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For anyone enjoying Smith Lake watersports, or watching from a shoreline home, the dramatic growth of wakeboarding is obvious. Popular with children barely school age to adults of every age, the practice of attaching a fifteen- to seventeeninch wide board to their feet and skimming along— and leaping above—the lake’s surface seems to grow more popular by the day. That growing popularity, and the desire of some wakeboarders to see just how far they can go with the sport, is bringing Colby Bernier’s Mitchell Militia Wakeboarding School to Smith Lake. Bernier, two time national collegiate wakeboard champion and winner of numerous professional wakeboard competitions, will offer classroom instruction at Russell Marine plus on-lake lessons. An Internet key-word search of the name Colby Bernier offers a hold-your-breath glimpse of what Bernier has accomplished and what he is capable of teaching. Several YouTube videos capture Bernier’s gravity-defying leaps, flips, rolls, spins and other gyrations that he performs from the end of a tow rope behind his boat. Some of the highflying tricks may not appeal to every aspiring wakeboarder. That’s all right with Bernier. His goal is to help make the sport even more fun, and to help every wakeboarder— beginner or aspiring pro—become more proficient. Some of Bernier’s ability looks like magic. Some is certainly the result of an uncanny sense of body control.
But much of it comes from long hours of hard work. Not drudge work, but work of pure joy born from the love of a sport that he was introduced to at age nine. That was at a lake near Overland Park, Kansas, where his family— mom Julie, dad Pete and brother Adam—then lived. In the intervening sixteen years, Colby’s father’s work took the family from Kansas to Hendersonville, Tennessee, where Colby wakeboarded on the Cumberland River’s Old Hickory Reservoir, and then to a home on the Coosa River’s Lake Mitchell, near Verbena. Colby still lives on Lake Mitchell, thus the name of his Mitchell Militia Wakeboarding School. He isn’t leaving Lake Mitchell, but thanks to his reputation as a top national wakeboarder, the school has expanded, now including the training sessions at Smith Lake. That Bernier finds himself in such a position is, to him, a natural life progression. “I really grew up on the water,” he said. “Some of my first memories are having the best boat naps…” “My first business venture was called Free Service,” he jokingly adds. “That was me getting drinks for everybody out of the cooler.” “All I remember (from those earliest days) is good times on the water,” he continued. “We were commuting to a lake at that time (in Kansas). So we would take trips, thirtyto forty-five minute commutes to the water trailering the boat and that’s really what got it started.” “The river rat family was huge for me,” he said. “And to this day we still are. Some of my best memories (are from the) times spent on the water.” thelakesidelife.com | The Lakeside Life
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