The 4th annual Alt Games: College Action Sports Championships would be a dream to compete in for anyone who is interested in college action sports. The CBS College Sports owned competition, previously known as the Collegiate Nationals, brings together thousands of the best college athletes from campuses across the country to San Diego, California to be named the national champion of their sport. That dream to compete for the title came true for UW-Platteville student Scott Stoltz.

Photograph submitted by Scott Stoltz
Scott Stoltz rides the waves during practice. He is currently seeking funding to continue practicing for the upcoming flowboarding competition on April 17.

Stoltz, a senior communication technologies major with an emphasis in public relations, will be competing against about 50 other athletes during the flowboarding competition on April 18 in San Diego. CBS has chosen four people, including Stoltz, that were not from California to compete against their flowboarding competitors in California. Flowboarding is one of five events that is taking place in San Diego April 17 through April 19. This will be the first collegiate competition Stoltz has attended.

“I’ve attended flowboarding venues around the area,” Stoltz said. “I’ve placed third or higher in most.”

Flowboarding differs from surfing, bodyboarding, skateboarding and wakeboarding because flowboarding differs in board designs, techniques, tricks, and flowboarders ride on artificial waves. These artificial waves, known as sheet waves, FlowRider and FlowBarrel, are created at the Wave Loch, Inc., headquarted in La Jolla, California. These sheets create huge waves like those that occur during a storm. The sheet waves flow as much as 150 thousand gallons of water a minute at a speed of 20 to 30 miles per hour. Flowboarding began in the early 1990s with the first FlowRider at the Schlitterbahn Water Park in New Braunfels, Texas.

Wave House played an important role in Stoltz’s interest in Flowboarding. Wave House is an indoor beach that houses machines like FlowRider and FlowBarrell. Wave House is located in cities around the world, including San Diego. Wave House’s most notorious Flowboarding machine is the WaveLoch Bructicus Maximus.

Similar machines can be found at the Kalahari Resorts in Wisconsin Dells, where Stoltz worked for years. He said that since the installation of the machines, he was hooked. In the last five years, Stoltz has competed in about 30 competitions.

A representative from Wave House gave his name to CBS representatives to possibly participate in the event. They lined his name up against others and they chose his name because of the experience he had.

“I was excited,” Stoltz said. “I was at my parents’ house and they called to ask if I could come and I was like ‘sure.’”

Currently, Stoltz is looking for funding to continue practicing for the upcoming competition. This past summer, Stoltz was able to practice a few hours everyday at the Kalahari, where club fees were $10 per session. However, FlowRiders are larger, requiring more energy. Roughly, $50 is required for each session. He flies to San Diego on April 17.

Over 1,200 athletes participated during The Alt Games in 2008, where 20 hours of original programming was televised on CBS College Sports Network. This year, there will be a 1-hour highlight show on CBS in May or early June. The Alt Games have partnered this year with the leading online action sports community website called Go211.com to stream live from the Alt Games. According to Go211.com, “Go211.com will be featuring live streams from the Alt Games as well as hundreds of video clips that will be syndicated through the CBS Audience Network.”

Stoltz anticipates graudation will be in December of 2009. He hopes one day he will be working in California, using his public relations emphasis. His dream job is owning his own travel company specializing in boarding vacations.

“I would love to keep flowboarding in my life and I am going to continue to grow the sport with hopes of getting it to the X Games and Olympics as well.”