Collegiate Skiing and Wakeboarding

Hey guys,
I'm the president of the University of Missouri waterski & wakeboard team in Columbia, MO. When I joined the team we were on a leasing program with a guy from Wisconsin named Scot Coley. Scot was basically responsible for getting Midwest collegiate skiing started by making it easy for college teams to attain boats. He was running a very cheap leasing program so that our clubs could afford it. Well, Scot passed away a couple of years ago and since no one wanted to take over his operation and our club couldn't afford to pay for our 2006 Mastercraft Prostar 197 outright, the bank repossessed it. So, we've been on the search for another alternative to get a boat for our club to practice with but we haven't been successful thus far.

So, my question to all of you is... any ideas? I know it's a very rare thing to come across a deal like that but I figured it wouldn't hurt to try this forum to see if anybody knows anything. It's getting hard to recruit new members and build our team when we can't say that we have a boat of our own. Anyways, thanks for reading this and thanks for the help!

Chris - Kudos to you for your efforts. I cant believe I missed out on collegiate wakeboarding by just a couple years - almost makes me wanna go back to skool rofl.

A google search of collegiate wakeboarding gives several results. Give em a try.
http://www.collegewakeboard.com/inde...tid=4&Itemid=3
http://usawakeboard.com/
http://usawaterski.org/
http://www.wakeworld.com/MB/Discus/m...tml?1179069050
http://www.alliancewake.com/wake/usa...ard-nationals/

Yeah I've e-mailed the guys in charge of usawakeboard and collegiatewakeboarding... waiting for a response.

On the same note, anybody know of a really effective fundraiser for something like this? Not going to lie, we've almost come to the last resort of having our girl members wakeboard and ski in bikinis to put together a calendar... any other ideas???

I skied collegiately 20+ years ago & it was always beg, borrow, & steal (but usually had some regular generous alumni boats available). Ah the memories of tournament road trips, sleeping in cars, & reaking of stale beer.

Don't know if it's available up in your area, but my daughter's high school band has hooked up with the owner of several of the large fireworks warehouses. He uses "volunteer" parents and kids 16+ from local charitable organizations (church, band, ROTC, cheer, brigade, etc.) to man the stores during weeks of July 4 and New Years holidays and pays a % of the profits. The payout "donation" from each store is split among the different groups working that particular store. Band is large enough we can completely cover one store - does take a lot of folks (especially N Y Eve and 7/4) so we get the entire cut. Those warehouses make a killing - our take is typically $14k-16k each holiday! Beats the heck outta magazine subscriptions, candy, & wrapping paper. Just an idea. Good luck!

Oh yeah, don't give up on the bikini clad coed calander idea - I'll buy one.

I was on the UT Waterski & Wakeboard team in college from '03-'06 and was the public relations officer for '05-'06, so I have a little bit of experience with this. We didn't have to worry about the boat so much as we did with travel/gas expenses. Mastercraft gives UT a new boat every year, I think they got an X-25 this year. John Dorton, MC's CEO, is a UT alum so he throws them a bone and is a huge benefit most schools don't get. We'd go to local businesses and see if they'd be interested in donating to the team. We'd sell spots on our team trailer, meaning we'd put their sticker there for advertisement if they'd donate. The local BMW dealership bought the whole backside of our equipment trailer and was a huge donation for us. You should talk to your local boat dealers and see if they'd be interested in leasing for the team, where they receive some sort of advertising or badging on the boat. Go out and talk to businesses that relate to the industry, you'd be suprised what you can accomplish if you take the reins. We went to a boat show in '04 and talked with a boat-dock manufacturer who agreed to simply build us a free dock with a overhead porch and a powered lift, we talked with local city government and they agreed to let us put the dock in one of the parks. We stored stuff in it for a while, it had a big closet under the stairs that we'd keep a generator for hosting events, but after a break-in where it was stolen we started to just bring everything with us. If I can help in any other way feel free to hit me up on here. I know the economy isn't in as good of shape as it was back then, and that it may be alot harder, but keep at it.

Man, that sounds like a great setup. The skiing/wakeboarding scene just isn't too prominent where we're at in Columbia, MO. Wakeboarding is pretty big a couple hours south at the Ozarks and then farther south at Bull Shoals. And there's some slalom stuff around but the closest boat dealer is an hour and a half away. Our other problem is finding a lake close to campus, there's a couple private slalom lakes that are REAL stingy about letting us on and the closest lake other than that is an hour away. It's just a tough situation.

Thanks for the tips though, that's the kinda thing I'm looking for on here... I think I'm going to try and write the CEO a letter. You wouldn't happen to know somebody that could put in a good word for us would you????