Skiing the Rust Off
By: Adam Koehler		September 16, 2009
The team attended its first tournament this past weekend. On Friday evening 20 people and 16 skiers departed for Evansdale, IA to partake in the first tournament of the fall season, Iowa Hawkeye Skifest. A team half composed of returning members with tournament experience and half without faired decently throughout, buoyed by some individual performances. The skiing started early Saturday morning with women's slalom. Kelly Kotarek posted a score of 2.25 buoys and Laurie Simonds posted a score of 1 bouy. The women hope to all improve next weekend after they shook off the first weekend jitters as Kelly has been running the course at 26mph in practice. At this tournament the women would earn a 7th place finish in slalom. For the men it also was a tale of a few buoys here and there with Kyle Flakne setting a personal best of 2 buoys. The men's team overall performance was salvaged by Sophomore Dusty Bodine who set a personal best of 5 buoys at 34mph. Freshman Peter Wahman posted a score of 1 buoy in his first collegiate tournament. The men's team earned a 6th place slalom finsih. After the slaloming was completed it was on to women's trick. Laura Sampson lead the way for the team by trickign just short her personal best with a pass of 410pts which earned her 5th place individually in the event. She was followed by Kelly Kotarek with a 200pt run. The women's team earned a 4th place finish in the trick event. On the men's side of the trick event the team was lead by the performances of Adam Koehler and Dusty Bodine, with 800pt and 740pt trick passes respectively; earning them individual placements of 6th and 7th in the event. Newcomer Jonathan Hoogstra put up a 100pt trick run on his wakeboard and lost the handle on his back roll attempt. As a team the men like the women would place 4th in the event. Women's jump was the next event to be completed. The team returns this year for the first time in years without any dominant women's jumper. At this first tournament of the year the women struggled as many had not seen a ramp since the Spring tournament season or Spring break for others. Every single jumper was close to landing, but alas not a single land was put in the books. The team hopes to put it all behind them at the next tournament and put more than a couple lands in the scorebooks. On the men's side the team performance was again held up by Dusty Bodine with a leap of 75ft. Kyle Flakne set a personal best with a jump of 46ft and Jose Gonzalez landed a 40ft jump, a personal best for him. The men's team would place 4th in the event. The team skied multiple 'B' teamers at the Iowa Skifest. Many 2-event skiers opting to ski their third event on 'B' team to try it out or give the team a sense of where each individual is in the event to properly create an 'A' team. Danny Martin went over the jump for the first time and had fun doing it, Peter Wahman set a personal best in trick with 80pts and Mike Laing set a personal best in trick with 40pts. As a whole the team skied okay at its first tournament of the year. Portions of the team skied to expectations and others exceeded them, but on the whole the team showed rust as some skiers had not hit a jump or seen a slalom course all summer long. The team ended up in 5th place overall, with the men's team earning 5th place and the women's team earning a 7th place finish.