University of South Florida Collegiate Wake Champions!
Marine Stadium in beautiful Long Beach California now lays host to the 2011 Collegiate Wake Series Champions University of South Florida! Derek Dyer and the Bulls took care of business against the 2010 team of the year University of Louisiana Monroe, then defending champ Texas Longhorns, and finally a very solid Chico State.
The Bulls veteran riders rode flawless all weekend in what was the toughest of the paths to the finals. It took Dyer is the semis to lay down a crow mobe, switch crow mobe combo to take first. Dan Olson, Ryan Hedstrom and Chris Waters followed suit. Each rider gave it everything they had making sure they didn’t flinch.
Thursday night was the first round as FSU took on the Oregon Ducks, and advancing thanks to solid all around team riding. Day 2 brought Texas’ defeat of Baylor is a very close Texas shootout. Baylor was lined up for the upset but Steven Cahail, Witt and Holland Finely, and Taylor Lopez were too much for the Bears to handle.
Chico St moved on thanks to a last minute forfeit by Long Beach St and moving them to the Semis against FSU. Chico had no problem handling the Florida school after Mason Masters went down early to a knee injury. It seemed FSU lost a lot of its energy after that.
This set up one of the best match ups we have seen in collegiate wakeboarding of Chico St, last years runner up, and USF who was upset in the first round to North Texas in 2010.
In the end USF came out on top taking home the title of best team in the country.
There was always something to do in Long Beach from trying out the Gibbons Slacklines, to a huge raffle courtesy of H20 Audio and Kicker Audio. The venue was only 5 blocks from the beach, 30 min to the sites of Los Angles and 15 from Huntington Beach. Everyday provided sunshine, glassy water and warn weather.
Ricky Gonzales and Nick Heany both put on a demo for the spectators and the TSO Studios crew with Sal Masekela came to show their support and wake app as well.
Thanks to Gibbons Slacklines, Slingshot Sports, and Buywake.com for providing the prizes for the champions, and Alpine Stars, and Buywake.com for taking care of the runner ups. Each member got hooked up with some amazing prizes!
Also big thanks to Tommy Iorio, Sal Masekela, the TSO Studios crew, Ricky Gonzales, Troy Flick, Nick Heany, Danni Patraitis, and the city of Long Beach for all the help this weekend making it one no team will ever forget.
1. University of South Florida
2. Chico State
3. University of Texas
4. Florida State university
April 17, 2011
Thanks to Rob Mendieta of Empire Wake for organizing a great event. Tommy Lorio was truly awesome and selfless for 3 long days of intense competition while pulling every rider from every college participating. Kudos, Tommy, you're a class act!! And thanks for giving me precious boat space to videotape the Texas riders. Was fortunate to meet Ricky G and Nick who gave of their to time to score the riders, not to mention offering invaluable tips along the way. I've actually got video of Nick's ride and all of the Texas riders if y'all would like to post any of it. Most importantly, I'd like to express how impressive it was to spend two afternoons on the boat with riders from Baylor, Texas and USF. In the fit of competition they were ALL courteous, positive and helpful to each other – World class riders, all of them. OK… I've got say that pic #10 above of Brent Longwill (Texas) doing a Whirly-5 on his Ronix board is typical Brent doing his thing (the best is yet to come!). Congratulations to USF and all the teams for a great weekend watching the top collegiate riders in the country!