I am relatively new to competitive waterskiing. This was our second nationals as a family and my first one competing. Unfortunately, this year wasn't great for me or my son. My son's set was impacted by a boat judge that didn't follow the rulebook following an error in boat speed coming off the dock. It is super unfortunate that a boat judge (or driver in the case of the thread) at Nationals doesn't provide a fair, consistent pull for the skier and follow the rules outlined for our sport when failures or accidents occur (and they will - I get that). What I would say in this case is that the situation sucked for my son and other boys in his age group impacted, but the appointed officials worked hard at the end of a 14+ hour day to make the most of a difficult situation and I commend them for that.
As for Lake 3, having been in Men's 3 and one position from the cutoff, I think that the necessity (not necessarily the decision) to move part of our group to Lake 3 sucked. I suppose that I can understand the need but the conditions were so remarkably different between the two lakes that I can honestly say if I knew what I know now, I would have left Friday morning and not skied.. My skiing sucked and I have no desire to deflect that lack of performance to anyone other than myself. And, I have no idea if the same driver drove for M3 and W4, but I can say that most of the things that were observed regarding W4 were happening in our group, too. The fact that the over-scheduling resulted in my Thursday evening practice being canceled probably had more to do with my poor performance than anything. Hopefully some day the $75 for practice will find its way back to my PayPal account.
Overall, I think that the Mystic Lakes crew and the appointed officials did a great job putting together the event. It was a huge task and I heard overwhelmingly positive comments. Again, in my limited experience, people that rant about "what is killing the sport" are typically more problem than solution. Beating up appointed officials, volunteers and site host over specific issues doesn't help grow the sport. Creating a culture in our community of learning from each issue like these and committing to get better each year, each event is the only way to get past this.
@eleeski, so interestingly there were drop noodles at both ends of the Lake 3 when they started Men's 3, but the driver ran over the one by the starting dock enough times that he cut it loose.