Senior Anthony Kennedy founded the University of Georgia’s club wakeboarding team in spring 2011 after realizing he was not the only UGA student wanting to compete in the new collegiate sport.
Kennedy grew up in California but moved to Cumming, Ga. when he was 10 years old.
His brother taught him to wakeboard behind a tower-less ski boat on Lake Lanier in Gainesville, Ga.
“Most of my memories growing up wakeboarding were with my family out on the lake and me trying to ride better than my older brother,” he said.
However, as a child, Kennedy had not yet envisioned beginning or even joining a wakeboarding team himself.
“I didn’t really take wakeboarding seriously until I got to college and saw that there was a more competitive aspect to it,” he said.
The idea for a UGA wakeboarding team came to Kennedy during a summer class in 2010 as he was looking through different organizations at UGA and realized wakeboarding was not one of them.
He did a little research and discovered that although an unorganized team had come along several years before Kennedy was in college, it had never been officially recognized by the university and fell apart.
He began to search for local wakeboarding competitions to network with other riders and stumbled upon Empire Wake’s Collegiate Wake Series (CWS).
The CWS had a competition at Lake Lanier in fall 2010, which Kennedy attended, and he met J. Vinson, another student and the co-founder of the current wakeboarding team.
“We started by asking Emmie Gooch in the club sports department what was necessary to start a club, “ Kennedy said, “and she directed us to the Center for Student Organiations and told us that we had to be a student organization for a year then could apply to be a club sport. So we basically did all the paperwork to be a student organization and began advertising our club.”
The team’s first members were recruited in spring 2011 at the Winter Activities Fair held in Tate Hall at UGA
Upon J. Vinson’s graduation in May 2011, the newly-founded team held officer elections and elected a captain, co-captain, secretary, and treasurer for the following school year.
Kennedy was elected captain and maintains the post today.
In the following school years since its creation, the UGA Club Wakeboarding team has earned its spot as an official club sport and placed seventh and third in the nation in 2012 and 2013, respectively.
With Kennedy’s leadership, the team has competed every fall in regional competitions and every spring in nationals in Las Vegas, Nev. Their numbers now include over thirty members, including both new and experienced riders.
“There are absolutely no qualifications to be on the team. You can come in with no experience – we’ll teach you how to wakeboard,” Kennedy said.
With growing numbers and increasing national standings year-to-year, the UGA Club Wakeboarding team has become a force to reckoned with in the water sports world.
“I try to guide the team in a direction that will help continue to grow it past my time here and help us leave a spot on the national level,” Kennedy said. “In 10 years, I would like to see the team still growing strong.I hope nationally, we’d still be one of the top contenders but still sticking to our roots and just having fun out on the lake.”