The Opening Pyramid from the 2011 National Show Ski Tournament

This past weekend, the Mad-City Ski Team competed at the National Show Ski Tournament at Traxler Park in Janesville, WI. The team had placed 2nd at the Wisconsin State Water Ski Show Tournament (the regional qualifier tournament) and was looking to both clean up the show a little bit and make a few of the acts just a bit bigger and try out a few new tricks in our show for Nationals.

But the weeks leading up to the tournament proved to be challenging for the team. Besides dealing with the incredible heat and humidity that had moved into the area in the week before the state tournament, two very prominent and important members of the team were injured. Ann, who is a Wisconsin State and National Swivel Champion, suffered a broken ankle about 2 weeks before the tournament and Lori, another important member suffered a severely pulled muscle the day before the tournament opened that prevented her from skiing.

The team didn’t let the weather, the wind, the water or injuries slow it down. The home show the week before Nationals proved to be one of the team’s best shows at home (or anywhere else) that year, one that we’d like to have performed at Nationals, and given the less than ideal conditions at our home site, that is a huge accomplishment.

During the final week of preparations, the team performed a couple more show run thrus, gave a couple acts a little extra time on the water and worked hard on our skits and intros… basically, putting the little extra polish on our show.

Finally, the tournament arrived. On Friday during individuals, Kristen Block, one of the team’s members, competed in the Individual Swivel Competition. Here is her swivel routine…

Kristen’s 2011 National Swivel Routine [video]

Facing some tough competition, Kristen placed 3rd in the Swivel Competition.

Friday night, the team met for a final team meeting to go through our intros, dances and responsibilities during the team’s setup and tear down times. Basically, a mini dress rehearsal, minus the costumes and skiing… and one less thing to worry about in the morning, which was going to come very early.

Saturday arrived (barely) and throughout team member’s homes, alarms went off about 3:15am and Mad-City’s migration to Janesville started. I’m assuming most team members packed the majority of their stuff into their cars the night before and had hooked up to whatever they might be towing, leaving the only responsibilities in the morning to be whatever they needed to do to wake up and eat some breakfast before getting on the road to Janesville by 4am.

5am arrives, Traxler Park opens and Mad-City shows up to get ready for our show at Nationals. Being the first team on the water, the team’s setup time started at 7:30am, leaving just a couple hours for the team build the back drop, the girls to put on make up, everyone to get their costumes, 100s of ropes to re-wrapped and for people to gather and preset their equipment. Boats were launched, floaters put into positions, backdrops placed and then it was show time.

Here are some pictures from the show…

And, by looking at the pictures, you can see that Ann, broken ankle and all, still skied. She hadn’t practiced for the prior two weeks other than to try it out the day before to see if she could ski with her broken and since she could, she did.

The team was very happy with the show. A few things that usually make it didn’t, but just about everything did make it. Clean pyramids, strong swivel act, good big act, great tandem act, awesome ending pyramid, a phenomenal ballet act and some great new comedy and it all added up to a show the team could be very proud of.

Here’s a short highlight video…

Mad-City Ski Team 2011 National Show Highlights [video]

Yes, 13 minutes isn’t that short, but there were a lot of highlights.

And for those that want to see the whole show, here you go…

Mad-City Ski Team 2011 National Show Ski Tournament Show [video]

 When the final results were announced, the Mad-City Ski Team placed 3rd behind the Rock Aqua Jays (Janesville, WI) who took 1st and the Wonder Lake Water Ski Show Team (Wonder Lake, IL) who took 2nd.

From USA Water Ski:

8/14/2011 20:04:12 – The Rock Aqua Jays Water Ski Show Team (Janesville, Wis.) won the national team title at the 37th Indmar Marine Engines Division 1 Show Ski National Championships, Aug. 12-14, on the Rock River at Traxler Park in Janesville, Wis. It was the Rock Aqua Jays’ 16th national team title.

The Rock Aqua Jays tallied 2,021.16 points in sweeping the traditional box scores for Dock & Equipment Crew, Pick-Up Boat Driving, Towboat Driving and Sound Crew, and earning top-scoring awards for Pyramid, Swivel, Doubles, Showmanship, Overall Show and High Individual Club Act. It was the Rock Aqua Jays’ first national team title since 2005.

