before, but with the exception of just a couple people, no one has seen it quite like this. Until now, pretty much everyone has only seen the side presented to the audience. Now you can watch Adam and Matt perform EOD 2.5 from a completely new perspective, from behind the curtain.

EOD 2.5 Special Edition [video]

Mad-City 2009 Highlight Video [video]

Welcome to the Future

The plan began nearly a year earlier when Matt Heilman decided to run for show director again. He had a vision of reinventing show skiing. The team had been running the same basic act order for several years and it had worked well, but he wanted to try something different, very different.  Everyone knew it was risky, but everyone bought into the plan.  The show planning started in the fall with brainstorming sessions to come up with new act ideas and a new show running order.  Everything was considered from the things that could actually work to the completely and totally off the wall.  After several meetings, a new running order was come up with and a list of new act ideas to try out in the summer. As the winter progressed, the team worked hard at the indoor practices, with many new girls learning how to climb while others practiced more.  The goal was to build a five high and that meant everyone needed to work on the climbing… everything needed to be smooth and everyone needed to be sure footed, know exactly when to climb and where to go.

Meanwhile, the search began for futuristic music, something that in and of itself is hard to define. A lof of people associate techno with futuristic music, while some futuristic movies use complete orchestral scores and others have a mix of harder metal as futuristic sounding music.  Finding the right mixture of music for the show was something that began in the spring and continued up through Nationals.  Sixty minutes of techno music was not an option.. a variety of styles and types were needed that all fell into that futuristic style.

The Climb

As the Mercury Open rapidly approached with July and State right behind it, the team really took to working on the new act running order.  It hadn’t been changed in years and the new order meant people needed to go different places at different times and boat drivers had completely new patterns.  The new order meant a lot of change for everyone.

The team was finally able to test out the new order at the Mercury Open at Traxler Park in Janesville, WI, where we skied a very good show.  We found a few things we wanted to tweak in the running order and came up with more new ideas.  Although we did not win the tournament, we found out a lot about our show and the team.

With the Mercury Open completed, the team set it’s sight on the State Tournament.  A few more changes were done to the running order and a few new acts were introduced… doubles around the boat and a doubles couple towing a swiveler.  Work continued with the goal of a five high with a double top being completed successfully a few times, but when it came time to ski state, clean was better than something that wasn’t consistent yet.  The hard work payed off though as the team was very succesful at State, winning our fourth consecutive state championship and fifth in the past six years (more details here).

All of this was just a precursor to setting our site on a fourth consecutive National Championship.  The team knew that winning Nationals was never done easily and many teams had really set their sites on beating Mad-City this year.  Teams would come armed with five high pyramids, two doubles tops behind the same boat, and other truely incredible acts.  Mad-City would need to ski an incredible show to defend it’s title.

More work was done on trying some more new acts for the show.  The team experimented with a lot of ideas before finally settingly on a new act for the show.  New comedy skits were dialed in and the last tweaks to the music were completed and a new ending intro unlike anything ever done before became a reality.  Nationals arrived and Mad-City was ready.

I Gotta Feeling

Friday morning of Nationals arrived and it was cold and raining, but the skiing started for the Indvidual Competitions regardless of the weather.

Ann Tieman took to the water first for Mad-City as she competed in the Swivel Competion. She practices nearly every morning before work, swivel skiing as the sun comes up with her husband Russ driving the boat.  And her hard work and determination paid off as she skied a phenomenal swivel set and became the National Swivel Champion.

Ann Tieman’s Swivel Routine at Show Ski Nationals Individual Competion [video]

The next people on the water for Mad-City were Carly Cates and Paul O’Connor who were competing in the Doubles Competion.  They skied a very good routine and ended up in the 7th place overall.

Carly & Paul in the Doubles Competition

Next on the water for Mad-City was our Jump Team. They skied an incredible jump act, but ended up taking 2nd to the Bad Water Ski-Ters who had also beaten them at State.

Team Jump [video]

The last competition of the day was the Individual Freestyle Jump Competition.  Both Paul O’Connor and Dan Benz were competing for Mad-City in this competition.  Paul ending up winning the competition by landing a two ski mobius and one ski mobius jump and Dan Benz placed 7th.  Videos of all of their jumps are below.

