A lot has been changing over the last few years in the sport of college wakeboarding. Take this one example. In the past, teams really only competed inside of their own regions. But now days, teams like Michigan State are flying across the country just to scrimmage Arizona State. That’s major league baseball tactics. Not college wakeboarding. But that’s just one of the signs in the growing aspect of college riding.

Another sign of the times is in the Louisiana Collegiate Wake Tour. Since 2010 when the LCWT was formed, it has been the crown jewel of college wakeboarding for USA Wakeboard in terms of participation. Most college events would be happy to have 40 to 50 riders for a tournament. The LCWT averaged 72 riders per local boat event last year with 11 schools from 4 states. Now most of the collegiate riders know the LCWT as the guys that host USA Wakeboard’s Collegiate Nationals each year. Yeah, y’all remember that party at Margaritaville in 2014? That was them. Last year at the FloraBama? That was them too. So who better to decide that when it’s time to make a change and put a foot in the right direction then the LCWT? So we would like to officially announce the Collegiate Wakeboard Invitational. Hosted by those LCWT guys again.

So what the heck is the Collegiate Wakeboard Invitational you ask? Well, its collegiate nationals with another name. Same competition, same format, same crew, same killer webcast. So yeah, maybe it’s not such a big change. But it’s a change that we believe the riders will end up getting excited for. The big change is there are no more regionals to compete in. All we want teams to do is host comps, and go compete. The more the merrier. We will take all competitions into consideration for a invite.

The Collegiate Wakeboard Invitational or CWI will be held at the birthplace of college water sports, the campus of the University of Louisiana Monroe on Bayou Desiard. It’s going on August 11th thru 13th, 2017. Sixteen teams from across the country will converge on Monroe, Louisiana to battle it out for a chance to say they are the best.

So how do we determine who will be invited? Well it’s pretty easy. We take all the information we can gather on every collegiate event held since the last nationals. We take into consideration how many tournaments each team went to, how they did in those tourneys, how many riders and what level of riders they took to each event, and how well we think they will stack up against other teams. We also had to lean a little to teams that have pretty active social media pages. Because the more they post, the more we know about that team. We also will be taking at least 3 schools from each region of the country. So you see, we are kind of like the BCS was in college football. We probably won’t get it right. But we promise to get it close. But unlike the BCS we let the top 16 duke it out instead of guess which two teams are the best.

So without further ado, the first 16 invited in no particular order are….

1. University of Florida
2. Michigan State University
3. Arizona State University
4. Florida State University
5. University of Mississippi
6. Louisiana State University
7. Oklahoma State University
8. Baylor University
9. Ohio State University
10. University of Louisiana Monroe
11. Central Washington University
12. Texas A&M University
13. University of Miami
14. San Diego State University
15. Sacramento State University
16. University of Cincinnati

Team packets will be emailed to teams in the next week. Teams will then have 2 weeks to at least respond with their intention of attending or not attending. Once a team declines, we have set list of 5 more schools that we will offer the invite to until someone accepts. After those 5 schools, the invite is open to any team who wishes to attend.

So, we hope to see everyone in Monroe, LA for the 1st Collegiate Wakeboard Invitational or watching the webcast right here on Alliance Wake! Get to riding!

For any questions about the Collegiate Wakeboard Invitational, please contact Nick McDonald at 318-381-2058 or collegiatewakeboarding@yahoo.com. If you or your company is interested in sponsoring this event, please contact Anthony “Ace” Cox at 225-610-6707 or anthony.ace.cox@gmail.com.