The Wonder Lake Water Ski Team, Wonder Lake, Illinois

Waves on the surface of Wonder Lake catch the light of the sunset, their sparkle dazzling the growing crowd of people on the grassy hill above the beach. In the midst of this natural splendor, Rihanna and Jay-Z — along with a stream of other Top 40 artists — rock the crowd from two giant speakers nestled on the beach’s sand. Nearby, groups of anxious spandex- and sequin-clad youths wait. The Wonder Lake Water Ski Show Team is minutes from its weekly performance.

Carrie Berner, a member of the ski team, described the tone of the event.

“It’s pretty comfortable around here, obviously — I’m standing in a towel,” Berner said. “There’s a lot of big families involved actually, a lot of people that are related, and if you’re not related you feel like you are, and it’s really a tight group.”

At 28, Berner said she has been skiing since birth, which, in Wonder Lake, is not a far-fetched claim. The ski team offers a developmental program for children as young as five, and later in the show two eight-year-old performers stunned the crowd with their barefoot water-skiing skills. Patti Hartmann, who has been involved with the team for the past 30 years, said 80 percent of the show team’s members first go through the developmental program.

“They teach the kids how to ski, teach them how to handle the ropes and how to do everything,” Hartmann said. “Really the main part of our success is taking those young kids from the time that they’re five or six years old and they learn to ski, learn to be part of a group. They learn the importance of skiing as a group and trusting the other people.”

Hartmann said her job as show coordinator is to make the performance run smoothly.

“[The show director] tells everyone what they’re going to do ahead of time, and I just make sure while it’s going on that it happens,” Hartmann said. “Predicting what’s going to happen, keeping them up-to-date on any changes. You’ve got to pay attention because a lot of changes happen spur of the moment.”

Hartmann said that although only 60 of the team members are actually skiers, the organization consists of more than 120 people.

“For every person on the water it takes one person on the shore,” Hartmann said. “It’s almost a one-to-one ratio by the time you get boat drivers and riders and sound people and like what I do and the costume ladies.”

Hartmann also said the team is active throughout the year doing fundraising and planning for the next season. The team puts together a casino night and a haunted hayride to raise money for equipment and travel expenses.

Each year’s performance has a theme, and announcers guide spectators through the show with practiced dialogue. The 2007 theme, Sweet Home, Wonder Lake, featured one announcer attempting to convince the other to move back to his hometown after being lured away by the promise of big city life in Chicago. Past themes include Disney on Water, Wild, Wild Wonder Lake and Pirates of Wonder Bay.

Lorraine Stahl, a resident of Wonder Lake since 1946, has seen the program grow from its conception. She said her three sons participated in water activities on the lake before the official team was organized.

“I’m old stuff, you know,” Stahl said. “I do know a couple of the young men who are on the team now because they come to shovel my snow, but otherwise I don’t know a whole lot about it.”

Stahl said her participation in water sports is limited, and she won’t be learning to water ski any time soon.

“I do not swim,” she said. “I can only dog paddle a bit, so that discourages me from being in the water with something like this where you could get dumped.”

The ski team members show no fear, though. The show started with a single boat pulling a line of about 20 female skiers called the Ballet Girls. Following their graceful performance, a group of young men attempted 360-degree rotations and front flips off a 6-foot jump anchored in the middle of the lake.

The team is justly proud of its Swivel Girls, who perform on a ski with a binding that rotates 360 degrees, allowing the women to perform difficult acrobatics and turns. The girls, the announcers said, have trained since the age of six on the special skis.

Next, several pairs of men and women entered the water to perform lifts reminiscent of professional figure-skating duos. This delicate display was followed by some extreme-sports exhibitionism from a group of male wakeboarders.

Following the wakeboarders, barefoot water-skiers wowed the crowd. The boys were pulled off the pier on their backs, standing up gradually as the boats increased in speed.

The team then demonstrated its two-tier pre-fab (from the term pre-fabricated) pyramids. The skiers who form the pyramids are pulled off the pier already in position on the shoulders of their teammates.

The skiers are both athletes and performers. They manage to smile and wave to the crowd without losing the intense concentration and balance required to remain afloat. High-energy music accompanies the stunts, and skiers usually wear different brightly colored costumes for each act.

The culmination of the show was the Big Act, which required more than 50 people on the water to build two four-tier pyramids. Female skiers carefully climbed onto the shoulders of the men at the base, steadying each other before assisting the next tier in its ascent. Dismantling the pyramids required as much care, but each skier arrived safely on the beach to thank the crowd and perform a final group dance — this time on land. The Big Act was at one time even bigger.

“Quite a few years ago we did a five-high pyramid,” Berner said. “It’s really hard. Not a lot of people can do it, so it was very memorable. When we did that we would ski six days a week, every day but Monday.”

The team still skis four days a week, hosts its Friday home shows, travels to two exhibition shows in Illinois and Wisconsin and also competes in three tournaments if it qualifies to be one of the 16 teams at Nationals in August. Berner said the team has placed in the top five at Nationals for the past 11 years and in the top three for eight of those years. In 2007, the team came in second at the national competition in Wisconsin.

Berner said she was pleased with the team’s success and its impact on Wonder Lake.

“We’re fairly well-known now,” Berner said. “We’ve won Nationals three times, which is huge. It’s a good thing for the community, for sure.”

Berner also said she hopes her daughter learns to ski — following in her mother’s wake and carrying on the proud tradition of an entire community.

Photos by Phil Jarrett