5 Seasons Ski Team equipment replaced after December theft

The Five Seasons Ski Team practices Sunday at Twisters Gymnastics in Cedar Rapids. The team’s season is set to start in June. (Bailey Cichon/The Gazette)

Five Seasons Ski Team members practice for a 2017 show on the Cedar River at Ellis Park. They perform dock starts, water ballet, pyramids, doubles, trios, jumping and barefooting moves on Thursday nights in the summer and during special events. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

Five Seasons Ski Team's Lily Adams (from left), Ryan Novak, Justin Harms, Anna Tuuri, Nathan Kreitman, Makenzie Creger and Craig Stocki perform as team members practice for their show in June 2017 on the Cedar River at Ellis Park in Cedar Rapids. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

CEDAR RAPIDS — Will the show go on? That’s the question that stuck in the mind of David Lammers, co-director of Five Seasons Ski Team, when he heard that the team’s entire sound system had been stolen in December.

“We had already put in three months of work preparing for this summer’s show. I wasn’t even that angry,” Lammers said. “I was just in disbelief and fear that the show might not go on.”

The theft was a hard blow to the water skiing team, which won best sound in the nation at the National Show Ski Tournament in Janesville, Wis., in 2014.

Team President Ryan Furnish had found locks cut off the team’s storage trailers and $11,000 of sound equipment missing. To this day, the equipment has not been recovered, and the culprit or culprits remain at large.

⧉ Related article: Cedar Rapids water skiing team’s sound equipment stolen

“We originally thought (replacing equipment) was going to take us a couple years or we’d have to use a lot of our budget, which we use for gas in the boats or costumes or ropes … ” Furnish said.

Fortunately, that would not have to happen.

Furnish told The Gazette that because of community donations, the team will replace the entire sound system by the first show of the season. As a thank you, the team will dedicate a special show June 8 to fundraising for a local nonprofit chosen by the team. A nonprofit has not yet been chosen.

“I just felt bad for those people that they had to go out of their way to steal something from this team,” said skier Annalise Sanchez, 15.

“Now it just makes me want to perform even better for the show, for the people just as a thank you for everything they’ve done. Their support is just crazy.”

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Five Seasons Ski Team performs free weekly shows on the Cedar River at Ellis Park from June through Labor Day. This year, the show theme is what Lammers describes as “the Game of Life reimagined as a game show reimagined as a ski show.” No show will be the same and audience participation is built into the show, Sanchez said.

The team competes in national ski competitions and most recently placed second overall at the 2022 National Show Ski Tournament in Rock Island, Ill. This year marks the team’s 45th season.

Comments: bailey.cichon@thegazette.com