- with a free wakeskate and multiple videos courtesy of Dave Thacker from the 55 of 26 wakeboard school up in Pennsylvania
- over an hour of instruction from Sean O’Brien and Derek Seaman from the Orlando Wakeboard Academy
- the opportunity to ride behind a brand new MB Tomcat courtesy of Alan at Southern Ski Boats.
Not bad at all for a little internet search!
For most groups of wakeboarders in the DC area, frequent interaction with other riders has typically been limited to a polite wave when passing another sweet looking wake boat on the water. Let’s face it, the local competitions have not proven to be enough to sustain a cohesive wakeboarding community that includes both great riders and the everyday yahoo who simply wants to progress at a more leisurely pace. Sadly, in this environment, the ones that are consistently shortchanged are the young kids who can only rely on their parents to teach them about the sport and occasionally drive them to an event or two during the summer. For them, wakeboarding never really can become much more than a recreational activity dictated by their parents’ schedules. DCWake.com was born out of an awareness that a huge, untapped community of recreational wakeboarders were out there on all of our local waterways and desperately needed a vehicle designed to allow them to find each other in a casual and more social manner. As DCWake rapidly grew and evolved into an informational and social outlet for everyday riders to tell stories about what they and their crew had been up to while on the water, it also became apparent that the site had to adapt to a somewhat different role as more and more parents joined the forum to learn about the local wakeboard scene. Somewhere, amid the chaos of our forum, the idea was floated by John (aka: Skyskier - our host), that a family related event would be a good idea for the growing number of parents that also spent time browsing our forums. With the offer of the Both Waters pavilion now on the table, planning for the DCWake Grom day was soon in motion.
March 2005: Longtime friends and coaches at Wakeboard Orlando, Sean O’Brien and Derek Seaman agree to start their own wakeboard training camp on Lake Fairview in the heart of downtown Orlando. On the verge of graduating from university, Sean never really had an opportunity to put himself out there amongst the wakeboard elite and was forced by other priorities to accept a significantly lower profile than most other professional riders. Derek had also chosen a similar route. Together Derek and Sean, continue to use the internet to build a cult following for Sean’s talented riding style and their new business venture. Soon, Sean is riding for a company that said it would put his name on every board they produced if he rode for them. Business is booming! The rest is history.
August 2005: Kirk (aka 540club) who I had modest contact with since 2000, gives me a call clearly desperate for a third - his second that day was Dave Thacker. It had been some time since I had wakeboarded, my wife and daughter were in Australia, it was 100 degrees outside...why not? Soon I am obsessed again and lurking the national websites for no good reason. In no time, I find Wade and Lisa, discuss the need for a local site, and only three months later DCWake.com is live...without any reasonable content or particular focus other than to help people find thirds or a pull.
Winter 2006: Quarterly business trips to Orlando had allowed me to hit a few of the wakeboard camps I had read about in the past. I discovered Sean and Derek through an internet search during one of these trips and went out with them on a brisk day at the end of January. After having attended a few camps in my travels, and clearly worried about the lack of anything of real value going on that winter on DCWake, I decided to write a review of my experiences at each camp since the biases on national websites and in the magazines are so obvious. After a few more camp visits in March, I found myself returning to Sean and Derek every time I was in Orlando for the simple reason that they are the most effective and approachable coaches I have come across in the business. By the summer, we were having conversations about how we could arrange an event up in Washington someday. Hopefully, you are beginning to catch my drift. Being almost middle-aged, I continuously am amazed at how slow I am to pick up on the things you kids take for granted. It appears to me now that if you are seriously into anything these days, then a high-speed internet connection is your best friend. When I was a kid, my mother and father would throw me out the door in the morning with suntan lotion and a canteen and say "see you at dinner" (Hence the popularity of 80’s hits like MacGyver - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGyver ). I can only imagine what MacGyver could have got up to if he had a laptop, some lotion and a wi-fi connection...
