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Vern Hollister - Correspondent

In a cool morning and a warming afternoon, Footstock's World Championship Barefoot skiing finished its final day Sunday. The sun emerged in the afternoon for the finals to take some of the chill out of the air. A few skiers shivered as the day continued, but others said that the water was still warm enough. Others just wore sweatshirts beneath dry suits.

In a semifinal competition, world champion Keith St. Onge from Florida defeated Connecticut's Anthony Buonaiuto in the Open class to qualify for a final figure eight go-round with Grafton, Wisconsin's Jon DeBelak. To reach that position, each skier had to have come through undefeated from a group of 128. For Buonaiuto, it was his first loss, and he would still have one more shot.

Crandon water skiers did well. Greg Fatla, Drew Keepers and Jake Weber also competed in the Open category. Each of them had one loss late in the day. Fatla won a subsequent head to head competition to finish fifteenth and reach the coveted top sixteen. Earlier this season, Fatla competed in St. Louis where he placed 5th and in Manitowish Waters where he placed 6th. Fatla said that neither of those two have the number of competitors or the prestige of Crandon's world championships. Keepers lost in that round. Not a member of the ski team, Keepers tried barefooting on Lake Metonga and has been gliding barefoot across the water for three years. Weber won his match. A Platteville resident, Weber spends his summers in Crandon. He also competed in the Junior division for skiers age 16 and younger. In that, Weber had skied well enough to finish in the top three.

Tournament director Gary Mueller said that in this 19th year of Footstock, 169 skiers competed from twelve states. Two skiers from South Africa participated, but Mueller said theirs was a learning process as they were more used to "trick" skiing instead of iron man or woman marathons on bare feet. The Women's division was small, with only seven skiers participating.

The three-day event drew marathon hours for the Crandon Water Show team, from Mueller as tournament director to Bucky Daily providing boat fuel. Daily said that every two hours, he dragged the hose down to deliver 40 gallons of fuel. Over the course of the championships, he provided 750 gallons of premium gas.

Boat judges rode each of the 400 trips the towboat drivers made. Jack Smith, a driver from Antigo and a regular for the nineteen years, said the three boats will put on 6,000 miles during the event. Jay Schaefer of Crandon, and another towboat driver, left driving on occasion to ski. In his last event, he skied for "Best of the Worst."

Saturday, drivers wasted no time in pulling up to the dock as they had 169 skiers to pull in a double elimination format. That meant that dock judges such as Joanne O'Connor, one of the founding members of the Crandon Water Show, and Candy Daily hustled just as fast. No one did more work than the slalom retrieval team of Jill Digman and Pat Becker. Each time a skier left, they were on a slalom board. When they passed in front to go barefoot, they left the ski and the retrievers' task was to pluck the two skis out of the water and transport them back to the dock each competitive pairing. Others saw to food and refreshments or sold clothing or kept the scoreboard. For a fundraiser, the Crandon ski club earned every bit of any profit.

"It's our biggest fundraiser of the year," Mueller said.

They charged a $75 entry fee, and other than trophies pay out almost $11,000 in prize money. The top three in Juniors, Seniors and Women's divisions receive cash awards as do the top 16 finishers in the Open class. DeBelak, in addition to competing with St. Onge for the championship, captured the Seniors title. He said he's been skiing since he was four years old; and to be a senior, he has to be 40 or older.

For the record, Schaefer lost his final contest.

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