HISWA

Today officially marks the first day of spring. For us that means that we go into double digits in the temperature. It also means that the start of the water-skiing season is getting closer and closer! Until the start of the season on Monday the 28th of March, I keep looking for ways to prepare to the best of my abilities. There are also more and more activities that have to do with the preparation of the season, like the activity day last week. Today I went to the HISWA Amsterdam boat show. This is a major event in Amsterdam for boats mainly, but also many water sports. It can really be seen as the kick-off of the water sport season, since you can buy any accessories you need. There are many ways to promote the water sports, like interactive workshops, demonstrations and activities. There was some room for water-skiing, but I felt like it was still under-represented and I am thinking of ways to promote it more next year (any ideas are welcome).

Testing my balance on heels

For me hall 2 was like water sport heaven. Here there was a kite-surf simulator, where you could feel the pull of the kite, but the talent of keeping the kite and the board under control was not necessary. There were also two pools, one in which you could go Supping (stand-up pedalling) and one in which you could go skimboarding. What I realised spending almost the entire day in hall 2, is that in all water-sports, balance and core stability was central. In every demonstration they would test your balance. Therefore I believe that once you can do one, you have a good basis to start trying other sports. This is great for some variation in between trainings-sets. For example I really like to go Supping.

Trying out the ski-machine, on heels, courtesy of the  Dutch federation

I had a lot of fun trying out other water sports, but the best part for me was still water-skiing. There was a skimachine which could be used to introduce people to water-skiing. They had water-skis without the fins, so they could be used on a flat surface. Sadly to be more time efficient they used a skimboard instead. Here it is clear that water-skiing should be promoted more. On the other hand, there were wakeboarders giving awesome demonstrations in the harbour, by using a winch. I believe that we could maybe join them and give a trick-skiing demonstration, because not nearly enough people know about water-skiing in the Netherlands.

The Dutch water-ski and wakeboard federation did have a small stand in this massive event. There were two wakeboard boats, which caught the attention of a lot of people. Also the youngest skier at my home club was used for promotion. This shows that people of all ages can join our sports and there was a lot of enthusiasm for water-skiing. This is why I think that next year it shouldn't be a problem to have more space for water-skiing on this huge event. There was also a selfie competition with which you can win a pair of sunglasses, so I chose to take a picture with my little champion.

Dedication

Since the club where I ski at home is exactly that, a club, there are a lot of things that need to be done by volunteers. There are a lot of things that need to happen where I don't have a clue how to help, like the technical aspects of the slalom course and the ramp. Since I do benefit from these things being done, I try to help and put my efforts anywhere I can. I do this out of respect for the volunteers who do the things I can't, for everyone that helps me and to show my passion for the sport in more ways than just on the water.
Sometimes this means raising money, in order to keep memberships and ski-set prices the way they are. It is possible for our members to ski for €6.90, which is extremely cheap, so to make this possible we need some other source of income. A local chain of supermarkets has a great initiative where sports clubs are able to promote their club so that shoppers donate tokens to their club. Customers get a token for every 10€ that they spend. After a while there is a party at which cheques are given out. The weight in tokens will be translated to an amount of money, which you are free to spend on whatever you want. In order to promote your club, you are allowed to stand in the supermarket and ask people to support you. One year we put the boat outside of the supermarket, which definitely made an impact. We also put skis around the supermarket and stand in our bikinis (in the winter) or wetsuits at the cashiers, where people decide which clubs to support. By bringing our youngest and cutest members we try to guilt people into supporting our club, haha. This all pays off, last time we earned €864.-!

To make sure we can have members ski at least 4 days a week, we need boat drivers and bartenders. I would really like to be a boat driver, but you have to be 18 for that in the Netherlands, so when I turned 16, I applied to be a bartender, since you have to be 16 for that. This usually means starting at 18:30 till after sunset, but it is a really fun way to contribute to the club, because you can chat with everyone the entire night. Best of all you can decide when you want to ski. In order to have a fair system, members can write their name on a board when they arrive, which is when they will ski. As a bartender you can say when you want to go once. So when the sun comes out, I quickly use this privilege to my advantage :) .
In order to keep our club up and running and attractive to new members, we have to keep building and cleaning. Cleaning is definitely my least favourite... however if it's done often enough it is not too bad, and the result afterwards is worth it. Along with cleaning days, we also have a couple of days in which everything is prepared for the new season. This involves anything that needs to be done that is not cleaning related. Sometimes we have to remodel to make storage more efficient and sometimes we have to build new things, for example ways to dry suits and towels, since it is mostly really cold. We had a day like this yesterday, which inspired me to write about all the things I love doing outside of the water to keep my club up and running. This is genuinely great because you keep the club up and running together with all the members. When everyone helps in their way, nobody owns it and it creates a sense of belonging and pride regarding the club and the way it is presented. This also means that the members are generally really close and it is always fun to go skiing because of the people you'll see.

'You either have passion or you don't'

Last week I wrote about my goals for the coming season. Even though I can't be on the water very often now, it is still time to work towards achieving those goals in any way possible. There are a few ways in which I focus on achieving my goals during the winter. First of all some of the very active people at my water-skiing club spent a lot of free time on building what we now call the ski-machine. It's in essence a sort of treadmill, but much bigger. It is only possible to practise for tricks

on this machine, since other skis have fins which will damage the machine. Also they involve different techniques which you can't practise in this way. It's amazing to be able to practise some basic tricks on, because with every error you make in your body position, you will fall. It is also great to practise toeholds on. For this we are able to hold a handle hanging from above as well, so where you would normally fall, you can keep yourself up. It is of course the aim to not use it at all, because the techniques have to come from your legs, because on the water, sadly, we don't have a drone that flies with us and holds us up when we're about to fall. However any wake turns are harder to simulate and flips are impossible. Therefore my goal really is to not be able to practise on this machine anymore. This would mean that for tricks my run consists of flips and ski-lines, which all involve jumping over the wake, therefore they cannot be done on this machine. These tricks are worth the most points, so one day I want to be able to do that of course (though I believe it will always be good to work on the basics). Until then, I'm practising tricks that I want to use in my qualifying run. I made a video of this on my new Facebook page.

One of the trainers of the club training, who put a lot of work in the ski-machine, also prepared a pre-season training programme for everybody to get our muscles ready for the season. This happens every Sunday and I'm on my way there now. We do interval training with 18 different exercises, alternating muscle groups. We end with some very slow squats, 3 seconds down and then 3 seconds up. Last week I still thought they were easy, but it turned out that I was stretching my legs before going down again, which takes the pressure off. After I changed this, I definitely did not think they were easy. The other fun thing about this training is that we already see our team mates before the season actually starts, which is, if you remember the word, very gezellig.

One final thing I want to say is that I also try to ski when the weather is (relatively) good. Today was actually the first time this year, after more than 2 months not skiing. When I woke up, I saw the water in my garden was frozen. This slightly discouraged me to go skiing today, but two things got me back on track. The national coach saying: you either have passion or you don't. Then later is saw this photo of the lake that I skied at, waterski school de Harder Veluwemeer. At that moment I was sold and I started preparing, both mentally and my gear... Looking back, it was definitely beyond cold, with the water temperature around 5 degrees (Celsius), but Alex and Gerrit made it a lot of fun with tips on both techniques and staying warm.

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.