22-12

When I was a kid, I mean I still am, but when I was younger, my birthday meant the world to me. 22 was my lucky number and 22-12 had a nice ring to it. My birthday haunts me in every username I ever created, since 10% of the Dutch population is called Lieke and any username was already taken except my name followed by my birthday. Now I'll be forever wishing I was born 10 days later, which would give me an extra season in under 17, since the age categories are made using the age you are on 1st of January of the season. I turned 17 on the 22^nd of December and so I have to ski in the category under 21 this season. It feels like just as I am starting to catch up, the challenges become harder. This is very motivating, but I can’t help but wonder what I could achieve with just one more season in under 17. Maybe, depending on how much more I am able to improve in the coming season, I could start dreaming of a finals place at Europeans, in under 17, but now that I'm under 21 I'm facing a new set of challenges. This means that I have to adjust the goals I set for the coming season. The first important challenge I’m facing is qualifying for under 21 Europeans in tricks and jump. In order to make sure I can achieve this, I need to plan roughly how to train for it, and also very important, at which competitions I am going to try to set the scores. There needs to be a fine balance between the amount of time I spend training and when I start trying to set scores at the competition. This is difficult to judge when I am not able to ski, because I can’t predict accurately how fast I will learn new tricks and jump further. If I don’t spend enough time training, I will make the same mistake I made last year. Trying to qualify for a score of 2500, when you can just about trick that in training, will not happen.  But the score has to be set 2 weeks before the Europeans, and if I wait too long I’ll have just one shot to qualify, which is way too nerve wrecking for me. Therefore my plan is to ski as much as I can in April and May, which might not be a lot, because I have my high school exams this year. Then in June I want to go to Vincent Soubiron Ski School to make sure I improve enough to be able to set the scores. The plan is to then do competitions in France, since the first competitions in the Netherlands are in July, this would be very stressful, because it puts a lot of pressure on setting a certain score in just one try, since Europeans are mid-July. If I can do 2 competitions in France at the end of June and 2 in the Netherlands and Belgium or Luxembourg in July, I’ll have 4 competitions to try to qualify.  I hope this is enough to ensure my qualification for this year, because then in the years to come I can focus on ranking higher at these competitions rather than qualifying for them.

The Rookies

I want to start this blog of with a small explanation. I've had a few people reach out to me with the question how to follow my blog. It is possible to fill in your e-mail address where it says 'follow by e-mail'. When you do this, you will get an e-mail notification when I post my blog. However, you can only find 'follow by e-mail' on the desktop version. So either this has to be done on a computer, or you scroll down to the end of the page on the mobile version and click on 'desktop version'  to find it. I hope this helps!


Now on to the blog. Last week I explained how training with a few people my age helped me discover my sport. Even though we had quite similar levels at one point, which motivated all of us to train to the best of our abilities, there was nothing more motivating to see people much better than me. Luckily, with our trainers, we went to rookie competitions. Since water-skiing is such a small sport in the Netherlands, it was no problem to organize a rookie competition as part of Nationals. These competitions were great to get some experience in dealing with stress and some insights on how everything was organized at the competitions. They were also good to meet more people that had about the same level in skiing, because this motivated in the short term. It was necessary to keep growing and the results were instant, because I won my first tournament. Even though it was not an official tournament and the results were absolutely not qualified for ranking list, it meant a lot to me. My first competition was quite some time ago and the scores didn't really matter, so I remember the feelings it gave me, but not the scores I skied. The results are also not published because the rookies are not official competitions. If I had to make an educated guess I'd say that I got 10 points for tricks for doing something that might have looked like a sideslide. Then seeing the skiers competing at nationals getting around 3000 points, I was really impressed. I also realized that what we did in our training was still far away from the real competition skiing, but that was something to work on. The rookie tournaments didn't follow all the rules, but it was already stricter than in training. This way we were slowly introduced to all the rules, but we were allowed to fall once, which took the pressure off. This way it was easier to grow into the real tournaments (after lots of training of course). I competed in my first national championship in 2014. It is a lot of fun to be able to ski with people that you grew up looking up to.

Looking up to other skiers has been the best motivation for me throughout the years. Competing as a rookie meant I could meet the best skiers of our country. This is where I first met Pemm and Tycho for example, who I went to Europeans with last year! I learned that they were skiing for our national team. This was the first time I realised how much more there was to do before I really counted in the water-skiing sport. I made it another goal to be able to join the Dutch team, even though I had no idea how, I would die trying.

Now I've been saying that the Europeans in Rome were my first, but that is not completely correct. It was the first time I was able to ski at a European championship, but together with my training buddies we had visited the Europeans in Maurik, held in 2012. Since we'd already met the Dutch skiers at other competitions, they were able to introduce us to some of the international skiers. I still remember being here, even though it was almost 4 years ago, as a game changing moment. When I was in Maurik trying to talk to everyone in their native language and watching everyone ski was the moment I knew that this was my goal. I would not stop training as hard as I possibly can until I could join the Dutch team and be one of the skiers at the Europeans.

