USA Wakeboard Cable National Championship Finals
WHEN:
Saturday, Aug. 1, 2 p.m.
WHERE: Wake Nation cable wake park, 201 Joe Nuxhall Way, Fairfield
COST: $10 each. Fans who purchased tickets to Thursday's preliminary action can use that same arm band to get in free. Kids 5 and younger also admitted free.
AT STAKE: A spot on Team USA and the right to represent the U.S. in the 2010 International Water Ski Federation World Cable Championships in Newbrandenburg, Germany.
ON THE WEB: View a photo gallery from Wake Nation at Journal-News.com.
FAIRFIELD — With talk of front-side 540s and board-side gaps to the back lip, one of the nation’s top-ranked cable wakeboarder might have lost a few novices in the crowd Thursday, July 30, as he emceed the preliminary rounds of 2009 USA Wakeboard Cable National Championships.
Tom Fooshee, a 24-year-old senior at Texas State, did his best to explain the fast-growing world of cable wakeboarding. After years of water skiing and riding wakeboards behind boats, Fooshee began cable wakeboarding when he moved to the San Marco, Texas, area, where one of the first cable wakeboarding parks was built. He’s been hooked ever since.
“Not only can you do tricks on the structures they have here ... but you can also do air tricks off the water. You flip, you spin, you grab, you can slide along the rails, you can do it all here,” the world’s No. 2-ranked boarder said. “I’ve been doing it for a while now and it still hasn’t remotely gotten old in terms of what we can do out there. It’s amazing.”
Each competitor is pulled around the 10-acre lake by Wake Nation’s six-tower circulating cable system, the nation’s only six-tower facility of its kind. After a lap and a half around the course, judges then rate each wakeboarder on his or her use of kickers (jump ramps), sliders (similar to rails in skateboarding, only on water), air tricks (where the boarders use the cable to propel themselves into the air) and overall composition.
“Each category starts off with a possible 100 points and the judges vote down from that,” Fooshee explained. Points in each category are multiplied by .25 in order to get the competitors’ actual score.
The prelims determined the rotation for Saturday’s 2 p.m. championship finals. Lowest-scoring boarders go first with the top-seeded contestants last.
First-time wakeboarding competitor Nick Braun, 13, of Fairfield Twp. was there because he wanted to see how he’d match up against the nation’s best.
“I did my best routine I’ve ever done, and I wasn’t really nervous out there,” he said. “I knew there would be some guys out there throwing some harder tricks than I could do, so I just went out there, had fun and did my best.”
McCauley High School senior-to-be Andi Yates, 18, of Fairfield just wanted to get in the water. The amateur women’s division was set to go off last on Thursday.
“It’s really nice being out there on the water. Me and another girl from Kentucky are the only two people entered in our division, and we’ve become friends,” she said. “We’re just looking forward to going out there and showing everybody that the girls can do this, too.”
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