Arizona State University Spring Opener

The Water Ski season started back up on March 28^th, down in Newberry Springs, California with the Arizona State Universities “Redneck Yacht Club” Spring Opener

Unfortunately since the snowboarding and snow skiing season was still going on, SNC only went down with a three man team, Cory Johnson, Spencer Fisch, and myself, but we gave it our all and had a great time.

We pulled up to the tournament around 10pm on Friday night, as always the party was already going strong, but we decided for once to set up camp before heading into the festivities. While setting up, a few more cars pulled in and started to do the same so we decided why not get the party started while setting up. So we hopped in the truck, plugged in the phone, and of course went strait to the best party station on Pandora, “80’s Cardio”. At first we got some weird looks with artists like Madonna and Michael Jackson blasting out of our speakers but about three songs in you could tell people were really starting to like it.

After everything was ready to go we walked down to the end of the lake to see what was going on and see some friends from last semester. Once Spencer and I finished our bottle of sangria, we decided it was time for bed so we could get up early and compete. As I opened my eyes to the sun beating into my tent, all I could hear was the sounds of boats ripping down the lake, and hung over kids who didn’t want to wake up yet.

As the tournament began, none of the three of us are really the best slalom skiers so you can imagine how well we did. I fell at 1 ball, Spencer who is brand new to the sport only getting up on a slalom ski once before didn’t score a buoy, and Cory made 3 buoys. The next event we had was trick, which was definitely a little better for all of us. Spencer scored 100 points in his first trick run ever putting him in 27^th place out of 35, I scored 320 points for 17^th place, and Cory scored 540 points for 11^th place.

Once the trick event was over and the boats were pulled out of the water, it was finally time for the “Redneck Yacht Club” themed party and the fourth event of the tournament, “Boat Races”, a five person drinking team where its basically flip cup, but you don’t need to flip it and you chug a full solo cup of beer. Of course the hosts of the tournament were the ones who ended up taking home the title, but if it weren’t for a disqualification on our team for spilling a cup in the first round, I feel that SNC could have taken home the title! Either way the night was great and it was pretty funny seeing everyone dress up in their best redneck yacht club outfits.

The next day was the day that I was looking forward to all weekend, jump day! Spencer was the first on our team to be up for jump and had never tried it before so we got everyone cheering for him as he skied down the lake to pump him up! On his first jump he took off fine but landed a little back seat and fell. On his second he backslapped a little and then stood right back up and there was his first water ski jump landing! After that he went in for his third and stomped it perfectly at 27 ft. for 21^st place out of 29 people, getting a shoreline of college students butts mooning him as is the tradition for first jump landed in competition. I was up next and was pretty excited with my score since I almost didn’t compete after hurting my back the day before. I jumped 66 ft. on my third jump, beating my personal best score of 58 ft. as well as the SNC record of 59 ft. and putting myself into 7^th place. Last to go was Cory who also landed all three jumps in a row and getting a score of 40 ft. putting him into 14^th place. All in all a great event for SNC.

As for Overall score, we really didn’t do very well since we only had three people go and the overall comes from your top 5 men and top five women but some how we still didn’t get last.

Once the three of us were all done with jump it was time to pack up our gear and start the drive back to Tahoe for another two weeks of school before our next tournament, and you could tell on the drive back, that was the only thing on all of our minds!