For most of wakeboarding’s history a delineation between park and boat riders did not exist. Cable wake-parks took a long time to transition away from being big fancy air trick machines, and so the progression of rail riding took place behind jet-skis and boats. 

Full length movies from a bygone era showcased hesh jibs from riders whose entire careers revolved around boat wakeboarding and all of the opportunities surrounding it. But they charged towards haste-fully made death traps anyway, crafting whatever kind of rail they could out of Trek board, PVC, and what they could steal.

Early versions of features would eventually begin to make their way into cable parks, at the same-time as Jet-ski rail jams continued to grow in popularity and size year after year; the early signs of a massive sea-change beginning to show. 

In September of 2008 Sesitec debuted the first System 2.0 wake-park to the North American market with a contest called Red Bull Wake Lab; hosted at Lake Eola. The ground breaking innovation being brought directly into the heartland of towed water-sports: downtown Orlando.

With attendance estimates nearing 20,000 the shoreline was packed in shoulder to shoulder with spectators eager to see for themselves the first true terrain park on water.

Oli Derome & JD Webb ended up winning best run and best trick, but no one went home that day thinking about contest results, the star of the show had been the course itself; alongside a lingering gut feeling that wakeboarding had just changed forever.

Fast forward a decade to 2018, and you’d be hard pressed to find more than a dwindling handful of pros whose careers span across multiple disciplines. The all terrain riders of the past have retired and the new generation have shown little interest in carrying on the torch. For every Guenther Oka or Massi Piffaretti there were twenty other pros who’d found their preferred tow and stuck to it.

Now, it’s 2026, and we’re only two years shy of being a decade away from then, and the paradigm is shifting.

Younger faces from the Protour circuit are being spotted at your local cable park, the top pros on cable are adding boat clips to their video parts or even joining the Protour themselves!

To help us make sense of this change, we reached out to some of this new generations multi-discipline wakeboarders to hear in their own words what’s driven them to start embracing the practices of their differently towed counterparts.

Jacob Sunde

I mean, I look up to Trev and Josh a lot. So it’s pretty easy to say I was influenced by them to get back into boat… haha.

But with boat riding, the simple stuff just feels so good. Grabs, carves, slashes… it’s just a different kind of freedom that you don’t get from riding cable.

The whole reason any of us wakeboard is because it’s fun and it feels good. For me, both boat and cable give me those feelings; on top of it being a different area for creativity within the sport I love so much.

But it also gives me a better chance to succeed. Living in America, there’s no doubt that boat is what drives a lot of the revenue for the sport. So why would I stay in one lane when I could be a Swiss Army knife?

What really lights my fire is video. Watching the legends before me in films such as Al Sur,  Dog Dayz and Scumline has only motivated me more to become the next generation of west coast boat wakeboarding.

Gavin Stuckey

Why not?

Orlando has been the mecca of boat wakeboarding for decades.

I’m fortunate enough that riding boat is easily accessible thanks to my friends.

So, why not?

Over time, the why not became what if?  What if I could do a back 9 without a kicker?  What if I could ride cable, winch, and boat?  What if I could I could stop saying "what if?".

And instead, say "Yeah I did that!"

Brett Powell

It all started with my dad and his passion for watersports — skiing, barefooting, and wakeboarding behind the boat. He’s the biggest reason I’ve always ridden both cable and boat. I learned how to get up behind the boat first, then discovered cable riding at KC Watersports and was hooked immediately; from ages six to thirteen I rode cable day camps every summer while still riding boat on top of it. Cable and boat complement each other when you’re doing both of them consistently. The cable park is right next to the lake that our boat is on so it was convenient to ride both in the same day, and I’ve always loved that. Taking cable steeze to boat/learning new tricks on the cable and taking it to boat. Perfecting my boat riding shaped me into a better cable rider.

 I was always driven to be good at both disciplines. Growing up noticed most riders leaned heavily toward one or the other, but seeing riders like Tom Fooshee, Bob Soven, and Guenther Oka excel across both worlds really inspired me to push myself in the same way they did. Between ages nine and fourteen, I took cable more seriously—competing internationally at events like Worlds in Dubai or the Philippines, and Plastic Playgrounds.

As I got older, my focus naturally expanded more toward boat riding because the boat scene is a lot larger than the cable scene in America. From competing in the Junior-Pro Malibu Series, to now the Pro Tour I love the connections that both cable & boat have brought me. Being a hybrid rider these days is pretty rare, that’s what drives me to keep doing both. I'm going to keep training in both and hopefully compete in some international cable contests going forward.

Luke Holmes

I grew up riding and competing behind boat from the time I was six, I kept up with it until I was eighteen. I ended up stepping away from wakeboarding for three years and when I came back my friends were all riding cable so I just focused on that and didn’t have many opportunity’s to ride boat in Miami. I moved back to North Carolina where I grew up this year and now have access to a boat right in my back yard. You’ll start seeing more boat clips from me in the future.

Trent Stuckey

I love the challenge. It’s a new game and I’m starting at the bottom, I love that.

Kai Ditsch

To me I just like wakeboarding, winch, boat, cable, whatever it is. I started on a boat and It took a long time for parks to appear in Argentina, but I always tried to switch it up between boat and cable.

Now I’ve been riding for so many years that going from one to another helps me keep my stoke on riding all year-round. After a long boat season the only thing I want to do is to ride cable, and after to much cable I'm itching to ride boat. I feel like it shapes your riding too, there's always boat stuff that you can transfer to the cable and vice versa.

Daniel Johnson

For me It has never been about boat or cable, it’s been a love for wakeboarding and just going wherever I had the best opportunity to express it. I didn’t always have access to a boat, or have a cable around, and that made me hungry to take advantage of whatever opportunity to ride I could get my hands on.

So, while it may seem that while wakeboarding has a strong divide between these two disciplines of riding, there is a young, excited, and hungry group of riders pushing it behind the boat and at the cable. Whatever it is, its wakeboarding, and we're here for it.

ATV’s Are Back

Flow State | J.K. Mullins