It felt weird to be at McCormick’s Cable Park’s first Birthday Bash competition, because the cable wake park has already established itself as a Central Florida wakeboarding institution. It’s hard to believe that McCormick’s Cable Park has only been open a year. After all, it already has a host of solid obstacles and a dedicated rider base that faithfully sessions the clockwise-spinning cable on a daily basis.
Park owner and operator Michael McCormick knows how to throw a birthday party. Complete with cake, fully catered barbecue, and a host of Orlando pros, local rippers and South Florida cable wakeboard gods, this all-day, pro-am competition kept things interesting.
Despite some kook trying to steal one of McCormick’s trailers (seriously, some mouth-breathing, neck-bearded yokel tried to hook up to a flat-bed trailer and a high-speed chase down Muck Pond Road ensued), the day went off without a hitch.
The format was a four-person jam session for semis, followed by head-to-head showdowns for finals. The disciplines included wakeboard, wakeskate and wakeski.
Just a few of the day’s highlights included just about anything done by Diego Shaw (he was parallel to the cable more times than not), Dallas Friday’s big, clean tantrum to blind; Marc Shuster’s all-around cable wakeboarding prowess; Bob Soven’s toeside 900 off the kicker; Sascha Peschl’s rail-fluffing; and of course the kid trying to steal the trailer. But seriously, wakeboarding is cool — committing felonies is not.
