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BILLY BENOIST
from Ocala, FL
has been selected as the 
July 2005

Dear Barefoot Central:

I am nominating Billy Benoist for Barefooter of the month and here is why.

Billy Benoist turned 16 on May 24, 2005. His dad Brent has been barefooting longer than most people I know but Brent says Ron was barefooting before him and thinks Noah was the boat driver. So, Billy has been fortunate (maybe not if you ask him) to be able to barefoot right from the time he was very, very young. Billy Nichols taught Billy Benoist how to barefoot when he was just 4 years old. Maybe that’s why he got so good, his first set was likely about 1.5 hours long.

Billy is a straight A student, a member of the Royal Rangers (he just completed his “gold medal of achievement” – highest honor in the Rangers), an X-BOX Champion, a very patient brother, and will eat pretty much anything if he is paid. He is also a pretty quiet guy. Never once have I heard him, or heard of him, bragging about his skiing. He is very humble – sometimes I wonder if he knows just how good he is. He might, but as all really great athletes he lets his skiing speak for itself. Billy competed at the USA Nationals when he was 6 years old and has won his divisions at Nationals a number of times. Most recently he won the Open Men’s Trick title at the 2004 Nationals. He likely has held, or still holds, some National Records (I’m not sure about that). 

Billy’s personal best in tricks up until this season was 4450. I had Billy, his brother Brody and a couple of other kids training with me for a week this spring. The night before the first ski day we discussed everyone’s goals for the week. Billy’s Dad thought 5000 points in tricks would be good. As we went over all of the kid’s goals and added up some point values Billy quietly suggested that maybe 6000 points was achievable. That was all I needed to hear. His training week now had a purpose. A 6000 point trick run that was “easy” and “fun” to practice. The good thing about it was that Billy did not really need to learn any new tricks for this. “We” just had to do all the tricks repeatedly all week until everything was “easy”. As I said earlier Billy is a quite guy. Hard to tell if he was actually happy about the 30 min set of 80+ surface turns I just made him do, or not. I had to figure he was…so we threw in a set of feet to feet toe turns to finish off usually.

Three weeks after our Training Camp Billy went to a tournament in Fort Lauderdale and Tricked 5700 in the first round. 1250 points better than his personal best. That would be deserving of the Barefooter of the Month title in most cases, but I would not be nominating him if that was all he did that day. As he was packing up to go home and play X-BOX I suggested he do a second round of tricks. For a fleeting moment he might have thought I was kidding, but then quickly realized I was not. “How about that 6000 point run we set out to do, let’s do it now and get it over with!” I suggested. A few minutes later he was skiing back to the dock with an AWESOME 6900 point trick run. I am pretty sure that Billy Benoist is the youngest USA barefooter EVER to have tricked above 6000 points let alone 6900. 

If you ask Billy what the coolest thing he has done this summer is he will likely tell you it has been “reaching level 8” on some X-BOX game or “getting paid $11 to drink a 12 oz bottle of Tabasco sauce”. Being the youngest skier in the USA to barefoot trick 6900 points will come in well below the Tabasco. That is why Billy Benoist should be the next BarefootCentral.com Barefooter of the Month.

Richard Gray

PS Just for fun, you should time his first pass and see what can be done in 13 seconds

Click Here to see the Video of Billy's 6900 Point Trick run
3 Meg WMV

Congratulations Billy.  You have reached a level in footing that few people on the planet ever experience.  And most importantly, you are now eligible to be voted the 2005 BarefootCentral.com Footer of the Year.

Chuck Gleason