Texas Ski Ranch Festival Wrap-Up
The event season at Texas Ski Ranch (TSR) comes to a close each year with the TSR Fall Festival. This year's Fall Festival included wakeboard competitions on both our cable lake and boat lake, the 2nd Annual Texas Pit Bike National, bikini contest, and a regional skateboard tournament. The action was intense, but the atmosphere was laid back as always at Texas Ski Ranch.
On Saturday September 23, after narrowing the competitors in five different divisions, with local favorites Tom Fooshee and Brett Little sitting on top of the leader board for pro cable and wakeskate respectively, we headed to the boat lake for some more incredible riding. On a glass calm lake with a beautiful MasterCraft X2 ready to go, riders in four divisions rode for the better part of five hours, eliminating close to half of the field.
Sunday morning came around way too early for many of our riders that qualified for the finals. On the cable, local favorites Tom Fooshee and Bret Little proved to be too much for the rest of the field as they won the wakeboard and wakeskate divisions. Both were pushed and had to perform flawlessly to win the titles. Josh Rice and Keith Lidberg made things difficult for Tom who hit a switch heelside 900, Pete Rose 5, slim chance, backside hs 7 and more to win the event. Collin Gee, who made two kick flips as well as two varial flips, pushed Bret. In the end, Bret’s mastery of the rails distanced him from the competition. Many wakeboarders dream to ride rails like Bret does on a skate.
The boat finals were the final event of the weekend and lived up to the billing. Tom Fooshee proved to be unbeatable as he walked away with both pro titles, a feat that has never before been accomplished. Tom is following the same path that Keith Lidberg had before him in mastering both the cable and boat venues at TSR. Tom is no stranger to first place finishes on the cable, but as his boat riding becomes more and more consistent, he should become accustomed to the same in boat pulled tournaments. “Tom looked more comfortable than I have ever seen him behind the boat. As he starts converting more of his tricks from the cable, he should be scaring a lot of the nation's top riders. He’s that good,” said tournament organizer Blake Hess.
In the wakeskate division, Brandon Thomas was again in town and looked to improve upon his finish at Cablestock. Texas’ own Jessie Landry, 2006 Cablestock Champion, was not going to just hand the title over to BT, the Toe Jam triple crown winner. While Jessie threw down a run that was very impressive, BT was able to edge out the win with his diversity of wake-to-wake, flip and shuvit tricks.
In the end, the level of riding on the water was much better than 2005 in all of the wakeboard and wakeskate divisions. You can’t ask for more than that. And now we head into the off-season and begin planning for the 2007 events!
Submitted by: mhodgdon
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Added: Thu Sep 28 2006
