Wakeboarding teen honors God on the water
Brody Spriggs fell in love with wakeboarding the moment his board tore through the current.
Now, it’s his life’s passion.
“It feels like gliding on top of the water. Such a cool feeling!” said Brody, 17, a four-time regional, two-time reigning national wakeboarding champion, who recently placed third in international competition in Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.
For this high-school senior who grew up on the Lake of the Ozarks, wakeboarding is much more than a sport. It’s a porthole into the spiritual delights of creation and his own niche within it.
“I definitely see God’s handiwork in everything I’m doing, and I feel he’s working inside me for me to be able to do the things I do,” said Brody, a lifelong member of Our Lady of the Lake Parish in Lake Ozark.
“I wouldn’t feel this type of energy and be able to do these things if somebody wasn’t working in this,” he stated. “I think that’s God inspiring me to pursue my dream. I want to pursue it with him.”
Wakeboarding is an intense water sport that’s somewhat similar to trick waterskiing.
But instead of skis, the wakeboarder clamps his feet to a curved, torpedo-shaped board, grabs onto a 70-foot line attached to a motorboat and performs gravity-defying feats in, around and high-above the ruts carved by the boat’s propeller into the water.
“So, you’re back there throwing your body around, hoping you’re going to land all these tricks,” Brody explained.
Competitors earn points for each trick they successfully land, based on factors such as height, movement of the board, reaching down to grab it while in mid-air, landing it smoothly, and seamlessly segueing into the next trick.
“It’s all about how good your flow is,” said Brody. “If you look flawless, it’s good.”
Factors such as weather, water and boat conditions, sunlight and glare off the water can keep things interesting.
“It’s always unpredictable,” said Brody. “You have to be ready to ride in any conditions.”
Confidence plays a big role — “how comfortable you are with the trick,” he said.
Hoping to become a professional wakeboarder, Brody invests 20 to 30 hours each week into practicing, in addition to his family and school obligations.
He previously took up pole-vaulting, football and basketball at his high school, School of the Ozarks in Osage Beach.
“But I never really loved them,” he said. “You’ve got to love what you’re doing. Even if you’re not very good at it, you still have to love it in order to pursue it and push yourself to the maximum limit.”
Dedication is a prerequisite to excellence.
“If you’re not really dedicated to it, it won’t be worth your time,” said Brody.
In that way, he stated, wakeboarding is a bit like discipleship.
“If you want to be with the Lord, you have to pursue your life with the Lord, you have to put that first and go after it and push after it,” he said.
Early start
Brody first caught sight of a wakeboard when he was 4, while visiting a boat dealership in Camdenton with his parents, Michael and Paulette Spriggs of Lake Ozark.
“I thought they looked really cool,” he said, and he enjoyed visiting with the wakeboarders there.
His parents bought him a wakeboard for his birthday. That week, a family with a boat came to stay at the resort Brody’s family owns at the Lake.
“My parents asked them to take me out on it,” he recalled. “That’s how I got started.”
He devoted the rest of that summer to learning the sport, a pursuit that spilled over into the fall and the following spring.
His parents signed him up for classes when he was 6. Kirby Liesmann, now a three-time world champion in the master’s division, became his coach and has remained so ever since.
The Spriggses got their first wake boat when Brody was 12 or 13 and upgraded to a larger, faster vessel two years ago.
“That’s really been fun,” he said. “It’s able to tow a lot more weight, and I get a bigger wake out of it.”
Brody used to get up early enough to go “boarding” on the Lake for 30 or 40 minutes each morning. Now, he does most of his practicing after school.
He also rehearses tricks with a wakeboard and a rope on a trampoline at home.
He noted that although wakeboarding is highly competitive, its participants are a tight community.
“We want the other riders to do well and for us to do well,” he said. “We don’t want the other riders to flip out or get hurt. We don’t bash other riders. That makes it not fun.”
Like any sport, there are ample opportunities for injury.
“I took a hard fall at nationals last year, bruised my sternum and pulled my abdomen,” he said. “I took a few days off after that.”
This year, he sustained a minor concussion but quickly recovered.
“The headaches and the light sensitivity went away after about a week,” he said.
Reluctantly third
This August, Brody won his second national championship in the junior men’s division and headed with his coach to Australia to compete in the World Wakeboarding Competition (WWC) Sept. 26-29.
It was his fourth time at the WWC, which was in Portugal last year and in Pine Mountain, Georgia, the year before that.
His high-school principal, teachers and friends are very supportive. The school accommodates his travels as it would with students in other activities.
He honors that by diligently making up any missed schoolwork.
“They want to treat this like any other sport,” Brody noted. “They don’t want to punish me for chasing my dreams.”
He found out in Australia that wakeboarding on salty seawater is quite different from the lake water he’s used to.
“I had that to my disadvantage,” he said. “The weather was also really unexpected — windy and rainy, which was weird.”
He was pleased to make it to the final round, “but I wasn’t really happy coming in third because I knew I could have done better,” he said.
He placed sixth two years ago and fourth last year.
Brody plans to graduate early from high school this December and move to Orlando or Fort Myers, Florida, to compete at an even higher level.
He might stay in the junior men’s division until he turns 19 or maybe try his skill in the professional division, which pays.
His parents are proud of him and are happy to see him succeed.
“They’ve been super-good to me,” he said. “They’ve put about as much into this as I have. I probably wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for all their support.”
He’s also grateful to the family business, Point Randall Resort, for helping him with travel expenses.
Sunrise, sunset
Brody holds Mr. Liesmann, his coach, in high esteem for helping him learn discipline and respect, overcome obstacles and become his best self.
“We talked a lot about God while we were in Australia,” Brody recalled. “He talked about how once you find God and you’re in the presence of God, then that’s the one thing you’ll ever want, the only thing you’ll ever crave or ever need.”
Brody said it’s wonderful to look out at a beautiful sunrise and tell God, “Thanks, that’s really beautiful.”
“I had a really good friend pass away,” he added. “It’s nice to see sunsets and sunrises and know that he’s up in the sky with God, watching over us and praying for us.”
Brody asked for prayers for himself and his family to stay safe and well, and for the pursuit of his wakeboarding dream to remain fun and relatively pressure-free.
“The Lord has put this in my life, and it’s something he has allowed me to be able to do well at and take it as far as I can,” Brody noted.
He’s optimistic about wakeboarding achieving a higher profile on the world stage.
“I hope that over the next few years, the sport gets more recognition for what we’re doing out there, and people start to enjoy watching it more,” he said.
