Caylee, Brie and Chanah Carter have a tradition. When one of the sisters is in the final year of her age group, they call it “her year.” 

“We each support her, and our whole focus is on that sister, whoever that is,” Caylee says.

Well, 2009 was Brie’s year.

In her last year in Girls 2, 14-year-old Brie capped off the season by winning the national slalom title by nearly a full pass, scoring a ½-buoy at 38 feet off. Before that? Well, her father and coach, Chris Carter, best sums that up. “The season ended at Nationals, and so she has got the state record; she won the Regionals; got the national record; tied it; and then won at Nationals,” he says. “And that’s a pretty good season. About as good as it gets.” 

Brie is a talented skier, no doubt, and she definitely had a great “year.” But as she freely admits, winning is about much more than just having talent. Water skiing has become a bonding time for the family from Loudon, Tenn.; time they look forward to spending together each day. And when it’s a sister’s “year,” the others don’t think twice about sacrificing for her.

“That person will get to ski first, that person will get the most support in that the whole family is pulling for that girl,” says Caylee, who at 15 is the oldest sister. “And we’ll spend, you know, extra time on the video with whoever that girl is, or our dad will give that girl his main attention.” 

And of course the other sisters are still training as well. Caylee tied for eighth place in Girls 3 slalom at this past year’s Nationals, while Chanah, 12, finished 26th in Girls 2 slalom and tied for 17th in tricks. “They take a lot of pride in being, quote, ‘The Carter Girls,’” Chris says. “Wherever they go, they are a group of sisters, that’s their hallmark.” 

That family support has definitely worked so far. A few years ago, in Chanah’s “year” in Girls 1, the sisters got behind her and the youngest sibling finished second overall at Nationals. In 2005, Brie’s “year” in Girls 1, she won every tournament, including the regional and national championships. All three Carter Girls have been skiing for the MasterCraft Tournament Team since 2005.

This next season won’t be Brie’s “year” anymore, but she is likely to continue turning heads in her new division. In the change from Girls 2 to Girls 3, along with competing against girls as old as 17, the boat also increases its speed from 32 to 34 miles per hour. So far that hasn’t seemed to affect Brie.

As soon as Nationals wrapped up, Brie began competing at the higher speed. She has competed in three tournaments since Nationals, and her scores there would have won the national title in Girls 3. Just as this issue of The Water Skier was going to press in mid October, Brie earned her Open rating, scoring 1 buoy at 38 feet off. What’s more, after only a month-and-a-half, she is already in a three-way tie for third in the world. If that ranking holds up, she could find herself competing in the 2010 Junior Masters and 2010 Junior Worlds. “At practice in Girls 2, during my easy practices, I had been going 34 [mph],” Brie says. “So I’ve been used to 34 a little bit, and it wasn’t that big of a struggle for me.”

The Carter Girls credit their success, and their start in the sport, to their father. The girls started water skiing about eight years ago after watching Chris – who calls himself an average Men 4 slalom skier – and some friends on the boat. Pretty soon the girls told their dad they wanted to ski around the buoys like he did. And I said, ‘No, baby, that’s way too hard for you,’” Chris recalls.

“Famous last words.”

Since then, Chris has become a self-made coach with his own unique training methods. A retired Navy fighter pilot, Chris has naturally implemented some of the same techniques that he learned from the Navy. For one, he focuses a lot on repetition, something that was key when he was learning the nuances of landing fighter jets on an aircraft carrier.

“When you train to fly fighters, you repeat and you learn methodically and analyze a tremendous amount to do with the jet and it totally becomes second nature,” he says.

With the girls, Chris also focuses on journaling and video work, so they can go back and see what is and is not working. He also uses video to compare each daughter to a pro skier.

Perhaps most importantly though, Chris recognizes that his daughters all have different strengths, and he approaches each of them differently. Unlike her sisters, Brie is an old-style skier, and she is scrappy on the water. Chris tries to take advantage of this instead of attempting to mold her into a smoother-looking skier. For one, Brie has an odd tendency to have her free arm fly way up in the air on her offside turn. This would cause an imbalance for most skiers, but not for Brie. “For Brie, it brings her hips up in a very strange way,” Chris says, “and it works for her, and you wouldn’t want to fix that.” 

Brie has bought into her dad’s training methods, and she has bought into the sport, too. She approaches water skiing with the focus and dedication of a professional – something she definitely wants to pursue in the future – as well as a healthy dose of modesty. “You have to have a little bit of talent, you have to have influence from other people or coaches,” she says.

“You’ve also got to have heart in what you do, you can’t just go out there and do it once a week; you’ve got to want to do it. You’ve got to ski when it’s raining, when it’s white-capping, when it’s freezing cold; you’ve got to want it bad.”

A few days before talking to a reporter for this article, a hard rain was falling on Tellico Lake. Still, Chris had said that whenever the girls want to ski, he would gladly go out and drive the boat. So when his three daughters came asking him to go out, he gladly obliged. “It was raining really, really hard, and you could barely open your eyes,” Brie says. “So all three of us went through that.”

But that’s nothing abnormal for Brie. “She feeds on competition or a challenge or something in her way, and then she wants to go after that,” Chris adds. “It was raining pretty hard, she had to squint and could barely see the buoys, but she wanted to do it anyway. So if there’s a tournament like that, she’ll be ready.”

The 2010 season might not be Brie’s “year,” but maybe it doesn’t have to be.

Chrös McDougall is a freelance writer based out of the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul.