NCWSA Skiers Take On the Moomba Masters

Collegiate water skiing welcomes athletes of all skill levels with any amount of experience. Often times, teams use this sentiment to encourage people who are brand new to the sport to compete. However, many of the elite teams have one or more water skiers that compete professionally or are of similar caliber. Nine of these elite NCWSA athletes competed in the largest water ski tournament in the world, the Moomba Masters in Melbourne, Australia.

The Moomba Masters is a prestigious tournament that hosts skiers from all over the world in five competitive towed water sports events: slalom, trick, jump, wakeboarding, and night jump. Unlike team based collegiate skiing, at the Moomba Masters and other professional water sport events, skiers compete individually. Several current NCWSA athletes from four different schools competed individually in the amazing event.

While the event is filled with many former NCWSA skiers, current NCWSA athletes could be found in all the events except wakeboarding. For slalom, the highest placing collegiate skier was Siani Oliver from the University of Louisiana Monroe (ULM), who earned third. Anna Gay from the University of Alabama won Women’s Trick with a score of 10,010 points (in two passes). In jump, Taylor Garcia (ULM) launched a 214 ft jump to earn fourth place. At the end of the tournament, crowds gathered to watch the world’s elite jumpers compete in the night jump event. Garcia repeated with a great performance that earned him second place, just behind world record holder Freddy Krueger. In the overall categories, Rollins College’s Dorien Llewellyn came in 3rd overall, and Florida Southern College’s Paige Rini came in 4th.

The atmosphere at the event is electric. There are large crowds that come and cheer on the skiers throughout the tournament. Rollins College’s Dorien Llewellyn explained what it is like to ski at the tournament.

“Competing at Moomba is unlike any other tournament in the world. The crowd is massive and they genuinely love skiing. This year we had a major current surge, which caused the ramp anchors to shift and the tournament had to be put on hold for at least an hour and a half. Many spectators sat on the banks patiently waiting for the skiing to resume, a kind of commitment I have not seen at many events. These fans really make you feel their love for the event, especially in Jump and Night Jump events. Night Jump at Moomba, with the banks packed with people and fireworks going off during the event, is definitely one of my favorite ski sets of the year. On the other hand, the river is super challenging to handle as a skier. The current causes you to continually have to adjust every single set and even every pass or jump,” Llewellyn said.

Since the Moomba Masters is an independent tournament, it has many key differences from competing in collegiate waterskiing. Alabama’s Mariah Fields says that it is like no other tournament, and then went on to compare it to Collegiate Nationals.

“Moomba is definitely a different experience. They truly fit into different categories, but I prefer the team aspect of collegiate skiing. Having a team on the dock cheering so loud gives you energy and encouragement that you can’t recreate through professional skiing. I don’t know if anything will ever top the feeling of coming off the water after jumping at my Senior Collegiate Nationals and seeing my entire team running down the shore flying that Alabama flag and how proud they were of me,” Fields said.

The University of Louisiana-Monroe’s Siani Oliver explained how she felt the Moomba Masters compares to collegiate skiing, and drew many similarities between the two events.

“I guess [the Moomba Masters is] more independent, unlike collegiate skiing. I go there with my friends whose skiing is just as important to me as my own, which would be similar to collegiate skiing, my teammates scores are as important to me as my own.  I guess that would be the biggest similarity. Similarly to collegiate skiing it’s an amazing atmosphere, and is filled with brilliant people. Everybody still wants to ski their best, but at the end of the day you can never not have fun!” Oliver said.

Competing at the Moomba Masters is not an undertaking that an athlete can just decide to do one day. It takes months or even years on intense training. The event takes place on the Yara River in Melbourne, and skiers need to prepare for the differences that a river current can provide. Alabama’s Anna Gay gave insight to what she did to prepare for all three events.

“I trick on the Black Warrior River at school, so that is very helpful to get used to the current. I had to adjust to getting used to all different kinds of speeds. You never know what the current is going to be like on the Yara, so this helped my confidence going into the tournament.  As far as slalom goes, I tried to drop quickly at the ends so that the water didn’t completely settle and I could get used to the rollers. For Jump, I practiced cutting close to shore to be able to visually get used to that. It is hard to get wide when you know you are cutting close to shore and on the Yara the rocks that line the banks can be intimidating and cause you to fall narrow,” Gay said.

The athletes each gave advice for what skiers who are striving for the big tournaments can do to improve themselves. The basic tone of every skier’s advice was to always have fun when you are on the water, look for new ways to improve, and work hard on every set. Although skiing in tournaments like the Moomba Masters may seem like an impossible goal, you never know what will happen when you give your full effort to something. Florida Southern College’s Valentina Gonzalez put it simply, “keep training hard, never lose faith, and always have fun!”

Collected Scores & Placements of Current NCWSA Skiers

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Joey Gilroy

I'm Joey "Goey" Gilroy, and I am a junior at the University of Cincinnati where I major in Secondary Education-Social Studies. I am currently the Vice President of UC's Waterski team. I compete in all three events at the collegiate level, but my favorite is jump.

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