Freestyle Jump – Dan Benz [video]

Freestyle Jump – Paul O’Connor [video]

Friday night the team met back at hotel for our team meeting. After eating dinner, the team was treated to Adam Schaler and Matt Baumler’s new comedy fill.  The skit, corregraphed by Taryn Garland, also featured Justin Mushel as the fourth member of the dancing quartet. Once the team recovered from witnessing the debut performance of the Ballet Ski, the team went through all of the details of the show one last time, practicing all of intros one final time and one last inspriration speech from our Show Director, Matt Heilman.

The Future is So Bright

Saturday morning, 5am, alarm clocks all across the hotel start going off as Mad-City wakes up.  The skies are still dark, but that is OK because the sun has not yet come up yet. However, the air was filled with rain, lots of rain. At 6am, the team gathered under a tent at the ski site preparing for our show.  Not knowing what the weather would do, we had to plan as if the show would happen on time.  The first team started their show ontime, but about 10 minutes in, lightning was detected and everything stopped. Mad-City continued to prepare for their show though.  After about an hour delay, things resumed and Mad-City began our setup as the sun started to come out and heat and humidity began to climb.

Missed by many at the state tournament, Mad-City brought back the preshow dance.  Here are some of the ladies of Mad-City dancing to Liquid Dance by A.R. Rahman of the Slumdog Millionair soundtrack.  This dance, as well as the team’s ballet dances and the ending comedy dance were all choregraphed by Taryn Garland.

Preshow Dance [video]

Finally, the show began… Here’s a highlight video of our show.

Mad-City 2009 National Highlight Clip [video]

By popular request, the finale of the our continious comedy… aka “The Dance”

Continuous Comedy – The Dance [video]

Here are just a couple pictures from our show…

Mobius

Ballet

Tandem 3-High Pyramids

Ending Pyramid – 40 People Strong

One thing that doesn’t show up well in the video, is at the end of the show, every single member of the team is on stage for the ending intro. Having every single member on stage for the end of the show is something unique to our show. Here’s a picture that shows that better than anything else.

Everybody on Stage for the Ending Intro…
Together Everyone Achieves More

Needless to say, the team was very happy with that performance.  Both pyramids up, down and clean back to the beach, 23 in ballet back to the beach and 3 awesome jump acts and a competely new montage act, not to mention a comedy act that the crowd loved. One comment heard on the webcast was that “Mad-City had set the bar so high, others would have to take chances.”

After a wild weekend of weather, Badgerland managed to finally finish their show on Sunday night after the final weather interruption of the weekend when some truly scary looking clouds rumbling with thunder moved through the area.  When their show resumed, the sun came out, and for the remainder of their show and the awards, the weather was as everyone hoped it would have been for the entire tournament.  Sunny, not really humid anymore and upper 70s.

With the points finally tabulated, the results were announced.  Mad-City’s year of hard work towards a fourth consecutive National Championship paid off in a big way.

The first award given out was the Skip Gilkerson award for the most outstanding male skier of the tournament.  Paul O’Connor was the receipient of this prestigious honor.  In our ski show, he performed many incredibles feats including a 720-degree helicopter, a two ski mobius, a one ski mobius, a one ski front flip, several tricks on his wake board, several other jumps over the ramp and centered a four tier pyramid.

Paul O’Connor – 2009 Skip Gilkerson Award Winner

The next awards presented for some of the highest scoring acts, with Mad-City winning three of them.  Ballet, Jump ans Swivel.

The Mad-City Girls – 2009 Best Ballet – 446 Points!

Dan Benz, Paul O’Connor, Tony Wang and Gary Pickney – 2009 Best Jump Act for Jump 2
(Jeff Jacobson, not pictured)

Joey O’Connor, Ann Tieman, Brea Imse, Laurie Taschwer, Kristen Block
2009 Best Swivel Act

The box scores were then announced and Mad-City won them all…  Dock & Equipment, Pick-Up Boat, Towboat Driving Showmanship, Overall Show and Sound Crew.  Sweeping all of the box scores is a tremondous feat as it really shows how the whole team performed at an incredible level.

