USAWSAWB (pronounced, "you-saws-aub") is considering the final official name change that they will likely need to undergo before complete self destruction. With atleast 3 executive directors since 2005 and an extremely high office turnover rate, the organization is clearly in distress, and has no clue how to fix their problems.
If USAWSAWB was a football team, it would be up for sale.
Letter by Jim Grew about Changing USA Water Ski To USA Water Ski And Wake Board
I'm just glad to see that absent from this proposal is how it will affect or improve membership satisfaction from the folks like myself that have been giving them $70 per year in order to be able to pay for tournament entry fees.
It's better to do one thing really, really well, instead of trying to do too many things and do them all poorly.
And if we went ahead and surveyed all the wake boarders out there (who already have their own governing bodies) they would say "Why the F is AWSA getting involved?"
Introducing USAWSAWB
Should USAWS become USAWSWB?
Apparently the International Water Ski Delegation Congress Bureaucracy met recently to appoint a subcomitte to investigate changing their name from the IWSF to the IWSWBF. Nothing like changing your name to change your image. "The decision was a no-brainer," a delegate was overheard at a press conference immediately following the session.
Clearly the thing to do at this point if you are an organization that considers itself a subset of the international waterski community, is to become filled with self doubt and loathing, and then consider the exact same solution.
From the AWSA South Website:
The issue is now being discussed again by many of our leaders as the wave of the future and have suggested that we should rename USA Water Ski to USA Water Ski & Wakeboard. The thought is that this would be more representative of our organization and present better marketing opportunities for our organization to the general public.
The wave of the Future? I'm sorry, is my watch broken? It's 1995, right?
Let me get this straight. We ignore wakeboarding at first, pretend it doesn't exist, alienate the wakeboarders (granted they are a different breed), and then change the name of AWSA to USAWS (big improvement). Then, we strategically wait for the growth of wakeboarding to die down, and water skiing to begin to go on an upswing. At this point, hit the abort switch and change the name to USAWSWB, in an effort for better marketing opportunites.
If better marketing opportunites are the motives, then why don't we change the name to USA Wakeboard and Water Ski? Heck, why not just eliminate the waterskiing altogether and just call it USA Wake Board. Better yet, we could call it the World Wakeboard Association -- that's much more all inclusive. Plus you could get huge time energy drink sponsors.
Wait... there is a World Wakeboard Assocation? And there membership is only $40 per month? Wow, sounds like a good deal.
Here's the polling results from USAWS's website:
