the fun of waterski recruiting

Wednesday, August 25, 2004, at 11:46AM

By Eric Richardson

We had the semi-yearly involvement fair at USC today. Basically at the beginning of each semester all the clubs set up tables out on Trousdale to recruit new members. I was out selling the waterski team, which is always fun and tiring. For a little over three hours you stand in front of your table holding a ski, telling everyone how cool your club is and how they should definitely come out and join. Now, granted, waterski/wakeboard isn't exactly the toughest sell... It's a pretty appealing event to begin with.

Here's the thing about our involvement fair signups... Every year we probably sign up more people at the involvement fair than any other club. This time I walked out with probably eighty names and email addresses. Of those people, though, maybe 15 will ever come out and I'll probably only see 5-8 more than once. What that tells me is that the demand is there, we just aren't selling ourselves properly. Sure, some of those people sign up without having any intention of ever showing up, but I'd say out of the 80 that's probably only 20 or so people. The rest are people who are genuinely interested, and what we need to do is figure out how to get them to turn that interest into action.

Next weekend will be important. It's a football bye week, so we can plan a Saturday trip. We need to go big and get people hooked right away, before classes and other commitments start to tie them up.