Look out 2019!
Happy New Year! We are kicking off the new year with a very special #TeamNewsTuesday as we asked around to see what our NCWSA skiers and teams had in mind for their New Year’s resolutions! With many responses in hand, we now get to kick off 2019 by presenting their fabulous responses:
Michigan State University
MSU hopes to work on their inclusion of new members and to gain a stable source of income for discretionary expenses. In addition to this they hope to build their A and B team. Lastly, they are hoping all their hard work will pay off by making the 2019 NCWSA Collegiate Water Ski National Championship at Bell Aqua Lakes in Rio Linda, California. We hope to see you there!
MSU’s Chris says he would like to run 32′ off this year as well as out jump MSU’s President who is now doing a ¾ cut.
Lander University
Lander plans to work on their team organization, so their members can get more adequate practice time. This stems from their experience at the 2018 SAC Regionals. Lander had the competitive edge to be able to compete for a 2018 NCWSA Connelly Skis Collegiate Nationals spot, but due to lack of practice time they were at a disadvantage against the competing teams. While they fell short in 2018, Lander thinks they have a real chance at gaining a spot to compete at the 2019 NCWSA Collegiate Water Ski National Championships.
Keep an eye on this team! They have improved tremendously throughout 2018, and we are expecting to see a lot from them in 2019.
As an individual and as President, I truly would like to try to push Lander to grow its ski team to potentially have a full A & B team in attendance at tournaments. I really want to make a big impact in the South & Atlantic Coastal region to where we are at the same competitive level as Clemson or Alabama.
Richard Kaczmarek
Western Michigan University
WMU will be working on making it to 2019 Midwestern Regionals which goes hand in hand with trying to improve practice time and availability. After coming close, but sadly not making the 2018 Midwestern Regionals, they are determined and excited for the 2019 ski season. WMU also hopes to be more consistent while having fun and doing what they love.
The team members have many ski goals with a few of them being to improve their consistency, run the course, learn more tricks, stay positive, become more involved, and practice on the lake more often.
University of Cincinnati
UC has some big plans for 2019. They are preparing to really step up their recruitment game and work on activities to improve their retention rate. UC also has a few skiers looking to break their school records this year! Additionally, they plan to dive into training once it’s warm in the spring in order to rebuild a once nationally competitive team. 2018 is the first year in over a decade UC did not qualify for nationals. While this was slightly expected due to the previous years’ large graduating class, their season was unfortunately even shorter than they had hoped. Look out for their comeback and to solidify a good foundation in not only 2019 but in the future seasons to come!
As this is my second year as President, I am so excited to be a better leader for my team. All of our members and officers work so hard for this team, and I don’t want to let them down- on or off the water. 2019 better watch out, UC is coming for it!
Mallin Blaxall
San Diego State University
SDSU plans to focus on recruiting during this upcoming spring of 2019. They have a lot of seniors on the team, especially on A-team, and it is time to start looking for new skiers to join! They want to enjoy every last minute with their graduating seniors. SDSU is also planning on teaching their good wakeboarders, like Ryan Van Saun, how to trick and slalom ski in 2019.
For some personal goals, Alec Dohmann wants to go 100ft during his last collegiate skiing semester since he has been battling the 80s for a while now. Natalie Gaharan (sophomore) and Allison Gurnett (freshman) wants to run 32 off in a college tournament as they have both completed the pass previously in AWSA tournaments. Haley Kestler, aka Haley Cherry, wants to run the full course for the first time in a college tournament (she has run it many times in practice). Allison Sandoz (freshman) is also known to the team as Phelps because she never learned how to swim, yet she is very interested in water skiing. She is now a pro on two skis! The team is hoping to help her work on the swimming part and getting up on a slalom ski.
Clemson University
Clemson‘s main goal for 2019 is to improve their trick event! It is by far their worst event out of the three. They plan on creating a trick challenge where the boat crew tells the skier which trick to do next, so more of our teammates can be involved. Look out for some funny photos popping up on their account when the weather warms up! Clemson plans to also up their merchandise game by creating a Clemson Water Ski online merchandise store. They are planning for this to go live by the end of the spring season, so get those wallets ready! They have a full year planned out for 2019 as they gear up to host the 2019 SAC Regionals.
