Recently, Burlington Boatyard has come in contact with a group of energetic and dedicated students at the University of Vermont, who are organizing a wakeboarding club which will allow for the promotion of the sport, as well as Lake Champlain being a great resource right “down the hill”.  

We have asked club President, Nicole Ullian, to reach out to all members of the Lake community – marinas, local businesses, individual boaters, and so on – to inform us all of their progress, needs and goals as they go through the process of recognition.

I invite you to read more on who they are, what they plan to do as a club, and more over, how they plan to be a positive group within the community to promote and contribute to the area.

-Guy

Hello World! We are a group of students attending the University of Vermont working to establish the UVM Wakeboarding Club. We’re in the process of recognition at the university and are seeking your help and support, which will enable us to launch in the spring of 2009.

 The club currently has over 100 interested members, some of which are expert riders and others who have never ridden before! Our goal is to get those students who are interested in wakeboarding out on the water and riding as much as possible. This will enable us all to  learn, progress, and most importantly, both UVM students of today and those of the future will be able to enjoy beautiful Lake Champlain and all it has to offer. 

 

With that being said, we face a few challenges in our efforts to get this club up and running. Our biggest is finding adequate equipment to use. This includes wakeboarding boats (boat rentals), wakeboards, wakeboarding rope, and wetsuits. We currently have a few members that would be willing to let the club use their boats to pull students (some with captain licenses!), but their boat is located at their home lake. For this, we wish to research dock space and availability as to find out where they can keep their boats during the riding season.

This club will be a great addition to the UVM community as well as the Lake Champlain community at large. The Wakeboarding Club will facilitate involvement, learning and connections among students outside of the classroom, while becoming a positive fixture in the Lake Champlain region. We plan on establishing a club policy where each member must complete a certain number of community service hours each semester. In fact, Burlington Boatyard has offered to guide us in making sure our efforts benefit lake areas and initiatives, and they too will participate with us when we set up these projects.

We figure that if the Lake Champlain community will help us, the least we can do is give back with our time and manpower to keep the lake and surrounding areas healthy and clean. If every member donated 5 hours of their time per semester, that would add up to 10,000 hours of community service given back to the Lake each year!

A few weekends ago, we had two opportunities to get out wakeboarding, as a local Champlain College student and a UVM alumni took six of our members out for a great day. Ironically, our first community service event happened that very afternoon.

While pulling a rider, another boat flagged us down. As we got closer, the vessel was smoking, so the young passengers, mother, and grandmother came aboard our boat while their captain and our two drivers tried to figure out what was wrong. We calmed the passengers down as the coast guard arrived, and luckily no one was hurt…just a busted boat! We had driven the women and their children home, confirmed everyone was all set, and they were very thankful.

It is our club mentality to help others on Lake Champlain, and be a positive influence to all those we meet on shore and on the water.

All in all, we are looking for any support or direct assistant that anyone would be able to offer.   We’d love to chat with any persons or company that would like to help in any way, big or small! Credit would most certainly be given for your kindness in anything and everything we do, and sponsorship opportunities can be discussed as well. From spots on our fliers and event banners, to logos on our gear and shirts, there is no question that we will give thanks and recognition to all those that help us reach our goal of establishing a fun and beneficial club for UVM and the Lake community!

We truly appreciate taking the time to find out about who we are and what we wish to accomplish. While some of us will only physically be on the Lake during our four undergraduate years, we will always call Champlain our home and do all we can to ensure that students can share in that same experiences for years to come.

- Nicole Ullian & The UVM Wakeboarding Club

If you feel you can contribute to the club in anyway, please contact Nicole Ullian at nullian@uvm.edu or Burlington Boatyard at info@burlingtonboatyard.com

Be sure to keep up with the club’s activities, reports, meeting minutes and more at their dedicated space on the Burlington Boatyard Forum.

Tags: burlington boatyard, BurlingtonBoatyard.com, community service Lake Champlain, lake champlain, Lake Champlain Boating, LLC, Nicole Ullian, University of Vermont, UVM, UVM Wakeboard Club, Vermont Boating, Vermont Coast Guard, Vermont Marinas, Vermont Outdoors, Wakeboard equipment, Wakeboarding

This entry was posted on Monday, October 13th, 2008 at 3:54 pm and is filed under The Boatyard, The Boatyard: Boating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.