The defending champion Wonder Lake Water Ski Show Team (Wonder Lake, Ill.) finished second with 1,961.32 points and the Mad-City Ski Team (Madison, Wis.) placed third with 1,914.04 points. The Backwater Gamblers (Rock Island, Ill.), which scored 1,801.68 points, and Badgerland (Waukesha, Wis.), which tallied 1,723.50 points, rounded out the top-five placements.

The tournament featured 14 teams and more than 1,500 athletes competing for the coveted show ski national title. In competitive show skiing, each club has one hour to present a theatrical performance on water skis. Judges score acts by awarding points based on originality, presentation and execution. Elaborate costumes and staging intermix with music and fast action on the water as an announcer leads the audience through the show.

Jacklyn Kumlien (Janesville, Wis.) and Bob Panter (Wisconsin Rapids, Wis.) received the Willa Cook and Skip Gilkerson awards, respectively. The awards are given to the tournament’s top female and male performers, as voted on by the tournament officials.

Links:

• 2011 D1 Show Ski Nationals Results
• USA Water Ski Article on the National Show Ski Tournament

After a long week of practice in some very hot and humid weather, Friday evening arrived and the team met for our now routine night before meeting, going through all of responsibilities during the setup and tear down times as well as practicing all of our intros and dances.

Saturday morning arrived and, just like the rest of the week so far, it was hot and humid with some storms looming on the radar, but show time finally arrived. It was still hot and still humid and the wind was just starting to pick up a little bit.

Here are some pictures from our show…

Backfoot Line

Opening Pyramid

Bell Sisters Barefoot Fliers in Montage

Chris on the Wakeboard in Montage

Jeff on the Sky Ski in Montage

Amanda in Swivel

One Act Show

Double Heli & Double Fronts

Ballet Line on the Dock

Ballet Line on the Water

The Ballet Line Flashdance Dance

After ballet, Big Act was ready to go on the dock when the wind picked up dramatically, to the point where the backdrops were nearly blown over…

The Backdrop Nearly Coming Down

After a roughly 30 minute delay, the front moved through, the wind died down and the storms seemed to miss us. With the backdrops back in place, the show started back up…

Toe Turn Line

Trios

Conventional Doubles

Tandem Barefoot

Tandem Doubles with Two 720 Swivelers

Tandem Pyramid

The Presto Prefab 4-High

Supersized Pinwheel

Ending Pyramid

After our ending pyramid, with time left on the clock, the team made the decision to re-run our ballet act (which had been partially pinned the first time.) The re-run paid off as they performed the water routine and stage dance again, this time, both flawlessly.

Overall, the team skied a very good show. With the exception of our jump acts which struggled a bit and ballet being pinned and needing to be re-run, the overall show was actually very clean. The team finished the marathon show in the heat and humidity knowing we had skied our hearts out and entertained the crowd.

Here’s a 9-minute version of our 60-minutes show…

2011 Wisconsin State Highlights [video]

Sunday, after all of the teams had competed, the awards were finally announced. The Aqua Jays, who had skied a very good show with huge numbers, swept the box scores and took 1st place overall. The Aquanuts had the highest scoring act of the tournament with their ballet line, the Aqua Jays had the highest scoring barefoot line, the Waterbugs had the highest scoring jump act and Badgerland had the highest scoring pyramid act.

Heather Addie won the Janie Dibble/Michelle Cook Outstanding Female Skier and Dave Rezin won the Jack Lukes Outstanding Male Skier awards.

The final results of the top 5…

1. Rock Aqua Jays – 2026
2. Mad-City Ski Team – 1732
3. Badgerland – 1652
4. Aquanuts – 1634
5. Webfooters – 1633

Thanks to Jim’s Photos for the great pictures.

Opening Pyramid at the Mercury Open... a 3-4-3

This past Sunday the Mad-City Ski Team competed at the Mercury Open Tournament in Janesville, WI with 12 other teams. The tournament provides a great warm-up for the upcoming Wisconsin State Tournament that occurs July 21-24.

Mad-City skied first on Sunday which meant the team needed to arrive at the show site by 5am which meant many of us woke up sometime between 3am and 3:30am to make it there on time. (For me at least, that is a time that I’m usually falling asleep, not waking up.)

