Last year, we got into our time machine and found an article on the very first NCWSA Nationals (1979). As we approach the Connelly Skis 40th NCWSA Nationals we are hopping back into our time machine to explore the 10th, 20th (bonus article on Parrish Slalom Record), and 30th (bonus article on Storm Selsor) NCWSA Nationals tournaments!
The following article was originally written and published in the 2009 January/February issue of The Water Skier! The Water Skier is the official magazine of USA Water Ski. The original article was imported word for word to be republished on NCWSA.com with permission from USA Water Ski and The Water Skier.
Hot Streak
Under a stifling desert sun, the University of Louisiana-Monroe won the national team title for the third consecutive year at the 30th Collegiate Water Ski National Championships, Oct. 16-18, in Chandler, Ariz.
Story and Photography by Scott Atkinson
Depth can never be underestimated when it comes to successful sports teams. Whether referring to a basketball team’s bench or a baseball club’s bullpen, boasting a deep pool of talent is the first line of defense — and offense — for any successful team. Just ask the University of Louisiana-Monroe water ski team. At the 30th Collegiate Water Ski National Championships, Oct. 16-18, at Firebird Lake in Chandler, Ariz., the Warhawks won their third consecutive and 21st overall national title.
The Collegiate Naitonals included 12 teams in Division 1 and 10 teams in Division 2. National team champions were declared in both divisions and individual medals for slalom, tricks, and jumping were awarded based on athlete’s placements within their division. Overall titles were awarded in each division to athletes competing in all three events.
In the Division 1 competition, Louisiana-Monroe tallied 12,360 points and easily out-scored archrival Louisiana-Lafayette, which finished second with 12,100 points. Florida South (11,480 points) edged host Arizona State (11,405 points) for third place, while Alabama placed fifth. Wisconsin, Purdue, Texas, Iowa State, Chico State, Cal Poly, and Clemson rounded out the 12 team field.
As it has done in its previous national title campaigns, Louisiana-Monroe came to the Nationals with a contingent of talented foreign water ski athletes. Ten of the 11 members of the Louisiana-Monroe team who competed at this year’s Nationals hailed from outside the United States. Members of the team were: Tyler Boyd, Cypress, Texas; Martin Bartalsky, Slovakia; Daniel Odvarko, Czech Republic; Robbie Paterson, Canada; Andres Pombo, Colombia; Adam Sedlmajer, Czech Republic; Kate Adriaensen, Belgium; Tatiana Hernandez, Colombia; Barbora Kolesarova, Slovakia; Tina Rauchenwald, Austria; and Karen Stevens, Canada.
Five Louisiana-Monroe athletes earned All-American honors by placing among the top five in respective events. Sedlmajer won the men’s tricks title, tallying 5,370 points, and finished runner-up in slalom and overall, scoring 2 buoys at 39-1/2 feet off and 1,740 points, respectively. Odvarko won the men’s slalom title and tied for fourth in men’s tricks, scoring 2-1/2 buoys at 39-1/2 feet off and 4,970 points, respectively. Bartalsky tied for fifth in men’s slalom, scoring 3 buoys at 38 feet off. As a team, the Louisiana-Monroe men won slalom and tricks and placed second in jumping and overall.
The Louisiana-Monroe women won slalom and tricks as a team, tied for second in jumping, and finished second overall. Adriaensen earned All-American honors in every event, placing second overall with 1,700 points, third in slalom with 1 buoy at 38 feet off, third in tricks with 3,370 points, and fourth in jumping with a leap of 133 feet. Stevens tied for fourth in slalom, scoring 4 buoys at 35 feet off, and placed fifth overall, tallying 1,550 points.
Louisiana-Lafeyette, which won the national title in 2005 and finished runner-up for the third consecutive year, also boasted another strong team of foreign athletes and had six athletes earn All-American honors. Italy’s Matteo Luzzeri finished third overall (1,620 points), fourth in jumping (161 feet) and tied for fifth in slalom (3 buoys at 38 feet off); U.S. athlete Ian Trapp, the defending national slalom champion, finished third this year, scoring 1-1/4 buoys at 39-1/2 feet off; U.S. athlete Danyelle Bennett placed fourth in women’s tricks and overall, scoring 2,880 points and 1,560 points, respectively. Denmark’s Stinne Soendergaard placed fifth in women’s jumping, leaping 132 feet; Great Britain’s Stephen Critchley tied for fourth in men’s tricks, scoring 4,970 points; and Austria’s Claudio Koestenberger finished second in men’s jumping, leaping 163 feet.
Arizona State’s Storm Selsor won the men’s jumping and overall titles, leaping 164 feet and tallying 1,760 points, respectively (see cover story), and Florida Southern’s trio of Alex Laurentano, Marion Mathieu and Clementine Lucine helped lift the Moccasins to an impressive third-place finish.
