 deserve this. And the banks need to forgive my boat loan. And the government needs to build a ski lake near my house. And wind...wtf? Seriously, its time for water skiers to stand up for their rights!
Rykert's Lake of Sin beat us to the punch with this vid. It is such an awesome jump that we had to steal it. So here you go!
Not only did the Men's Collegiate Jump record fall this last weekend but so did the Women's. Lauren Morgan topped Alex Lauretano's 155 foot boot from last years South Central Regionals. Poochie is part of a the new wave of very talented Women's jumpers calling themselves "Girls That Fly" and she showed she certainly does with this boot.
Zack Worden took down a record that many thought was unbreakable. Ryan Fitts jumped 193 off a 5 foot ramp at 32 mph in 1999. This record was set before the "Bebee era" of driving was ended and many argued it was an unbeatable distance due to the drivers helping the skiers. We are not saying Fitts record is not legit, that is just an argument for why his record held for so long. 
Well that record is no longer the longest NCWSA jump, Zack Worden went out and topped it with a 194 foot bomb. We can only find the vid on facebook so the jump vid is HERE.
Here is Zack practacing about a month ago at ULM's practice site.
Sitting here in my office watching the Nationals webcast means absolutely nothing I get paid to do will get done today.  There are few sites out there as nice or set up as well for a tournament like the NCWSA Nationals. On to Day 3 with Women's Tricks and Men's Jump and the final scores.
ULM's women have fallen to FSC in Jump and Slalom, but they will claim the last Women's event of the weekend. In a tight fight for the top 4 positions ULM will edge out Alabama while ULL and Rollins will round out the top 4. FSCs weakness in tricks trops them into 5th with ASU hot on their heels. Cincinnati, San Louis Obisbo and La Crosse have the ability to knock ASU down if they slip up.
After 5 events, with only the jump event to go...
And finally, the final event of the weekend is Men's Jump. This event is intense as the results here can give you a nudge up or down a spot, or can win you nationals...or cost you that big trophy. If the first 5 events go as we think, ULM could have 5 guys jump 90 feet and still win the tournament. But that is not going to happen, instead they are going to have 5 guys jump over 140, 1 guy pushing or over 180. So yes, ULM takes men's jump. Their jump team is so dominant in fact they are going to beat their closest competitor by 200 points. FSC who have been chasing ULM all weekend will take a solid second place with the Tide coming in comfortably in 3rd. Rollins, ASU and ULL will battle it out for 4th with all three teams being very closely matched...or not...ULL only put up 3 jumpers this year..wtf? We may be incorrect about this but it looks like they are skiing short a score. If ULL fields a 4th they will bump up in to competition with FSC and Bama. Ohio State has by far the best jump team of the rest.
ULM just did not put it together last year to win their 914th nationals, but this year they brought the heat and will be adding to their shed of trophies. Seriously, their trophies are all in a shed by their ski site.
Day 2 of the NCWSA Nationals brings up Men's trick and Women's Jump.
All of the talk before the season began was about how dominating the 'Bama trick team was going to be, but with the lack of consistency we are going to make a pick that may not be popular with some people, but the CRB is going to give the gold to ULM. Alabama may have 5 skiers that could ski for any team in the country but they have not put together 4 scores at a single tournament while ULM has. It will be very close though, and ULL could very easily slip into the top spot. Men's Tricks is by far the biggest toss up of any of the events this weekend. ASU could slide in if the teams ahead have an unfortunate fall. FSC and THE Ohio State will battle it out to fill out the 5th spot.
This event shows ULM's Achilles heel, while they will put up 5 respectable scores, at least 3 over 100 feet that will not cut it with this level of competition and will cause them to drop to 3rd if not 4th place. ULL has not been able to top their instate rivals will power past for a solid 2nd. FSC rises to the top again and secures their second event gold. Alabama is right on ULM's heals and could very easily overtake them for 3rd. ASU, Rollins and UC San Louis Obisbo will fight it out for 5th.
We ran hundreds of scores, made spreadsheets, consulted those in the know and used the magic 8 ball to get our results. I provide my insight before each list of placements based on our calculations. There is plenty of room for teams to go up and down based on the fact that these teams are now skiing at the same sight with the same conditions and some teams will have skiers that missed a tournament here or there. Midwest teams will most likely place higher then our calculations project due to awful weather at their regional this year.
Collegiate Nationals is upon us and this year we have decided to try a scientific approach to see what the final scores may be. Today the final top 20 list came out on NCWSA.com and we came at this from a more scientific approach. There is no reason to run the tournament now, here are the winners.
On to the Big show. We are only doing D-1, not because we did not try to do D-2 as well but scoring an entire tournament is a bit more difficult that you would think.
Here is our methodology in determining these scores, we used the various teams placements at their regional events and extrapolated out these scores into Nationals. Now, obviously, this assumes that each skier skis the same as they did and other factors are basically ignored. But, the concept was to simply take the teams and sort of rank them by their past performances to determine their future.
Unlike baseball or football where there are advanced metrics to help, including park factor and vorp and what not, waterskiing doesn't have anything like that, obviously. But, here is our crack at it.
Included is also some opinion to help flesh out the story.
ULM is very good this year and you can expect to see all 5 of their men run into 38 off. As you can see from the scores listed below, they nab first place with 2265. We think that second will also be a lock with FSC grabbing silver. Interesting to note that despite FSC being very strong slalom team, they are second to ULM, but, those two teams seem to be in a tier all by themselves with ULL being a shade more then 300 points back in third. The fight for slalom will be 3rd to 7th and then the rest of the pack fighting for the rest of the spots.
The script is flipped in the women's bracket with our projections showing FSC taking over the top spot with ULM coming in third. However, in this case the gulf between the one and two teams and the rest is narrowed with Rollins and ULL rounding out the top four and all within 200 points of each other.
Coming soon will be Day 2 with Men's Tricks and Women's Jump.
If you have differing opinions or people to watch for or anything that could change our predictions let us know!
This vid terrified me. This trail looks scary enough on its own, but with big holes in the walk way and the fact the guy does not clip into the safety lines at all just proves that he is a much braver and stupider man then I am.
This is a cool view from the top of a pyramid, looks kinda freaky up there.  Way to many ropes and skis to hit if you fall.
On a scale of 1 to 10 of awesomness this is a 250 foot jump. This may be the greatest rant in the history of the world. All I can say is 'Fuck' and 'Yes'.
 He crashes hard, gets up in obvious pain and waves to the crowd, then at the awards he sprays a small bottle of champagne on the winners. Its hard to beat a good jump set by Jaret, he was the cats pajamas of jumping for many years. He went 299 feet off the ski fly ramp! That is hella baller!
And speaking of jumping crashes... Why snow skiing? Well we put the CRB ski masterbu into storage for the year today and thus it is snow skiing time. I am going to cry for the next 7 months.
I have talked quite a bit about cable parks and how I see them as a large part of the future of water sports. So far only in Europe have a large number of 3 event skiers taken to cable skiing. The IWSF is throwing its weight behind cable wakeboarding for the Olympics. Will it get in? Maybe, and sure I tear on wakeboarding, but that is because of the D-bag aspects of