“Joining the water ski team at Bowling Green was one of the best decisions of my life. We’ve made amazing memories with the best weekends and tournaments. It’s a huge part of our life now forever,” Trace said.

With nationals on their mind, the team specifically placed an emphasis on maximizing 100 percent of their efforts to reach their desired victory lap.

“We just had our last tournament this past weekend and it was an emotional one. We were hoping to go to nationals and we were 110 points, which is a very small margin away from placing to get there. So that was very hard, but our team started from nothing. When me and Ali joined it we built the team pretty much. People before us started, but we built it to the place where we are now as actual contenders,” Trace said.

The siblings are from Canal Fulton.

Ali said that she is most proud of the sense of community the team shared.

“The most rewarding and exciting part about it was getting all of these kids to have the same goal. It was really fun watching them progress from not believing in themselves to turning into ‘yes we can do this, we deserve to do this’ that was the most memorable part about this whole experience,” she said.

Trace said that compared to the other big name schools such as Ohio State University or Miami University, Bowling Green has not always had the most prized resources. However, he said that his sense of pride comes from the fact that the team was able to succeed with essentially nothing.

“At first we were kind of like the rag-tag team put together. We wouldn’t even practice water skiing we’d practice with a wake board on wake board boats, which is the exact opposite of what you want to be doing. But we turned wake boarders into water skiers and actually got to where we needed to go. We were like the best of the worst so we went as far as we could with nothing,” Trace said.

With no intention on attending the same school, the twins said that they subconsciously followed each other.

“We never really talked about it and we weren’t going to follow each other. Obviously we both wanted to go to a place that had a water ski team. Her (Ali’s) decision was more off her academics and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I just knew I wanted to go somewhere that had water skiing and I went on the tour with Ali and thought ‘well this is kind of cool,’” Trace said.

As for what’s next for the dynamic duo, Ali is preparing to work a full-time position at a catering company in Smithville as a result of her degree in tourism, leisure, and event planning. She said that she will continue to ski as she hopes to one day land the cover of Water Ski Magazine.

Trace isn’t sure if he will continue to ski based on his health. He plans to work in apparel merchandising.

“I don’t know if I’ll be skiing anymore, I mean technically I’m not supposed to. If I’m still healthy, I’ll still water ski, but I probably won’t be as active as I was in college. At the beginning, when I told my doctor I was going to water ski he was like ‘all right but I suggest you not do it’ and after awhile he was like ‘you look fine, it’s still not a good idea but…’ I’d love to keep water skiing as long as I’m healthy.”