Sarah Jahn, Roc Cates, Meg Cates, Amy Kothes, Adam Jermain, Laurie Logan
Best Dock Equipment

Pat Walters, Pat Jahn, Dave Zink, John Kothe
Best Pickup Boat Crews

Gary Pickney, Don Heilman, Cyndi Pickney, Jerry Wesner, Tony Wang, Bobbi Wang, Sue Heilman
Best Boat Drivers

Jim Jermain, Eric Wedige, Adam Schaller, Matt Baumler
Best Audio Crew

When the final results were announced for the overall placements of the teams, Mad-City took 1st place overall, winning by nearly 280 points over the 2nd place team, Wonder Lake out of Illinois.  It was truely an epic achievment a year in the making.

Matt Heilman – Show Director for the 2009 Mad-City Ski Team
Accepting the the National Championship

The 2009 Mad-City Ski Team

Matt Heilman, our show director, pointed out to us before Nationals that Mad-City had a chance to do something unprecedented in show skiing this weekend. That was win 8 titles in row over the course of 4 years.  That means win State four years in a row and Nationals four years in a row.  8 titles in 4 years.  That level of consistent achievement is something that hadn’t been accomplished by anyone before.

Links:
2009 D1 Show Nationals Team Results
2009 D1 Show Nationals Individual Results
Jim’s Photos – You can find all of these pictures and more at Jim’s Photos
Mindworks Photography Photo Montage Video

Local News Stories About Nationals:
Mad-City Ski Team Aims for Fourth Straight National  Title
Mad-City Wins Fourth Straight National Title
Champs to Teach Water Skiing to People with Disabilities

Other Press Announcements:
USA Water Ski Announces Nationals Results
USOC Press Release

Note: This story will be updated in the next few days with additional video clips.

The tournament starts with individual competitions on Thursday where we had several people competing.  The weather on Thursday was not very friendly for water skiing.  It was cool and very windy, with the wind right out of the west which produced a very rare situation on Lake Wazecha… white caps.

Carly Cates and Paul O’Conner competed in the doubles competition and took 6th place.

Paul & Carly

Ann Tieman competed in the swivel competition and put on an excelent performance and took 2nd.  A video of her performance is below.

Mad-City’s Ann Tieman at the
2009 Wisconsin State Individual Swivel Competition [link]

Our jump team competed in the Team Jump competition where they performed flawlessly and ended up taking 2nd place.  A video of their performance is below.

Mad-City Ski Team’s Jump Team in the Team Jump Competition Video [link]

Paul O’Conner also competed in the Free Style Jump Competition and took 2nd place overall.

On Friday morning, the division 2 teams began skiing in the cool, cloudy, sometimes raining weather.  With a high only in the 60s, it was one of the coldest state tournaments in my memory.  On Saturday morning Mad-City finally took to the water to perform our show.  A short highlight video of our performance is below.

Mad-City 2009 Wisconsin State Tournament Highlight Video [link]

On Sunday afternoon the results were announced and Mad-City took home several awards.  The team was recognized for the Best Ballet Line, Best Jump Act, Best Dock & Equipment, Best Pickup Boat Drivers and Best Audio Presentation.  When the team results were announced, the Mad-City Ski Team took 1st place overall.  Here is a link to the full results (2009 Wisconsin State Tournament Results).

Mad-City Ski Team - 2009 Wisconsin State Champions

The 2008 National Show Ski Tournament was originally scheduled to take place at Traxler Park in Janesville, Wisconsin, but, due to the high waters that affected the southern part of Wisconsin and much of the mid-west the most prestiguos tournament was moved to Wisconsin Rapids, the same site as the Wisconsin State Show Ski Tournament.

Having Nationals in Wisconsin Rapids made it almost seem like a second state tournament for Mad-City.  It’s a ski site a lot of us love and the Wisconsin Rapid Aqua Skiers always hosts a very fun tournament and we always seem to have a good time when we visit.

The tournament kicked off Friday morning with individuals taking place and Mad-City had a number of our members competing in the individual competition.  In the individual Swivel Ski Competition, our own Ann Wittenberg took to the water first.

Ann competing in the Swivel Competition

Following Ann for Mad-City was Kristen Armstrong.  Also competing in the swivel competition and she put together a great routine, even poking fun at the fact that she had to move around to find a place to ski.

She began her year skiing for the Tommy Bartlett Ski Show in the Wisconsin Dells, however, due to the flooding and subsequent drainage of Lake Delton, the Tommy Bartlett show was no longer and on the water and she eventually made her way to the Mad-City Ski Team.