The team took 3rd at the tournament, placing behind the Rock Aqua Jays (from Janesville who took 1st Place) and the Wonder Lake Ski Team (from Wonder Lake, IL who took 2nd and was last year’s National Champion).

As a  whole, the team was very happy with our skiing at the tournament and we’ll be ready for the state tournament in a few weeks.

Pictures from our Tournament Show

(Click on the thumbnails below to embiggen the pictures.)

Photos courtesy of Jim’s Photos.

Mad-City’s Opening Pyramid

In the tournament, Mad-City took 5th place overall and was only about 160 points from 3rd place.  With lots of places in our show for our team to continue improving, we were very happy with our overall show and placement. The state tournament is just 3 weeks away and we plan to put on a great show for everyone up in Wisconsin Rapids on July 19th.

Final results of the all the teams were as follows:

1. Rock Aqua Jays
2. Wonder Lake
3. Webfooters
4. Water Bugs
5. Mad-City
6. Beaverland
7. Lauderdale
8. Aquaducks
9. Five Seasons
10. Minneiska

To view more pictures from the tournament and all of our shows, please visit Jim’s Photos.

The Mad-City Ski Team competed at the 2009 National Water Sk Show Tournament at Shorewood Park in Loves Park, llinois the weekend of August 7-9 with the goal of winning a fourth straight National Championship.

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…

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

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.

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.

The Following is a picture recap of our weekend, special thanks to Jim’s Photo’s and Eric Wedige for the pictures. Please visit www.JimsPhotos.com to view our complete seasons worth of pictures.

Friday Jump Competition

For the second year in a row the Mad-City Jump Team took home top honors for the best jump squad in the entire country. The competition allows every team five-minutes to perform any number and combination of jumps and are judged on difficulty, flow, crowd appeal and execution.

Our team hit the water first and put on a show that no one was able to match! You can view more pictures of our team jump competition at Jims Photos (Link)

Double Gainer

Four Man Front Flip

Quad Helicopters

Ladies and Gentleman, Your national champion Jump Team!!

Saturday Nationals Ski Show

The temperatures on Saturday were climbing into the mid-80s by 9:00 A.M, we knew we were in for quite a day. Mad-City skied third after the Janesville Rock Aqua Jays and host ski team the Ski Broncs. Our show finally hit the water at about noon. More pictures can be seen at Jims Photos Website (Link)

The story behind our show is that with the addition of announcer Matt Baumler, who brings with him a theatrical style all his own, he is looking to make the Mad-City Ski Team over, make us into a theatrical ski show. However, our incumbent announcer, Adam Schaller is resisting, satisfied with Mad-City’s free-wheeling, rock and roll, style ski show. Who will win? Lets find out!!

Sandy, Libby, Taryn, Ann, Kristen and Teri welcome you to our show with a pre-show dance!

The trumpets begin to blare, and that means only one thing…

Welcome to a “Tale of 2 Ski Shows”!!

Kicking our show off in style, a 7-man Bacwards Barefoot Line

Matt Baumler, your court jester!

Our 4-2-4 Opening Pyramid Team

Adam doesn’t look like he is enjoying this! Lets try something in Mad-City Style.

Montage – Jeff on a sky ski

Montage – Kirk and Beau on shoe skis

Montage – Paul on a wakeboard

One Act Show – A Mad-City Original! Shoe Skis, Four-High Pyramid, Strap Doubles and a Pinwheel!!

Now, back to Matt’s style. Hey Meistro, Give me some rhythm!

Ballet – Your Mad-City Dream Girls

Ballet – Dream Girls on the water

Ballet – Dream Girls on stage w/ Matt.

Now we head back to Adams style of ski show, some freestyle jumping

Jump 1 – Paul and Scott perform a double gainer

Jump 1 – On the Dock

Matt won’t stand for this, here comes a pirate theme….

A Pirate Theme? Jack Sparrow thinks so!!

Star Swivel – Kristen Heilman on the water

Star Swivel – Ann Wittenberg, Joey O’Connor, Laura Fick and Kristen Heilman

Adam has other ideas about this Pirate theme! Here comes the Mad-Ciy Big Act!

