Excutive Director Report
February 28, 2008

Back

Dear USA Water Ski board members, board members of the sport disciplines, principals of the sport, and USA Water Ski staff members,

For me, this week is one of the principal trips of the year. I just completed travel and participation in the Water Sports Industry Association (WSIA) Summit in Park City, Utah, and I am now en route to the Wisconsin Water Ski Federation’s Think Tank, which is being held Thursday through Sunday in Wisconsin Dells.

The WSIA Summit, as organized by Jim Emmons of World Publications and Larry and Jan Meddock of the WSIA, was the most creative gathering of an eclectic crowd of people with wide-ranging backgrounds and ages as one can imagine. The outcome of the Summit was a collegial exchange of ideas as to how to move forward in an economy as strapped as the one we have currently. It was completed with a group of people who are diverse in age, dress, body and hair decoration, media and technology savvy, language buzz words and music interest, and everything else one might think of that separates generations. But ultimately, everyone was the same. It was all about how together we can move forward in building the sport, and building commerce that supports the sport.

One major obstacle throughout all sport seems to be the need to become more inclusive. USA Water Ski as a growing organization has had to restructure to bring into play the various sport disciplines. With restructure and change comes growing pains, and we certainly have experienced that episode as our water sports have evolved. The magical part of the WSIA Summit was the approach taken by a diverse group to stand back from the trees and take a look at the entire forest. Every discipline can support and help grow the sport across the board. Leon Larson, a long standing member of USA Water Ski and an official for many years within the International Water Ski Federation, said it best. Leon said if you really take a look at it, wakeboarding serves a younger generation of water sports enthusiasts in which many may eventually turn to threeevent, show skiing and/or hydrofoiling as they become older. Leon feels we have all of a sudden a pipeline from one discipline to others within the spectrum of our sport offerings. Good on you, Leon.

Jim, Jan and Larry put together as fine a program as I have seen in many years. They brought together cutting edge marketing people from this industry, and they brought others from outside the industry that were also amazed at our endemic industry marketing prowess. People such as the COO of Starbucks, and the VP of Business Development from Penske presented great programs and also underlined their legitimate high-level enthusiasm for water sports (Penske to the point of buying a majority share of MasterCraft).

Thanks to Leon Larson, Dave Clark, Dan Levine and Steve Upp for their representation of our organization at the WSIA Summit.

Now, off to Wisconsin and Think Tank.

Steve Locke
Executive Director
USA Water Ski