Ironically, when she came to Mad-City, Mad-City was also on the move.  Our primary ski site on Lake Monona in Madison had too much water and was “Slow No Wake” so we weren’t able to ski there.  We were able to secure a site on Lake Wisconsin, only to later find out we had to move a couple hundred yards up the shore, and then encountered some blue-green algea forcing to just hold land practices.  In spite of Mother Nature’s effort to keep Kristen off the water, she still put together a routine that was good enough for 1st place in the swivel competition.

Kristen competing in the Swivel Competition

The next event was the doubles competition.  Mad-City had a couple qualify for this event as well.  Paul O’Connor and Carly Cates competed and did very well for the first trip to Nationals.  They suffered a bit of a snafu with the sound for their short opening dance and skit, but, they took to the water with a sliding dock start.  Unfortunatly, Paul lost a ski on the start, but they skied away and completed their first couple passes before they needed to get Paul’s lost ski.  Here are a couple pictures from their run…

Paul and Carly in Doubles - Notice Just the One Ski

Paul and Carly in Doubles

After doubles, the final event taking place on Friday was the Team Jump Competition.  Mad-City features a large group of very talented jumpers, however, on that day, it simply was not meant to be.  After waiting through a two-hour delay caused by stormy weather, the Mad-City jump team took to the water and competed and that’s about all we can say about it…

One of the highlights of the act was Rock Cates jump.  Unlike some of the other jumps, he skied away.

Rock in Team Jump

Mad-City's Jump Team

After individual’s wrapped up, the team gathered together at a picnic shelter for our normal pre-tournament team meeting.  Our picnic featured some tasty pizza from a local pizza place, a slight change from our pot-luck that we have prior to our State Ski Show weekend, a pot-luck that normally features the Wang families fanstastic turkey sandwhiches.  This meeting allows us one last chance to go through all of the details of our show… our intros, our dances and our comedy skits.

One of the few changes from our State ski show was that we decided to revamp some of the comedy and we completely redid one of our skits.

A week before Nationals, Adam Schaller and Matt Baumler (our announcers) put together a brand new playlist for a new dance they planned to do and sent it to Eric Wedige (me, our sound technician) so their new routine could be put together.  After a long ski practice and late night of editing, I sent them back their new song to dance to.  At the picnic, they performed their new dance in front of a crowd for the very first time and we, the team, loved it.  (Here’s the video of them performing it at Nationals.)  Here are a few pictures from the team picnic.

Team Picnic

The Kids in the Pick Up Boat

We did take time for our team picture…

The 2008 Mad-City Ski Team

Finally, after months of preparation, Saturday arrived.  The culmination of almost 10 months of preparation and countless hours of behind the scenes work, we were about to put on the the most important show of the year. We gathered at the ski site early, where some of us grab an early breakfast, while others eat some leftovers from the night before, and others simply pace around the site anxiously.  Finally, show time arrives. Instead of a ton of pictures of every act, here’s a highlight clip of the ski show…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU9Y5DWYCqg&hl=en&fs=1]

Mad-City 2008 National Highlight Clip [video]

With the show over, now we can all relax.  The rest of the weekend is spent relaxing, watching the other ski teams’ shows and having a good time.  Sunday afternoon finally arrives and the last ski show finishes up.  All the ski teams gather on the beach for the award ceremony.

First up for the awards are some awards from the individuals.  Here is Kristen collecting her trophy for 1st Place in the Swivel Competition.

Kirsten - 1st Place National Swivel Competition

After the individual awards are handed out, they start doing the act awards for the tournament and Mad-City collected a few of those…

Mad-City Wins Best Ballet

Mad-City Wins Best Barefoot Act for the Backfoot/Backbreaker Combo Act

Best Jump Act - Tony, Cyndi and Paul

Best Swivel Act - Kristen, Kelsey, Kristen and Ann

Mad-City also won manys of the traditional box scores…

Best Pickup Boat Crews

Best Boat Drivers... and Riders

Best Sound Crew

Finally, it was time for the overall team awards and Mad-City had a long wait to find out their placement, which is always a very good problem to have.  They work their way from last to first.

Anxiously awaiting, they made their way to the final two teams…and they were both announced simultaniously.

2nd place had 1981.4 points and 1st place had 2069.22 points.