Kate Sullivan (sophomore), 2019 Public Relations Chair, plans to break her PB’s when she gets back from her Costa Rica study abroad with goals of running 34mph, jumping over 50ft, and tricking over 300 points. Angel McCallum (junior), 2019 Merchandise Chair, will be participating in the trick challenge to learn some new tricks and to run 34mph. Personally, I (Ashley Stevens) hope to jump into the 80s, run 35′ off, and learn more toe tricks. I also hope to improve my leadership skills as Clemson’s 2019 President while helping my teammates gain their AWSA officials rating. Matt Haertel (junior), 2019 Recruitment Chair, plans to work on his slalom consistency and stability. He is looking to get a new trick ski (new ski = new tricks), practice a lot more, and to get serious about jumping. Parker Roberson (junior), 2019 Treasurer, hopes to trick over 600 points, jump into 60ft, and get into 36mph.
Iowa State University
The Iowa State Water Ski Team has two big resolutions for 2019. The first is to recruit more women’s skiers since they will be losing the majority of their women’s team next year due to graduation/study abroad. The second is to work on tricking. They can usually do well in jump and slalom, but their trick scores tend to weigh them down.
University of Illinois
In 2019 the Illini want to continue to grow their team, and to grow closer as a ski family. As they rebuild, after being less active in past years, UofI have a small but dedicated group of people now who love hanging out, and skiing together.
Individually, Social Chair Stephanie Sieben shares that her team members have a goal to improve their skiing to a point which they can qualify for Midwest Regionals this fall.
Miami University
As a team, the Redhawks want to continue to grow and get more people at their school involved in this awesome sport/community. Coming into the 2018 season, they lost over a dozen seniors who were very dedicated to our team, and weren’t sure how many new people they’d be able to recruit this year. Luckily the team was able to find quite a few who joined, but would love to continue growing.
Elizabeth Rowan, Social Media & Apparel Director, says everyone on the team would like to improve in each event. Whether it be running the course for the first time, or starting to cut in jumping, or learning a new trick, everyone individually is looking to improve.
University of South Carolina
Emaleigh Tuggle, Vice President for the UofSC Water Ski Club shares that their 2019 resolutions, as a team, would be to get together more outside of the lake. For example, movies together, studying together, camping, etc., in order to create a family feeling among the club. Also, to get more of the members out on the boat, skiing and enjoying themselves, as much as possible. With a small club and few practices, I would like to get to know the members beyond their skiing abilities.
Emaleigh’s 2019 resolution is to try new things, new jobs, new leadership positions. Along with new things, she would like to to have more confidence in herself when trying new things.
University of Wisconsin- Eau Claire
As a team, they are looking to make it to Regionals in the fall! The past few years the team has been looked at as a social group, not serious skiers. They’d like to show their talent to the Great Plains Conference, and that they can take the sport seriously! They now have access to a jump and a course (two things they did not have in the past) and look forward to a lot of progress this year!
The NCWSA
As your governing body, we have a few resolutions of our own! The main 2019 NCWSA resolution is team bonding and team growth. NCWSA, as an organization, always wants to grow and promote this amazing and life altering collegiate sport of water skiing. For 2019, the NCWSA wants to see more team bonding on and off the water, academic and fun, all promoted through articles like this one with #TeamNewsTuesday. Submit your Team News with this guide! The goal is to get up to 70 teams on the NCWSA team rankings list. We are currently at 60, lets get 10+ more! If you are interested in creating or joining a team, look here for more information.
NCWSA.com Resolutions
In addition to these resolution, here are some for our NCWSA website as well! We would like to get all team pages set up and linked. There are currently 12 team pages, and we have a total of 60 active teams. Follow this link to learn just how easy it is to get your team page up!
For 2019, we would also like to continue to grow our volunteer writer pools. If you are interested, go here for more information. With our volunteer writer pool and volunteer recap writers from all four regions, we will be attempting to cover all 2019 NCWSA tournaments.
Another major resolution is to launch a visual overhaul of NCWSA.com that provides a better spotlight for some of our reusable amazing content and feature stories. This would still allow the promotion of active stories that cover our recent news about collegiate water skiing!
NCWSA Marketing & Membership Resolutions
The NCWSA Marketing & Membership team resolution is to provide more resources to empower teams to grow as well as develop our smaller (new and endangered) teams. They are also looking to develop a process for new teams, so it is easier from them to break any barriers in joining the collegiate world!
Reach Those Goals!
Thank you everyone for sharing your 2019 resolutions! Keep in mind a plan is just a goal with a date set to it. We hope everyone achieves their goals and sends us their pictures when they do.
For some of your goals we are able to lend a helping hand! Look out for some one-page how-to’s that are coming out soon!
- 2019 Reflections: South Central Edition - January 10, 2020
- 2019 Reflections: Western Edition - January 9, 2020
- 2019 Reflections: Midwestern Edition - January 8, 2020
