Ski Tournament Suggestions

[DkLkSkr]

In an effort to get more people and new skiers involved in waterskiing, I came up with a tournament on our lake that creates a friendly atmosphere while allowing any ability level to win. It is a standard one round ski against yourself tournament. Everyone is placed in the same division and you ski against your personal best. The person that does the best in comparison to their personal best wins.

After skiing for the first time this year in tournaments, it got me thinking about how to create another tournament or tweak this one that could give more variety and gain more interest. Does anyone have any suggestions for a tournament that that would be a fresh idea? What are people's favorite tournament formats to enter? If you could explain the format briefly that would be helpful as well, since I am new to tournament skiing.

[Than_Bogan]

We often do something similar to skiing against your best, but borrowing the handicap concept from golf. The key differences are:

 

1) The baseline is your AWSA ranking score (except that any penalties are not applied -- that would give an unfair advantage to a skier with fewer tournaments). If a skier has only one tournament, we might go back two years to get enough scores. If a skier has no scores, they can't participate in the handicapping portion.

 

2) The handicap is a fraction of the gap from you to Open -- typically 95%. What this does is give a slightly smaller amount of extra buoys to a "worse" skier. Without this, it's nearly impossible for a high-end skier to ever win, because for somebody stuck on a plateau, a 1 buoy PB might be a monster day, whereas somebody on the steep part of the learning curve might bust out a PB of more than a pass.

 

3) Round the handicap to the nearest 1/4 buoy, to avoid the post-handicap scores looking really bizarre.

 

4) Remove the extra 6 buoys for LL, since that can cause wacky problem. The easiest way to do this is actually to grant 6 extra buoys to all scores that didn't complete -15 at max speed.

 

5) Use some discretion to avoid crazy outliers. Sometimes you know a ranking score is not at all representative of what someone can do. Using a previous season or even just plain manual adjustment may be required to keep things fair and fun.

[GK]

We use a very similar handicapping structure to Than for our Buckeye Buoy Tour. Go to www.skiowsa.com and click on Buckeye Buoy Tour for more details. Contact me if you have any questions. gk at rounding6.com

[crashman]

Hoosiers are trying to copy the buckeyes basically eliminating any valid excuse I can think of to not ski a tournament next year

http://www.indianawaterski.org/schedule/Hoosier%20Buoy%20Tour%20Scoring.docx

 

As a novice skier I like the idea that I would get at least a few warm up passes. It would suck to give up an entire day of skiing at the local club in order to attend a tournament and fall on my first pass thus confirming that I'm not the best skier and ruining my chances of getting in a good day of skiing.

[DkLkSkr]

That is all great. Thanks! Any ideas for other formats, head to head, etc...?

 

[LCZ]

The Buckeye Buoy tour has successfully used several head-to-head formats. Check it out at www.skiowsa.com as @GK suggested. Pick Your Poison is one of the most creative.

[9400]

I recently saw where someone mentioned skiing a tournament where first time tournament skiers were gauranteed 4 passes every round.

[kdameyer]

Ohio has created a new Division for first time skiers in BBT events. Here is how we have it written up.

http://skiowsa.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=419:new-ohio-novice-division&catid=36&Itemid=2.

We have attracted a lot of first time tournament skier because of this. Kudos to Greg Kuenning for implementing this.

[ScarletArrow]

My wife and daughter take advantage of this 4 pass min rule. Makes tournaments so much more fun for everyone now that they ski - even though they are not running the full course.

[GregDavis]

I drove and officiated at several Buckeye Buoy tournaments the past Month. Greg Kuenning has done a fantastic job, Greg is to be commended for all his hard work and making it happen. It's easy to talk about changes, complain, they should this, someone should do that. But, take charge, and make it happen, that's what Greg has done. Thank you Greg for all your hard work, and sticking to it. Incidently, the buckeye buoy tour events, we partisipated in was the most fun I've had at a tournament for a long time. Other state waterski organizations should look at copying what Greg has done.

[DkLkSkr]

Great ideas and great effort to get new skiers involved! Thanks for the help!

 

[ToddL]

@9400 - Novice skiers with 4 passes... us, too! We just started this. Our Novice division was sanctioned as a clinic. Thus, scores at our novice event go nowhere (not GR, Not Class C). The format we use is ability groups by speed or line length. (But I like some sort of PB or Average benchmarking.)

 

I did a big survey of skiers who weren't participating in tournaments. The results suggested that 4 passes per round and a price point of $20-30 was the market demand from this segment of skiers.

 

Anyway, per round, the skier skis off the dock until fall or miss. Then, we "mulligan" the missed pass. If at this point the skier has skied less than 4 passes, we make up the difference with unscored rides at any speed/line the skier chooses. We are very clear that only the first two attempts per round score. (Sometimes, a skier will do better in a free ride.) Best of the mulligan or initial score is recorded for the round.

 

So for true beginners to competing, a round might look like this:

Staring Line: -15, Speed: 30 MPH

1. First pass: 5 buoys (initial score)

2. Mulligan pass: 3 buoys (mulligan score)

3. Free Ride through the course down (got 4 buoys, but not scored)

4. Free Ride back through the course (got all 6 but not scored) to Dock

Round scores at 5 buoys.

 

Another skier might look like this:

Staring Line: -15, Speed: 30 MPH

1. First pass: 4 buoys

2. Mulligan pass: 6 buoys, so speed up...

3. 32 MPH: 3 buoys (final score)

4. Free Ride back through the course (got 3 again, but not scored) to Dock

Round scores at 3 @ 32 MPH

 

Another skier might look like this:

Staring Line: -15, Speed: 26 MPH

1. First pass: 6 buoys, so speed up...

2. 28 MPH pass: 6 buoys, so speed up...

3. 30 MPH: 3 buoys (initial score)

4. Mulligan 30 MPH: 4 buoys (final score) back to Dock

Round Scores at 4 @ 30 MPH

 

You get the idea...

[DkLkSkr]

Todd - I like the idea! I think that will be an easy, simple addition to our tournament that can add more to the event. I can think of one flaw in our tournament that this solution will fix. Thanks!

[DUSkier]

Have run handicapped team event before. Have run 1st round with the -4 buoys from PB as handicap format. e.g. PB of 4@35off skiers runs 2@35off score is +2. If skier ran 5@32off score would be -1. From the first round take your 2 or 3 best handicapped scores (All depending on numbers) and appoint them as "Team Captains" have them go pick for pick of the remaining skiers. Run second round and add up team score. It is a really fun tourny and will usually be fairly close in the end as well as involving all ability levels.