Competition Day 4
Saturday - August 13
Auquaplex, Austin Texas

Men's 3 had Phil Gustafson, Ken Kaestner, and Jimmy Spell battling it out for the Overall title.  Ken Kaestner seemed to be a man destined to have the title.  His skiing was smooth and consistent the whole week. He was skiing with quiet confidence.

As always, Mens 4 is one of the toughest divisions, and largest.  Joe Knapp, Jimmy Taurus, and Doug Jordan were separated by less than 100 pts in the Overall standings.  Joe Knapp stood up both trick passes on the final day to clinch the Overall title.  He pumped his fist in the air as he slid into the water at the end of his 2nd pass.  He was so excited that he had skied well.

Open Men's had Mike Salber, Kevin Williamson Jr, and Kevin Towers separated by less than 100 pts going into the final round.  MIke was the defending Overall Champion, but Kevin Williamson ended up taking home the 2005 Overall title, which is his 2nd in the last 3 years.  The slalom event determined the outcome as Kevin posted a 15.8 to Mike's 14.9. 

As for the girls, Elaine Heller had stepped up her game considerably and was giving Amy Morrison a run for her money in Girls 3.  Amy  had won Jump and Slalom, but fell early in her trick pass.  That left the door open for Elaine who hit her first toe-up in a tournament then ended her second pass with a back to front tricking a PB of 1700 pts to take the gold in Tricks and the Overall titlke, and move into the Women's Open division.  Elaine's whole family was cheering from the announcers booth as Elaine skiied away her back to front.  You'll no doubt be seeing Elaine on the US Junior team in the coming years.  

Shannon Heller was giving Chelsea Hammonds a run for her money in Girls 2.  Shannon took gold in jump andt Chelsea took the gold in tricks, but Shannon would take home the Overall title..

Malorie Bacon and Andrea Eggert did their best to put the pressure on Rachel George in the Open Women's division.  But neither could keep Racheal from taking gold in all three events, as well as the Overall.  Malorie is improving, but is still a couple years away from giving Racheal any real head-aches in slalom.   

The Open Men's International division had Paul McDonald (Canada), Ben & Matt Harris (Great Britain), and Heinrich Sam (South Africa) competing and exciting the crowds with some unbelievable Tricks and jumping.  It looked as if Paul McDonald was skiing on shoe skis as he finished a 7750 pt trick run.  As Paul was quietly schooling everyone, young 11 year old, Heinrich had the crowd on the edge of their seats every time he took to the water.  Everyone knew he was capable of pulling off a world record run and wanted to make sure they were watching just in case he did it.  We all knew we were watching the future of the sport.  He was only 11 and already a legend.  His dad Eugene was very proud and was eager to help anyone that wanted to talk to him about how he trained and coached Heinrich to such a high level.

With all that aside, the biggest story of the tournament was Scarpa vs St. Onge  

Ron

Keith

Willie

Back to the battle between Ron and Keith.  It all came down to the final round in tricks and wakes.  Ron had posted an 8300 to Keith's 8400 in the first round.  The odds of him doing that again was slim and we all just knew Keith had the overall locked.  All Keith had to do is ski a good pass, but doing push it too hard.  But when Ron started his final trick run, he looked in perfect rhythm.  He was hitting all his tricks and ended up standing up both passes and tricking an amazing 9200 pts.  Nobody knew the score of course, we all figured it was close to the 8300 he tricked the day before.  Keith just had to trick an easy 8000.  Keith toed-up and started turning.  Keith is one of the most amazing turners.  You'll actually here the top guys talk about Keith's weakness being how clean and fast he skis.  He is so fast on his turns, that even the slightest hesitation sticks out like a sore thumb, unlike his competitors, who ski sloppier, but in a way that is harder to pick out their flaws.  Keith was in the middle of a 540 to the front and he almost caught a toe.  He caught himself, but the damage was done.  He was now out of sync the rest of his run.  He ended up falling at the end of each pass and was only able to post a 6550 in the final round.  The good news was that he knew that his highest score from the two rounds would be the one they would consider for overall and the medal.  So he had the 8300 in the bag, but had no idea that Ron had posted a 9200.  Originally, Ron's score was in the mid 8000's, but his run went back to video and they re-posted it at 9200.  That's what Keith didn't know going into the final slalom event.

In slalom, Ron came out strong and posted a 18.8 which bettered his first round of 18.2.  Keith knew he needed a good slalom score, but he had a 19.4 from the 1st round and was figuring that he had the overall in the bag.  His 2nd round was only a 19.2.

Everyone was in suspense until the awards banquet when Doug Koch announced that Scarpa had won the overall title by only 11.7 points.  How's that for close.

Now what was really strange was Scarpa didn't show up to the awards ceremony.  I found that to be quite odd.  We're used to Bowers not showing up for awards, but not Ron.  Lee Stone made a nice speech about how Scarpa wanted to get home to see his family, but I and everyone else at the banquet didn't quite get it.  There was just an awkward silence after Lee's speech.  Everyone was thinking what I was thinking, and that's if I had just taken down one of the most dominant skiers on the planet at 40 plus years of age, I'd be calling my wife to let her know what I did and I'd be home right after the celebration, unless of course, there was some sort of family emergency.  But if there was a family emergency I would have let everyone know that so they wouldn't think I didn't care.  So I'm left wondering if Ron knew he won the overall, or if he left because he thought he got 2nd.

So we all got to see some amazing skiing, and everyone was eager to congratulate the winner, but we were left hanging.  It was however, great to see Keith and Willie Farrel at the banquet handing out medals to all the winners and congratulating each other on a great 2005 Nationals.

Some other notable awards included:. 

Photos taken on Day 4
 Photos by Mike Salber, George Wakefield, Stuart Williams and Chuck Gleason