The LSU Water Ski Club is back.
The club that won a national championship during the 1980s has seen a resurgence in interest and is once again competing in collegiate events after an eight-year absence from LSU.
After transferring to LSU from the University of Louisiana-Monroe, mass communication sophomore Jaime Wallace was interested in helping create a team at LSU.
Wallace was a member of the team at Louisiana-Monroe, where water skiers get scholarships.
“I skied my whole life, and I just love skiing,” she said. “I wanted to get [a team] started here because there used to be one back in the ’80s, and they won nationals.”
Wallace trains at Bennett’s Ski School in Zachary. While at Bennett’s, fellow University student Kameron Langlois was told to meet Wallace because of her interest in starting a team.
Langlois, a construction management freshman, got on board as soon as he heard about Wallace’s interest.
Wallace and Langlois are now the president and vice president, respectively, of the LSU Water Ski Club.
While Wallace has been skiing since she was 3 years old, she says experience level shouldn’t be a concern for club members.
“There’s some people that have skied a couple of times that just want to get better and ski in competitions,” she said. “There’s all ranges of people.”
Joey Vinning, geography freshman, said he wasn’t a great skier before he got involved in the club.
“I learned how to water ski when I was 15 or 16, but I hadn’t had much practice with it,” he said. “I learned pretty much everything I know how to do at Bennett’s.”
Langlois said he enjoys the laid-back nature of the club.
“With the team, we can just go out on the river and everybody is able to constructively criticize what you did wrong and tell you things to work on,” he said.
But the team also knows how to perform well.
Wallace was named to this year’s South Central Regional All-Star Team.
“It was a pretty big deal,” Langlois said. “Everybody’s proud of her, and it’s an honor to be one of the best in the region in only [LSU’s] first year doing it.”
This year’s nationals competition will be hosted at Bennett’s.
Each region in the country gets five bids to nationals, but the South Central region, in which LSU competes, may get six seeds this year. Wallace believes LSU could get the sixth seed.
“It’s kind of like our home field, so going and watching would be enough in itself,” Langlois said. “Being able to compete in it would be a like a dream.”
The team is already looking to improve and expand for next year.
Jay Bennett, owner of Bennett’s Ski School, will coach the team next semester. Bennett was the coach of LSU’s last national championship team in the ’80s.
“That’s going to help us out a lot,” Wallace said. “We’re going to have pretty much professional coaching.”
Wallace said the club is even getting interest from high schoolers.
“It’s definitely growing,” she said. “I’ve had an incoming freshman for next semester that’s a really good slalom skier e-mail me.”
The club’s members believe the club will keep growing because of how unique the sport is.
“I like it because of the adrenaline I get from it,” Langlois said. “It’s a rush getting to go 50 miles per hour behind a boat.”
 
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Contact Albert Burford at [email protected]