For the second year in a row, the Eastern Regionals are being held nearly in my back yard, here in Penfield NY.  And for the second year in a row, most people in the Rochester area won’t even know about it. While the sport of tournament waterskiing has never been a large spectator event, I wanted to write up a quick guide to this years Eastern Regional Championships, for those who might want to come out to watch.

Where is this happening?

Tucked within the suburbs of Penfield NY is perhaps the most perfectly engineered waterski site in the region. The site location is called Hidden Pass for a reason, as most Penfield residents don’t know that it exists.  The site is the private residence of the DiBella’s and the Rudy’s, and typically not accessible by the public.  This event however, offers a unique opportunity to go down to Skimore lane and pay witness to some of the best skiers in the country.

If you are looking to find the pond via a map, you can map anywhere to “skimore lane” in Penfield to find it.

View Larger Map

When is this happening?

The action starts this Thursday at 8AM Sharp and runs through the weekend.  There is an official schedule of events, which we grabbed from the Hidden Pass website.

The events are broken up into age groups, designated by a national classification system.  So if you look at this schedule and see M1, M2, M3 that means Men’s 1, Men’s 2 and Men’s.  I will explain what that means later.

When the tournament is over for the end of the day, the pond turns into practice rounds for new competitors just arriving. They will ski until the light goes away.

You can access the entire perimeter of the pond itself, which puts you amazingly close to the action.  There is a site map on the Hidden Pass website, but there will be plenty of signs to help you navigate to parking areas.

What am I watching?

There are three events to spectate.  Tournament Slalom, Tricks and Jumping.  Being a slalom skier, I of course have my own biased towards watching that happen, so I will explain some of the basics to slalom skiing.

The boat will drive down the center of the course, while the skier attempts to ski around 6 buoys, making an nice pendulum motion behind the boat if everything goes well.  They need to go through the entrance gates and exit gates for the entire run to count.  There are points for getting partial of half buoys but you need to complete one full run to make anything count.

The challenge is that the different divisions above have different speed requirements and every time you successfully make a pass, they shorten the rope.  The rope has different colors on it, and after a little practice, you learn to spot what the length the skier is running from the shore.

If you are still trying to decipher that schedule up above, this might help.  The divisions are broken up by age groups.

• Boys and Girls 1 — 9 years and under
• Boys and Girls 2 — 13 years and under
• Boys and Girls 3 — 17 years and under
• Men and Women 1 — 18-24 years inclusive
• Men and Women 2 — 25-34 years inclusive
• Men and Women 3 — 35-44 years inclusive
• Men and Women 4 — 45-52 years inclusive
• Men and Women 5 — 53-59 years inclusive
• Men and Women 6 — 60-64 years inclusive
• Men and Women 7 — 65-69 years inclusive
• Men and Women 8 — 70-74 years inclusive
• Men and Women 9 — 75-79 years inclusive
• Men and Women 10 — 80-84 years inclusive
• Men and Women 11 — 85 years and over
• Open Men and Women — any age

There is a much larger chart, showing what the minimum speed is based off your age.

The rope length is confusing to many people, as if you ask what somebody is running, they are going to tell you a number OFF.  22 OFF, 28 OFF, 32 OFF, etc.  The number represents the amount of feet OFF of a full rope, which is 75′.  For references of distance, at 38 OFF, the rope is short of the buoy by 6 inches.

What do I bring?

A folding camp chair, because it get’s tiring watching somebody else to exercise. You will want to bring a few dollars with you, so you can have your own T-Shirt made on site, or pay for some grub throughout the day.  Junior Development has a 50/50 raffle going on, and there are a handful of vendors on site.  You definitely want to bring a camera and a set of sandals, in case you need to get your feet wet.  Though you can’t swim out into the pond while people are skiing and boats are running, putting your feet in the water can help curb the heat.

Where can I find out more information?

The Hidden Pass website

The site was setup for participants first, but there is a lot of good information in there.

Here is the 2010 Regionals Guide.

2010 Eastern Region Tournament Guide

This is the entire guidebook for all of the tournaments in the Eastern Region this year.  It is valuable however, because it has all of the regulations and rules in it for somebody trying to understand the sport.