Mary Kaminski
When junior Adam Carlson used to watch his older brother compete in water ski tournaments for Hope College, he couldn’t wait to water ski in college — that is, until he realized his college choice didn’t have a water ski team. “Notre Dame was one of the only schools in the Midwest who didn’t have a ski team at that time,” Carlson says. “Purdue, Michigan, Ohio State, Michigan State — they all have ski teams.”
Both Division I and Division III schools in the Midwest had water ski teams, and Carlson decided to add Notre Dame to the list. With the help of senior Steve Feutz, Carlson began the application process to create a water ski club at Notre Dame last fall through the Student Activities Office (SAO). Getting it approved, however, took longer than they expected.
“We wrote a constitution, a budget, a schedule of events, and we finally got it approved through SAO,” Carlson says. “We submitted it all last October or November and finally heard back in August that they approved our request. So it took almost a full year — which was kind of a problem because then we didn’t really have much time to set up a team.”
The 20-member roster was created after a few practices at Carlson’s lake home in Michigan, about 30 minutes from campus. “After the practices, everybody was still on the team. What happens at these tournaments is you have an A team and a B team — so we had everyone participating,” Carlson says.
Notre Dame’s water ski team finished 14th out of 15 teams in their first tournament, but despite little practice and even less competition experience, the team quickly improved. After only a few weeks, the team finished 10th out of 17 teams at the Great Lakes Conference Championships (GLCC) on September 21 at Lake Lottawatta in Hamilton, Ohio. It was the team’s third and final tournament of the short water ski season.
The tournaments consist of three events — a six-buoy slalom course, a five-foot ski jump and trick skiing. “Nobody on the team had ever competed before, ever, in these events,” Feutz says. “Plenty of people had the skill to compete, just not the experience. All we could really do to prepare was go through the slalom course a couple of times, then go off the jump a couple times.”
With continued practice and growth, the ND water ski team hopes to continue its improvement to become a Midwest superpower. If they finish in the top seven at the conference championship next year, they can move on to the regional championship. “Look at our improvement from the first tournament to the second one — if we improve anywhere close to that semi-consistently, we’ll have no problem making it to regionals next year,” Feutz says.
While the team will graduate Feutz this year, who was the highest individual finisher for the Irish at the GLCC (13th out of 70 competitors), they have a bright future. “As far as the team goes for next year, we had only two seniors on the team, so we will still have about 18 people returning, including three or four freshmen,” Carlson says. “Hopefully we will have a good solid base for next year.”
