Wakeboarding team looks to further development

What originally started out as a couple of guys that wanted to get together and wakeboard to keep their sport they played in high school going through college became the wakeboarding team of Georgia College.

Freshman pre-engineering major Justin Fletcher is a member of the wakeboarding team and is influential in keeping the team organized.

Fletcher realizes the importance of starting of the wakeboarding team of Georgia College.

“There’s a good collection of people who do it out here at (Lake) Sinclair and (Lake) Oconee and especially they go to Georgia College, so they decided that they need to put something together,” Fletcher said. “They do compete collegiate within colleges, but it’s not like a huge sport yet. It came out as just a couple of guys wanting to wakeboard on a team and wanted to keep it going through college.”

“Wakeboarding’s a big camaraderie sport. It’s one of those things where if you know how to wakeboard and you’re somewhat decent, you can get out there and ride and have fun and you’re on the team.”

Justin Fletcher,

freshman pre-engineering major

In terms of recruiting, the wakeboarding team does not hold tryouts or rigorous tests for people wanting to join. Anybody that wants to be on the team can be.

“Wakeboarding’s a big camaraderie sport. It’s one of those things where if you know how to wakeboard and you’re somewhat decent you can get out there and ride and have fun and you’re on the team,” Fletcher said.

There is a collegiate series called the USA Wakeboarding that Georgia College is a part of where schools all over the nation can compete.

USA Wakeboarding in a series that works under the Collegiate Wakeboard Series.

“They don’t discriminate against divisions because there’s not that many ski teams,” Fletcher said.  “It’s the same deal at other colleges. They have their club teams and we all travel to the same spots, the same premiere wakeboard spots, they bring a boat out and somebody will sponsor it and we’ll compete there.”

In the series the Georgia College wakeboarding team competes against other college wakeboarding teams like UGA and others schools in Florida.

Fletcher also competes, non-college affiliated, on an individual level in different contests throughout Georgia and Florida. He plans to enter wakeboarding on a professional level.

“That’s my plan despite being an engineering major. I want to professionally wakeboard,” Fletcher said

The wakeboarding team does not have a coach, but is instead run by the people on the team.

Even though they do not have a coach, Fletcher and fellow teammate senior business major Justin Young are the ones that put everything together and keep everything organized as far as contests and paperwork.

The wakeboarding team is made up of about eight people and unfortunately the team members currently do not have a working boat.

Because they have no boat the team has to practice whenever they can with a boat they can gain access to.

“As many times as we can get on the water, we’re out there,” Fletcher said.

Fletcher is currently in the process of getting his boat together for the team to be able to practice on.

In dealing with seasons in wakeboarding, there is no definite set-in-stone season like other sports we have.

“The season is basically gauged by how brave you are, how much you can brave the cold. Sometimes we’ve ridden in December and started in April. I’ve ridden in February before,” Fletcher said.

The season moves with the warmth.

To stay conditioned in the offseason, many wakeboarders will partake in other boarding sports.

“A lot of wakeboarders will stay in shape when wakeboarding is out of season by staying on some kind of board whether its snowboarding, longboarding or skateboarding,” Fletcher said. “Being on a board helps being able to wakeboard. I do snowboard and skateboard in the interim.”

The watersport of wakeboarding happens to be a costly sporting event.

The Georgia College wakeboarding team’s set budget from the school has been downgraded since last year.

The decrease in the wakeboarding  teams budget dropped to a total budget of $1,000. Last year, the wakeboarding team was given a budget of $2,000 by Georgia College.

Due to the university cutting the wakeboarding team’s budget in half,    the team is only able to compete in about four to six competitions in a given season.

These seasonal competitions involve state and national tournaments.

For the future of the team, Fletcher hopes that the wakeboarding team at Georgia College will grow.

“I would really like the team to get a bigger sponsor to where they can have their own boats that they can take out and do whatever,” Fletcher said.  “If we had the resources, we could be really great because of the two lakes that we have around here. I would really like to see a lot more people getting into it. Any interest that people would show in the sport would make me really happy.”

Posted by Sam Hunt on Apr 21 2011. Filed under Recreation, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.