Extreme sports do not even begin to describe what wakeboarding feels like. It is the combination of balance and focus that enable one to wakeboard. The skills and literacy needed in order to start or become an expert in wakeboarding describe the literacy practices of this sport. You need to learn the language of the sport and the equipment needed to participate.
In the picture above, you can see that this sport is for both man and women. You can also see equipment that is used to keep one safe while partaking in the sport. The number one thing needed for this sport is a swimming suit. You are going to be in water almost the entire time. The next thing that is needed is the mainly for girls but it is what is known as board shorts. These are a pair of pants that replicate a male swimming suit. These help during a whip out, so your bottoms do not ride up your rear. One of the things that this picture does not portray is a life jacket. This will ensure that if for some reason you become unconscious you will float and not drown. Last but not least it the board and boots. These are separate items even though they are attached to one another. Many people wear helmets but they are not required.
Once you have your gear on you get into the water. You will be handed a rope with a handle that you hold on to for the duration of the sport. Without this rope you will just float in the water. This next video will show you how to start by getting out of the water.
The gentleman in the video does a great job of explaining how to get up on a wakeboard. When being pulled by the boat, most people have the instinct to pull back. This is not what you want to do. The boat will do all of the work for you, you just need to relax. Most of this sport is trial and error. You will never learn anything without falling. You cannot be afraid to fall. There are injuring that comes with the sport but they are considered an occupational hazard.
The language of the sport is probably the hardest to learn. Although you do not need to know this, it will be difficult to communicate with other wakeboarders without it. You will hear a lot about heel side and toe side once standing and the terms only get deeper from there. This next video shows how to control a wake board once standing.
Although it looks very simple, you will have some difficulty with the balancing. In the article “Getting Started: Wake-Boarding” by Mark Anders, Anders talks about board control. This is what he had to say, “To swipe back and forth across the wake, turn your shoulders and hips so they are more open to the boat. Look where you want to go and move the handle slightly to the inside of your forward-facing hip, while transferring your weight to your heels. As you cross the wake, keep your knees bent. ‘Don't steer with the rope,’ says Shawn Watson, two-time national wakeboarding champion. ‘Keep the rope at your hip and your arms straight. It's more of a lower-body movement.’ To cut back in the other direction, slowly press your toes down and push your knees forward toward the water. Turn your shoulders and hips in the direction you want to cut” (Anders).
Most of the beginning stuff is practiced on land before you hit the water. This is because it will be easier to perform the task if you know what you are doing before you get into the water. When I learned to wakeboard, we just got in the water with the equipment on and went at it. Most of the time I would wipe out and have to start again but I eventually learned. I have been wakeboarding for several years now and I still cannot perform the tricks that are shown in this next video.
The ritual used to perfect these tricks is to get up very early in the morning and practice on the clear glassy water. Tina Black the author of “Wakeboarding” talked about how she learned to wakeboard. “Our ritual was to go out alone at dawn before the Coast Guard (or bay pigs, as we call them) came out and found us without the obligatory third person on board. For a few hours, we would catch the flat, glasslike water in the bay, boarding in fast rotation one after the other. Once we learned to stand upright, the rest came quickly. Before long, I was crossing the wake, cutting, carving, starting left- or right-side forward and jumping from wake to wake, getting a respectable amount of air between my board and the water” (Black).
Wakeboarding as a literacy is a language of its own. This language is used throughout a few other sports. The language is not the only way of communication. There a hand signals used to communicate with the boat. A few of the hand signals used are the thumbs up sign to increase speed, the thumbs down to decrease speed, and the hand across the throat mean to stop. These communication skills help the rider to achieve almost perfect conditions in order to perform at their best. Communication is very important in a sport that can result in injury.
Many sports have their own language, but wakeboarding takes it to a whole other level. Without the knowledge of this language, understanding the sport is possible but would be difficult when it comes to talking to other riders. This is a major step in becoming an expert in the sport. You can learn many things but partaking in discourse communities. They teach you valuable communication skills that will stick with you for the rest of your life.
References
Black, Tina. "Wakeboarding." Women's Sports & Fitness (10996079) 3.6 (2000): 42. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 2 June 2011.
Anders, Mark. "Getting Started: Wake-Boarding." Popular Mechanics 186.7 (2009): 30-31. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 2 June 2011.
After reading this essay, I realized there is a lot more that goes into wake boarding than I anticipated. I thought the most interesting thing was the communication with this sport. If the wakeboarder doesn't know how to properly communicate with the driver of the boat or other wake boarders, it becomes a even more dangerous sport. The terms and language used by wake boarders in this discourse community are only used in this sport and an outsider wouldn't understand.
ReplyDeleteI really liked how you went about writing this blog. I loved the videos and how you put the literacy not only in the actual communication but how they communicate with their hands and how they express themselves through their moves. I think that the language used in this process to wake board is something new to look at and how people look at this community is different and does take a lot of language to speak to be able to get a point across and work together as a team in order to coordinate moves.
ReplyDeleteYour essay was well constructed and pretty cohesive. I like how you gave a pretty in depth introduction to what the sport entails. You made it seem like a very non-exclusive sport, in that everyone has to start somewhere and new members are welcome. The literacy practices are interesting and I liked to see that you kept connecting them to other sports as well, to make the subject more accessible, but you also set wakeboarding apart within that. Good job!
ReplyDelete