Footstock Day 2

Day 2 was packed from start to finish with great competition.  It started off with Tony Buoniauto against Bill Brzoza and Cody Heller vs his sister Elaine.  The winner of Tony and Bill would then have to take on Aaron Schoelzel.  With Day 1 seeing only couple full eights,  day 2 was quite the opposite.  It started off with one of the longest runs of the tournament and kept that pace the entire day.

The Heller family was all about strategy.  Elaine and brother Cody decided to have Elaine throw the handle early in their heat to give Cody a better chance of going deeper into the Open division. Then Elaine threw the handle to give Shannon the title in the Women's division. Personally, from a spectators view, I didn't like the whole concept.  You come to see competitors fight it out to the limits of their abilities with the best man, or woman, standing in the end.  Traveling 1200 miles to see a fixed match wasn't fun.  It's great that the Heller family is so dominant in the sport, but I'd like to see them compete at their highest level among each other, otherwise it's really not worth watching.

One of the worst things that happened to all the other male competitors when Elaine threw the handle against Cody is that she went into the loser's bracket.  That meant she skied against a lot more competitors which resulted in them handing out more PINK shirts.  Yes, we have some of those videos as well.  Shannon Heller was able to knock off a few top competitors of her own.

Elaine Heller vs Paul Stokes	I Got Beat By a Girl at Footstock!
Paul Get's his Pink Shirt
Elaine Heller vs Bucky Daily
Shannon vs Dan Ehlers

We were fortunate to have cameras in the boats for most of the Day 2 finals.  So instead of boring you to death with reading about it, just click on the videos below to check the runs out for yourself.

The final race this yea saw the same two skiers battling out (Fleck vs Schoelzel), but the tables were turned this year.  In 2004, Aaron Schoelzel had to defeat Peter Fleck twice to win the title, but this year, Aaron went undefeated into the final and Peter was forced to defeat Aaron twice.  Aaron came into Footstock this year on a mission to proclaim his dominance.  He had fallen early in two Figure-8s earlier this year and was determined not to do the same at Footstock.  Whatever he did to get refocussed worked. He was undefeated the entire day.  He didn't even give Peter a chance to beat him twice in the finals.  One run would be enough.  Of course the home town crowd was elated knowing that the prize money would remain in Wisconsin.  Keith St. Onge was quick to remind David Mueller that Aaron skis Team BarefootCentral.com.   Keith, Mike Salber and Aaron Schoelzel are all on our elite promo team and are sponsored by Eagle Sports and US Gear handles.  They are both true champions and we are proud to have them on our team.  Win or loose, they do it with class.