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.

Mad-City 2009 Highlight Video [video]