Mathieu and Lucine, who hail from France, won the women’s overall and slalom titles, respectively. Mathieu tallied 1,715 overall points after placing second in tricks (3,390 points) and jumping (135 feet) and finishing tied for fourth in slalom (3 buoys at 35 feet off). Lucine scored 2 buoys at 38 feet off to win slalom, and she leaped 134 feet to place third in jumping. Lauretano [Florida Southern], who hails from Morris, Conn., and lives and trains outside of Orlando, Fla., won women’s jumping and tricks, leaping 142 feet and tallying 3,960 points (one pass), respectively. “I was really pleased with my tricks because in collegiate skiing [with only one pass] you don’t have a limit on the number of flips you can do, so I decided to do a run of seven flips,” says Lauretano, who a few weeks later eclipsed the 8,000-point mark [two passes] in a record tournament. “I did alright, except I accidentally repeated on of my flips instead of doing a different one. I have put a lot of hours into tricking. My scores have improved because I have been putting more flips into my run and taking out the other wake tricks.”
Officials Honored
The 2008 Bill Stevenson Outstanding Driver Award was awarded to Ron Goodman, and the 2008 Phil Chase Most Outstanding Official Award was awarded to Martha Selsor. The awards are voted on by the appointed drivers and appointed officials, respectively.
Lauretano’s 142-foot effort in jumping came when she was the second skier in the third of five sets of skiers. “I actually hated going out in the third set because it was so nerve-wracking having to sit through so many jumpers to see if it would hold up,” she says. “I didn’t think it would hold because I felt I could have jumped farther, and there were a lot of other talented skiers to come after me.”
Lauretano’s bid for the overall title was doomed on the first day of the tournament when she fell early in her first pass in slalom due to a broken binding. “My back binding broke when I was putting on my ski,” she say. “We tried to repair it within the time limit they gave me, but couldn’t do it. Things like that happen. It was definitely discouraging being taken out of overall contention, but I did my best to redeem myself in the other two events.”
The complete scorebook from the 2008 NCWSA Division 1 Nationals can be viewed on USA Water Ski & Wake Sports website.
Cincinnati Wins Division 2 Title
Cincinnati won the Division 2 team title, accumulating 7,560 points. The Bearcats, making their first appearance at the Nationals in the modern era, edged runner-up Michigan, which tallied 7,470 points and also took home the coveted Team Spirit Award. Texas State, the defending champion, finished third with 6,910 points, followed by Texas A&M (6,375 points) and Rollins College (6,225 points). San Diego State, Missouri State, North Carolina, UC Davis and UC San Diego rounded out the placements in the 10-team field. “Our goal was to just make it to Nationals,” says Greg Kuenning, Cincinnati’s coach. “To win it is unbelievable. The kids put in a lot of hard work and practice to accomplish this.”
So did Kuenning, who was a member of the team in 1998, a year after the program was started at Cincinnati. He has been coaching the team since he graduated, and the team has grown from five members in 1998 to 25 in 2008. Fifteen competed at Nationals. “It’s a great feeling to know that I was part of building the University of Cincinnati ski program over the last 10 years,”Kuenning says. “We’ve had a lot of great people come through the program who each contributed to making this team what it is today and I’ve made a lot of lifelong friends in the process. I think that Cincinnati is a prime example of what a start-up team can accomplish with a little hard work and dedication.”
Competing at Nationals for the Bearcats were: Justin Ady, Brian Desserich, Pat Ewald, Greg Hudepohl, Brad Ruff, Robert Smith, Daniel Soules, Christopher Van Treese, Kacy Clifton, Emily Kutil, Nicole Richter, Kelsey Smith, Amanda Thress, Casey Thress, and Jacklyn Woniger. Among the many highlights, Van Treese won the men’s tricks title, tallying 1,700 points, and finished third overall; Ewald placed fifth in slalom, scoring 1/2-buoy at 32 feet off; Clifton finished fourth in women’s tricks, scoring 890 points; Amanda Thress placed fifth in jumping, leaping 54 feet; and Casey Thress landed her first-ever jump with a 37-foot effort. “A lot of the teams have skiers that have been skiing their whole life,” Kuenning says. “We have not had that luxury. We have worked from the ground up. We had a lot of depth this year and it paid off at Nationals.”
Texas A&M’s Brent Norwood won Division 2 titles in men’s slalom, jumping, and overall, scoring 2 buoys at 35 feet off, leaping 127 feet and tallying 1,340.0 points, respectively. He also placed second in tricks to Van Treese, tallying 1,570 points, to clinch the overall title by more than 200 points. “I really wanted the overall this year; overall is always my goal so it’s nice to come away with it,” says Norwood, who won jumping for the second consecutive year and improved upon second-place finishes in slalom and overall from the 2007 Nationals. “I knew I would be right there in slalom and jumping, but I needed to really concentrate on tricks and stand up my run. I wasn’t able to do that last year, so that was big.”
Rollins College trio of Jenna Mielzynski, Geena Kruge, and Michaela Cooper combined to sweep the women’s individual events. Mielzynski won tricks for the second consecutive year, scoring 2,570 points; Kruger won women’s jumping and overall, leaping 99 feet and tallying 1,310.0 points; and Cooper won women’s slalom for the second consecutive year, scoring 5-1/2 buoys at 35 feet off.
The complete scorebook from the 2008 NCWSA Division 2 Nationals can be viewed on USA Water Ski & Wake Sports website.
Permission for Republishing
This article has been republished from an issue of The Water Skier, and is posted on NCWSA.com with permission from USA Water Ski and The Water Skier. The Water Skier is the official magazine of USA Water Ski.
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