Executive Director Report
January 28, 2008

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This past weekend was a whirlwind for me. The USA Water Ski board meeting along with the sport discipline board meetings provided a great opportunity to meet many of the personalities of the sport. It was a pleasure. Thanks to everyone for the wholehearted cordiality and welcoming attitude. It also was an opportunity to reacquaint myself with my oldest friend from water skiing, Tony Baggiano . I have known Tony since 1991 from various meetings we attended as members of the United States Olympic Committee. I was with USA Triathlon at that time and Tony was representing USA Water Ski. Both organizations were affiliate sport members. Both of the sports were placed onto the Pan American Games' program at the same time (1995 in Argentina). He is a grand and generous man. I enjoy knowing him.

Here are some of the highlights from the weekend and other items of interest:


-- During the USA Water Ski meeting, there was a fair amount of discussion on how this organization can appeal to recreational skiers, people interested in skiing, and youngsters, many who are wakeboarders and are not particularly “joiners” of organizations. The outcome of that discussion was to adjust our thinking, and our collateral material to begin mixing in a blend of competitive skiing along with other topics that would attract other types of skiers. Examples are to place articles within The Water Skier magazine and www.usawaterski.org with an orientation toward fashion, boat care, safety, waterways advocacy successes, etc. Having a magazine exclusively oriented around competition may appeal to some, but it appears to us that a magazine featuring numerous topics would have a greater range.


-- There was a huge concern on how water skiing could achieve the "cool" factor as perceived by mostly young people. Wakeboarding has already met that standard. We need to work on rubbing off a bit of its coolness as all of the other disciplines are actually as cool, but not perceived to be so by many outside of those disciplines. Again, one example is to update collateral material to appear more contemporary in the use of photos and graphics.


-- An outcome as we proceed with the creation of more articles and photos related to non competitive events is that Scott Atkinson, our editor, will be faced with not highlighting each discipline or as many events as often as he has in the past due to our new approach and the limited number of pages within the magazine (as a result of our budget restraints). This result is O.K with the board as we move down the path of being more appealing to a broader base.


-- However, hand-in-hand with how we can appeal, we also discussed who our real customer is. Reality is that the major customers of USA Water Ski are event organizers. It is a simple equation. The more events that are produced, the more opportunities people have to participate, the more members there will be. USA Water Ski is government. As a national governing body, our job is to provide officials, rules, championships (through the designation of the rights to conduct those events to event organizers), train teams, provide event insurance programs, administer doping education and testing through USADA, advocate to protect skiing venues, build the sport, and generally govern It is really not like someone wants to join government unless they are forced to do so by participating in a USA Water Ski sanctioned event. To build the sport, we need to nourish current and future event organizers. We will do that in the new grassroots programs.


-- Jim Grew has sent to you a lot of the technical information dealt with this past weekend. I hope you have an opportunity to read it. It proves to me that the volunteer corps are certainly active in a very positive fashion for this organization.

I will be leaving Florida this Friday for Colorado , and will return the following Thursday. Scott Atkinson will be acting executive director during my absence. Thanks for a great time this past weekend.

Steve Locke
Executive Director
USA Water Ski