Yes, we were just at this site for the Brazos River Rat Race. This is the second of three events this club hosts. At all the BBC events, you can expect a Texas welcome, a Texas feast, and a Texas Hoe-down. This club really knows how to host an event. The atmosphere is like no other place on earth.

The entire event is held at Barefoot Beach, the site of the Brazos Barefoot Club. This beautiful river lies on the southern outskirts of Ft. Worth near Rio Vista. The river has charm and nestles between thousand acre ranches.

This tournament has a very fun format for the skiers and has lots of spectator appeal. It is comprised of four events, including the "Expression Session," "Extreme Starts," "Mono-a-Mono," and Jump. It turned out to be too rough Sunday afternoon to jump.

Expression session is the tricks event and all runs are judged from shore! This is great for the judges. The score is based on intensity, execution, and showmanship all on a scale from 1-10. The score for Extreme starts is based on difficulty, originality and crowd appeal. This event is also on a scale of 1-10 and judged from the shore. Mono-a-Mono is the endurance event and skiers battled head to head with a single elimination format. This format is similar to a figure 8 tournament, except instead of an 8, we just follow the river until one of the footers goes down with one judge in the boat.

Extreme Starts
Novice can do any two starts. Open must do a forward and backward start. If two forward starts are used in open, the second start won’t have position points. Pros must do a forward and backward start using two different apparatus. The skier is judged from shore by three judges, one judge for each category.

Difficulty - 1 pt. deep
2 pt. beach
3 pt. dock
4 pt. tower
2 pt. tumble start
2 pt. forward
4 pt. backward
3 pt. to one
4 pt. toe up
examples:
forward (2) tower (4) toe up (4) is 10 pts.
backward (4) dock (3) is 7 pts.
backward (4) deep (1) tumble start (2) to one (2) is 10 pts.
Originality - Scale of 1-10, Judge sets standard on first score.
Crowd Appeal - Scale of 1-10, Judge sets standard on first score.

Expression Session
This is the trick event.
The skier is judged from the shore by three judges.
The skier is only judged by what the judges can see from shore.
Intensity - Scale of 1-10, Judge sets standard on first score.
Execution - Scale of 1-10, Judge sets standard on first score.
Showmanship - Scale of 1-10, Judge sets standard on first score.

Mono-A-Mono
This is the endurance event.
Skiers will battle head to head.
Flip a coin to decide which side of the wake.
First man down, or first man to touch butt to the water is out.
Last man standing advances
Single elimination

The first event of the tournament was the Expression Session. There was some anxiety as to water conditions and ski-ability – though the water was glass, it had rained the week prior and the river was up and flowing with quite a bit of debris. But after a few passes with the ski boats, the debris was cleared and the water was set for the Expression Session Event.

The kids rocked in the boom division Expression Session. Some of these kids have some real talent. We had some huge trophies to give away to the top three kids. The battle was on. The crowd showed tremendous support and the kids had a blast.

The most popular trick in the novice division was the "meat hook". It was great to see these guys out there giving it their best. The open division showed the crowd a variety of entertaining and innovative runs with everything from a neck one foot to a back toe thumbs up.

In the pro division, Phil Gustafson beat Paul out with a back toe up on one run and a couple of surface turns on the other run with style. For the back toe, Phil road to speed on his butt and then rolled over and planted. This impressed the judges and received a roar from the crowd. This would be enough to win over the toe turn and flip I did in my runs. That’s what is cool about this tournament format, the judges and crowd become really involved from the shore. This is an easy way to make barefoot water skiing a spectator sport.

The extreme starts competition was very exciting and entertaining. The dock was about 6 feet off the water, and the tower was about 14 feet off the water. None of the novice had done a dock start before. I drove the event and coached the guys through the lower dock start. They all followed a tight rope and made their starts. All but one of the novice skiers went off the high tower on their second start.

Open had all kinds of crazy stunts. Nathan Aust put on a real show with his homemade fishing pole ski rope, and a classic River Rat Fishing Tower Start. He missed the start though, and that killed him on his score.

In the pro, Paul won the starts with a submarine tower tumble. He dove from the tower (after checking the water depth thoroughly) and stayed under the water as the boat took off. After pulling off a 75-100 foot submarine, he popped up from under the water, tumbled up and skied away.

Not to be outdone, Jan Honsinger and Andrea Eggert go together and convinced one of the guys in the crowd, who happened to be visiting from Germany, to pull off a triple flyer.  Andrea did a front flyer, Jan did a flying front tumble up, and our mysterious German did a flying back tumble-up.  Very impressive!

Heather and I had to leave before the Mono-A-Mono started. I had two finals on Monday morning that I needed to get home and sleep on. From what I hear, it was a great competition as well.

Thanks to the Brazos Barefoot Club, Waterski America, Malibu Boats, Texas Master Craft, Brazos River Boat Storage, the Indian Lodge Resort, Fastsigns, the Ski Ranch Ski River, and Red Bull for supporting this event.

Stokeman OUT!!!