Big-Act – Trio

Big-Act Doubles

Big-Act Swivel Line

Big-Act Star Staggered Swivel

Big-Act – Conventional Doubles

But wait, what is this? Matt coming in as Adam? This should be good.

And it is…here comes our national champion jumpers again!!

Jump 2 – Dan Wang, Paul O’Connor and Kirk Schultz perform the hangman (Flip over Helicopter and Flip)

And now, Taryn and Adam have a little ditty…or two!

Fellowship and Fun!!!

However, here comes Mad-City’s biggest pyramid ever!!

Our Ending Pyramid – 4-2-4-2-4!

Together at last, Matt and Adam in the “Original” Evolution of Dance

The “Original” Evolution of Dance

Evolution of Dance

Evolution of Dance

But, now its back to business. Welcome the tournament MVP, Paul O’Connor!!

Jaw Dropper – Gainer

Jaw Dropper – Front Flip

Jaw Dropper – 720 Helicopter!!

Stickin it!!

The Skip Gilkerson Award Winner for Best Male Skier – PAUL O’CONNOR!

Not to be left out, a tweak on a Mad-City Original. the Guy/Girl Combo Line!!

The guys on the dock!!

15 guys and 15 girls = 30 person ballet line!!

Combo Ballet on the water – HUGE!

Ladies and Gentleman, YOUR 2007 Mad-City Ski Team!

Sunday Awards Ceremony

After an entire weekend, numerous shows and a amazing amount of nerves…the time has finally come to reveal the winner of the 2007 national championship!

First up, the award for best Ballet Line!

Chris accepting the award for best ballet line of the tournament, our 30 person combo ballet line!!

Next, award for best jump act…no surprise, its….

Paul O’Connor with driver Tony Wang and rider Cyndi Pickney for the Jaw Dropper. A Front Flip, a Gainer and a 720!!

Next award is for best swivel ski act of the tournament…and the winner is?

The Mad-City Star Swivel, Ann Wittenberg, Joey O’Connor, Laura Fick and Kristen Heilman! The best group of swivel skiers in the nation!!

Mad-City doesn’t stop here, next up is the award for best Male skier at Nationals. The Skip Gilkerson Award goes to?

Paul O’Connor!

Turning our attention to the behind the scenes action, the award for best dock crew goes to?

Mad-City! Our ladies behind the scenes get some well deserved recognition!

An important part of every show is the pick-up boat crew, and the award goes to?

Mad-City! Jim and Liz McKenna and Caprice and Lee Vanderkolk take home the award for best pick-up boat crew!

Turning our attention to the tow-boat crew, could it be a sweep of the boat driver awards?

YES!! Tony Wang, Gary Pickney, Don Heilman and Jerry Wesner, the best tow boat drivers in the country!

Bringing the announcers words and the music to your ears, here is the award for best sound crew.

Mad-City Again!! Matt Baumler, Adam Schaller and Eric Wedige claim the award as best sound crew!!

And now…the drum rolls.

The best ski show in the entire country goes to?

MAD-CITY!! Show Director Chris Coupland picks up our award, with show committee in tow!!

and now we celebrate with the traditional dip in the water!!!

Your 2007 National Champion Mad-City Ski Team!!!

Following our National Championship, and right before, the Mad-City Ski Team has got quite a bit of publicity!! The following are some links to various articles and other media about the Mad-City Ski Team.

Mad-City Team Up – Isthmus The Daily Page (Thursday August, 16 2007)

Mad-City Ski Team Retains Title – Wisconsin State Journal (Tuesday August, 14 2007)

Show Ski Gold – Wisconsin State Journal (Saturday August, 11 2007)

Watch The Ski Team Perform – Wisconsin State Journal Video (Saturday August, 11 2007)

Mad-City Ski Team to Compete – Wisconsin State Journal (Friday August, 10 2007)

Here is what some of our competition had to say following the National Waterski Tournament:

Wonder Lake Ski Team (Wonder Lake, IL)  2nd Place – Northwest Herald (Tuesday August, 14 2007)

Janesville Rock Aqua Jays (Janesville, WI) 3rd Place – Janesville Gazette (Monday August, 13 2007)

Ski Broncs (Rockford, IL) 11th Place – Rockford Register Star (Monday August, 13 2007)