...Anyway, today the internet touches almost every aspect of our lives and really does have the unique ability to bring together people from extremely different places in only a matter of minutes. Hence, when the concept of the grom event was floated, it only took a day or two before most of the key players were in touch with each other discussing matters relating to venue, coaching, boats, giveaways etc. I will admit, a cell phone or two were also used since Dave Thacker has no computer.
Spring 2007: Alan Slabaugh of Southern Ski Boats starts sending over his clients to DCWake. Having successfully sold a MB B52 team edition to Dan Smith in the fall, Alan became a regular on the site and found an appreciation for the sense of community and stupidity developing at DCWake. In any event, most of his $65K boat purchasers tend to be family folk and not surprisingly, DCWake experienced a flush of parents as new members courtesy of Alan’s referrals.If you have followed the timeline closely, then you can easily understand that everything was in place to make an event like this come off with minimal effort and just some advance funding. Regarding the day itself, sure things could have been run more effectively, a few of the sideline activities didn’t pan out as advertised, but all in all every one left very pleased with having made the effort and the experience proved that DCWake has the resources to pull off a range of its own events if the desire is there. Without question, every parent loved having the opportunity to ride and hang out with Sean, Derek and Alan.
July 9th, 2007: Brooke Pitcher wrote..."best story for me was my son Bailey, who has been on the edge with riding, not really feeling it, low confidence, etc. etc. at the end of the day being able to take a couple sets riding doubles with me, and having Alan and his wife, and Sean and Derek in the boat giving pointers. No pressure, no worries, and nothing but time. His confidence level went up 100% that evening. And then being able to chill on the boat and talk shop while Derek and Bailey swam around, you just can't put a price on that stuff. Bailey is still talking about it, and for the first time really wants to go down to Orlando to camp."
July 9th, 2007: Todd wrote..."I can't say enough thank you's to everyone that made this event happen. Chase for bringing us all together, nice to put faces to so many names. Hopefully we can keep getting together organized or not. Alan S, wow did you even have a kid there? None of us can thank you enough for the awesome boat and all the time you gave to the kids. Sandy and John for giving us places to park and even to cool off in your homes...Everyone! Thanks! I know that all three of our Groms learned a lot. Hard to believe how much they can learn from someone like Sean and Derek in such a short period of time. We continued all night Saturday and all day Sunday and the kids remembered everything they were told and all three of them made great strides this weekend. Nuff said, this was a great thing to do and it definitely needs to be at least an annual event!"
July 9th, 2007: Scott wrote..."Wanted to say a BIG thanks as well to everyone involved. My son Shalen got up for his first time Saturday behind the Tomcat!! He was so amped that he couldn't wait to go again, and ended up getting some pretty good rides in the rest of the weekend. Great meeting everyone and I will be watching this board to see about future events. Thanks again!!"
From my perspective, this time last year I only knew one other family on DCWake that was really into wakeboarding. Sadly, that was Jimmy Yeager and his family (valeriejimmy). My daughter Grace and their daughter Lanie have become good friends and are frequently boat buddies. In fact, when Lanie was wakeboarding off of Jimmy’s boom that day, she turned to Grace in the boat and said "See, this is how you wakeboard." Personally, that made my day for the simple fact it might have been the most useful wakeboard instruction from a Yeager, ever.
As time has gone on at DCWake, I eventually met Mack and Sara, Dan Smith and his girls, Brooke and his kids, and on the Grom day: Cwfunrider, tmorganti, faceplant, claude, Gary, the guests they also brought with them and a few crashers as well. I can’t fully explain how important it was to me to have the opportunity to bring together so many people who share similar interests and also have kids. I still can’t believe that it was little more than a year ago that I knew none of you and really had no chance of ever attending a relaxed event like this. Thanks for loggin on and getting involved.
Whether you were able to attend or not, it is a tribute to everyone at DCWake.com that takes the time to make the place interesting in their individual ways. Without you, what would inspire the recreational wakeboarder to abandon the shadowy status of lurking the site and take the time to enter into the fun. Here’s to DCWake and our growing community!
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