And then they announced that the Rock Aqua Jays took 2nd place meaning that we, Mad-City, had taken 1st place.  Our show directors for 2008, Matt and Kristen run down to accept the award and the team follows them down in a crowd dust.

Mad-City Celebrating 1st Place with a Mad-City Team Woo Ha!!!

Kristen and Matt Celebrate

Mad-City - The 2008 National Show Ski Champions

Much like State weekend, Nationals weekend was very successful for the Mad-City Ski Team.  We took home the awards for Best Ballet, Best Barefoot Act, Best Jump Act, Best Swivel Act, Best Pick Up Boats, Best Tow Boats, and Best Sound Crew, and had the highest scoring act of the tournament with our Comedy Act.  We also had the best showmanship and had the 2nd best pyramid act.

The 2008 National Championship is Mad-City’s 3rd National Championship in a row and 4th in the past 5-years.  We previously won in 2004, 2006, 2007 and now in 2008.

Attached is the Official Scores: 2008 National Results ]]> http://www.madcityskiteam.com/2008/10/22/a-look-back-at-nationals-2008/feed/ 0 http://www.madcityskiteam.com/2008/10/12/a-look-back-at-state-08/ http://www.madcityskiteam.com/2008/10/12/a-look-back-at-state-08/#comments Mon, 13 Oct 2008 01:19:00 +0000 eric http://madcityskiteam.com/?p=435

The Wisonsin State Tournament is always an exciting time. It’s a weekend that just about everyone on the Mad-City Ski Team looks forward to. Great place to ski, a great skiing environment, and fans that are excited to see the show we’ve put together.

The tournament starts on Thursday with Individuals.  Paul and Carli were the first Mad-City members up competing in the doubles competition.  They put together a good routine that left them in 4th place.

Next up, we had Ann competing in swivel.  She also put together a good routine and finish in 2nd place.

Next on the dock for Mad-City, we had another swiveler in the competition, Kristen.  She also put together a very strong routine, which ultimately ended up puting her in first place overall.

Mad-City’s final entrants in the individual competition was the jump team.  The put together a pretty clean jump act that was good enough for first place.  Here’s one of their jumps, the 5 man front flip.

Thursday night, a lot of the team members went out to blow off some steam, relax and have a good time.  Friday, it was back to business though.  Some members relaxed at various places around Rapids, others took in some ski shows.  We all got together at one member’s cabin for a last team meeting on Friday night.  It’s a chance to go through all the intros, dances and skits one last time, sometimes for the first time.  Besides the meeting, we’re treated to a very good picnic dinner.

Finally, Saturday morning arrives.  So far, none of the many pregnant members of the team had gone into labor so we had all hands on deck for our show.  As usual, it’s always a last minute scramble to get the last few details of show ready and set everything up for the show.

Since, a common saying is a picture is worth a 1000 words, and video provides 30 pictures a second to provide the illusion of motion, here’s an essay with approximately 10.5 million words in it.  Luckily you don’t have to read it all.  Sit back and enjoy this highlight clip of our state show.  It’s just a little shy of 6 minutes.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn7HKcrGisE]

State Highlight Clip

With the show complete, the rest of Saturday is spent relaxing and having a good time.  Sunday morning arrives and the wait really begins.  But as the last team finishes their show, everyone starts to get anxious as we wait for the results.

Finally, the awards ceremony starts.  They kick things off with the individual results, handing out the.  Here are our team members accepting their awards.

Ann wins 2nd Place in Swivel

Kristen wins 1st Place in Swivel

Mad-City Jump Team wins 1st in Team Jump

Paul & Carli Win 4th Place in Doubles

After the awards for the individual competition are handed out, the act awards for the shows start.

Mad-City Wins Best Ballet

Mad-City Wins Best Jump Act

Then the traditional box scores begin…

Mad-City Wins Best Dock & Equipment

Mad-City Wins Best Tow Boat Driving

Finally, the overal results are announced…

Mad-City Wins 1st Place at Wisconsin State

Mad-City Celebrates 1st Place by Swimming in Lake Wazeecha

It was a very successful weekend for the Mad-City Ski Team… top 2 swivelers, 4th in doubles, 1st in team jump, best ballet, best jump act, best dock and equipment, best tow boat drivers and 1st place overall.  After celebrating our victory that night, the team set its focus on Nationals, which would take place just 3 weeks later.