Club training

Last week I mentioned that the water-ski-club I joined held training sessions on Sunday’s for skiers aged 18 and under. I want to expand on this, since without it I wouldn’t have done water-skiing as a competition sport. The trainers and boat drivers are all volunteers so I am very grateful that they helped me the way they did. When I first started water-skiing, the other skiers in the training were already quite far ahead. This meant that I could learn from them as well as the trainers. When I got better it was a lot of fun to do small competitions amongst ourselves, which helped us all to get better and better. Through this we also entered small competitions, called the rookie cup. This was especially for skiers that want to get some experience in competitions, but don’t have the ability to compete in the ‘real’ national competitions. The ‘real’ and the rookie competitions were held at the same time and at the same site, so we could meet other skiers who were much better and have people to look up to. This has been great motivation for all of us and I want to expand on this next week.

Even though water-skiing is an individual sport, being with the group every Sunday morning added a team element to it. Spending so much time together and sharing the same passion meant we got very close and had a lot of fun together in between sets. We also went in the boat to watch other ski and encourage them as well as learn from them. I couldn’t have wished for a better way to get introduced to the sport. The trainers taught me a lot about the sport. They helped me with everything I needed to know, starting from how to warm up to how to deal with nerves at competitions. Without this I wouldn’t know that you could save time on the water if you practise on land. This also meant that I didn’t necessarily have to go to the lake to train. I could now practise at home too. Also buying skis and other equipment was quite the task. Since water-skiing is not a really big sport, there are also limited places to get materials, especially in small sizes.

Of course I don’t remember every piece of advice and tip I ever got from these trainers, but there are some things I will never forget. One of our trainers was so passionate about helping us that he didn’t just give tips and tricks after we fell or at the end of the course, he would just shout from in the boat. Every time we had just rounded a buoy, he would scream ‘PULL PULL PULL’, you could barely hear this when you were skiing, but as I said, we would go in the boat with each other… you could definitely hear it sitting next to him!

When I started in this training, I was almost the youngest skier. Over the years, older skiers stopped and new skiers joined. Now I’m the oldest in the training. Last season was the first time I was asked to help train some of the new skiers. Now we have skiers ranging from 5-17 years old which is much more diverse than when I started, when it was 12-14. It is a lot of fun to help train the younger kids and create a bond with them both on and off the water. 

Have a great Valentine’s day everyone!

How it all started

I know many stories of skiers who grew up with water-skiing due to family and friends. For me this went a little different. When I started I knew nothing and nobody in water-skiing. It’s not really a middle of the road sport, especially in the Netherlands, nobody

(myself included) really knew what I was doing. I saw a water-skiing club next to a restaurant at a lake when I just moved to Groningen, where I live now. As I mentioned before, I have lived in other places as well. In each of them I have tried different sports. In the Hague, I played hockey, which is extremely popular in the Netherlands. This wasn’t really for me though. I also learned how to snow ski when I was 4, I lived close to an indoor snow centre where I learned to snow ski to prepare for many winter holidays in the mountains. I really enjoyed this and we have a snow skiing holiday almost every year. When I moved to Scotland, I stopped hockey, but I wanted to continue snow skiing. However I wanted some change, so I decided to learn snowboarding on an artificial slope close to my home. Through school, I also joined the basketball team. I enjoyed both these sports very much and wanted to continue them both when I moved back to the Netherlands. For snowboarding I wanted to compete in slalom competitions. However we moved to the Netherlands in the summer, and the artificial slopes were not in use. In the area that I moved to there were no other alternatives either, so I had to think of a creative alternative. I thought wakeboarding would be similar to snowboarding (not really), so I wanted to find a place where I could learn this instead. I also continued basketball and took up other sports like Taekwon-do.

Next to a restaurant where we were eating, I saw a water-skiing club, called Water Ski Club Paterswoldsemeer. This was really close to my house and so I asked if they could teach me how to wakeboard. They suggested I should start with learning how to water-ski and then afterwards they would teach me how to wakeboard. It’s important to mention that even though it was summer, the water- and outside temperature must have been about 10 degrees (Celsius). After being in the water for my first few tries, I got up on my skies, however by this time I was freezing, even my lips were turning blue… The two people that taught me how to ski for the very first time, were afraid they would never see me again, because I was so cold, boy were they wrong J. I came back when it was a little warmer to learn more about water-skiing. The training opportunities for water-skiing were quite different from other sports I knew, luckily my family is used to somewhat extreme sports, as my brother does karting competitions.

Though I didn’t continue my snowboarding, or wakeboarding ideas, I did end up competing in slalom competitions, just without the snow. At the water-skiing club there was a training on Sunday morning, where I learned all three aspects of classical skiing over the years. On other days I could practice skiing, but there wouldn’t be an official trainer, which felt different to other sports, so it took some getting used to. Besides the fact that this was different for me and took some getting used to, it was also difficult to explain what I was doing to friends, because no one had heard about water-skiing as a competitive sport before. Many people saw water-skiing as a recreational sport and something that you would do with colleagues once in your life, but not every week. As I got more competitive with water-skiing, I dropped other sports to free more time for training. These were difficult decisions, some were helped by injuries or training times, but in the end it was clear I wanted to continue water-skiing instead of any of the other sports I did. There were many reasons I chose water-skiing, mainly the challenge it presented. Not only improving in the sport itself, but also finding out how to grow and how competitions worked. Since it is so unique, it also presented many hurdles, which always kept it interesting. Though it was difficult to get used to the ways of training in water-skiing, the structure of the training on Sunday morning of the water-ski club helped a lot. However there were, and still are, many things we knew nothing about, especially in the competing world.