The Western Washington University Waterski team competed at the National Collegiate Water Ski Association National Championships in Martindale, Texas, from Oct. 10-12, taking home seventh place in Division II.
Isabel Lukes scored 540 points to take fifth in the women’s trick competition. Lukes was the only Viking to secure an individual podium performance.
The women’s squad bolstered Western’s standing by finishing third in the women’s jump competition, leading the Vikings to sixth place in the jump in the combined standings. The performance was Western’s best finish in a combined event and a key factor in their strong overall showing.
“The students put in a lot of work, and I’m always impressed with that club,” said Caitlin Sommers, assistant director of WWU campus recreation. “They’re really passionate about what they do, and they work really hard to make sure that they’re giving that opportunity to the students to continue [waterskiing] or start a new sport.”
Since the team won the Division II national title in 2015, the waters haven’t exactly been smooth skiing. The fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 greatly diminished the Western waterski roster and left the club without a coach and a lake to practice on.
At one point during the fall of 2021, club membership consisted of a mere three people. Returning to competition meant fully starting over, bringing a batch of new recruits with little competitive waterskiing experience.
The new strategy of recruiting directly from the student body was a stark difference from what the team had previously done to bring in new talent before COVID-19.
“Back then, there would only be 12 to 15 people on the team, but they would all have grown up on private lakes waterskiing their whole lives,” said Anders Larson, the club’s vice president. “It will never go back to that.”
The process of building back from such a reset is an ongoing one, and the team’s leadership hopes to bring the momentum they’ve built during the past few years into future seasons. Still, club president Kyler Grunert says their goals have shifted to being more accessible to waterskiing newcomers, while still competing at a high level.
“The whole team, nobody had ever really [waterskiied] before, at least not competitively,” Grunert said. “I think that’s what makes it so accessible to everybody here. If you want to come out, we’ll teach you how to waterski and you could get as good as anybody else on the team.”
The seventh-place overall result this year marks an improvement over the Vikings’ 11th-place finish in 2023, and Grunert is optimistic about a top-five finish in 2025. More importantly, the team culture for this motley crew of waterskiers has never been better.
“To me, it’s like family,” Grunert said. “Everybody I hang out with is on the waterski team; the people I live with are on the waterski team. It’s everything, basically.”
The team now practices at Lake Samish, and some members rent a lake house to be as close as possible to practice. They also have a team boat, which they say helps their setup make waterskiing as affordable as possible for new members.
Competing on the national stage is simply a matter of “bringing the stoke.”
“It doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from or what you call yourself,” Larson said. “If you have that stoke, we’re gonna be friends.”
Jonah Billings (he/him) is a Sports and Recreation reporter for The Front. He is a second-year Western student and is majoring in journalism with a minor in history. In addition, he is a member of Western’s varsity cross-country and track and field teams. He enjoys running, reading and spending time with friends. You can reach him at jonahbillings.thefront@gmail.com.
