At 1:30 Monday morning as narcoleptic viewers were zoned in to reruns of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air on Nick at Nite, the K-State Water Ski team was rolling into town ending two days of intense competition and a 10-hour ride back to Manhattan from Wilmington, Ill.
After finishing 14th out of 21 teams at the Great Plains Conference Tournament and failing to move on to the Midwest Regionals, many might wonder if the lengthy road trip was worth it. To the skiers on the team, the answer is simply yes. The tournament gave members of the team an excuse to do something they are passionate about.
Nate Cless, senior in geology and president of the water ski team, has been water skiing for almost as long as he can remember. For Cless this high-profile tournament gave him a couple of reasons to dawn his water skis.
"I'm a competitive guy so I like the competition factor, but it's more for fun," said Cless.
While fun and a competitive spirit drives many on the team, time at practices and competitions afford many in this close-knit group the opportunity simply to enjoy each other's company.
"There isn't a single person that I don't get along with," said Lia Frankovic, senior in kinesiology and women's team captain. "It's not just going out to the lake for practice; you're also going to hang out with friends."
Although the team might have enjoyed themselves, failure to move on at the conference tournament meant that its season had come to an abrupt end. One of the key factors for the team's short season might have been because of a lack of skiing knowledge.
"We had a lot of inexperienced skiers skiing at a major tournament for the very first time," said Cless.
Last season the team saw relative success and missed out on going to Nationals by one place. A lack of retention is partly to blame for the inexperience on the team this season. Out of 25 skiers from last year's squad only five returned for this season, leaving the team with little experience.
Cless said one of the hurdles in rebuilding the team is getting the younger skiers to become proficient in all three events that are common at every tournament.
In the jump event, skiers are pulled at speeds reaching 32 mph over a ramp and propelled up to 70 feet through the air. To many on the team, this experience is like none other, but it also can be quite intimidating for beginning skiers. Getting people to take the plunge can be difficult at first.
"It's initially scary and then once you do it you realize how fun it is and it's an adrenaline rush," Frankovic said.
The other two events are slalom, which involves cutting in and out of buoys, and trick, in which a skier performs as many freestyle tricks as they can in 20 seconds. These two events require a lot of technical skill and it takes some time to get the hang of it, and Cless said time was not something that the young team had with such a short preparation period.
The team had only one tournament and relatively little practice time heading into last weekend's competition. That, combined with a lake that is oftentimes rough and lacks a practice ramp, made ample preparation a difficult task.
Whatever the reason might have been for not moving on to Regionals, the tournament gave the fledgling team something to aim for next year. Cless said the experience gave them an idea of the things they needed to work on for next year to help rebuild the team.
With the season over, the team plans to go on doing what it has enjoyed doing from the beginning. Love of the sport, fun, and friendship will bring the skiers out to Tuttle Creek Reservoir for as long as the weather holds out.
"Now we're back to skiing for fun for the next two or three weeks, or until it starts getting cold," Cless said.
