Determination to Win
A Miami Herald sportswriter once said:
"In all my years of covering sports, I have never seen an athlete
with more determination to win."
He was talking about Linda Lee Leavengood.
She was 17 at the time, 1968, and she was a member of the United
States Water Ski Team that had won the World team title in Sherbrooke,
Quebec, the year before.
As the years passed, Linda cultivated that determination to become one
of the finest women water skiers, overshadowed in her peak years only by
the incomparable Liz Allen, her good friend who preceded her into the
Hall of Fame.
Born February 25, 1951, Linda began skiing at age five after her family
joined the Greater Miami (Fla.) Water Ski Club.
By the time Linda was 11, she was competing at the national
level. She won the national
Junior Girls Overall Championship in 1964 and was off on a career that
would bring her international acclaim, especially as a jumper.
One of Linda's skiing characteristics that helped carry her to the top
was her ability--and determination--to hold onto the towline at all
costs. When she set a new
Junior Girls' jumping record of 86 ft in 1964, she went completely under
the water on her landing but then bobbed back to the surface still
grasping the handle to ride off the course.
She won a place on the 1967 U.S. team by holding on in a desperate last
split-second cut toward the jump ramp on the robin Lake ski course at
Callaway Gardens in Georgia.
A few weeks later, she treated the startled spectators at the
World Championships to one of her underwater recoveries on the Slalom
course.
Linda added the Girls Division Overall title in the 1968 Nationals to
her early accomplishments but her ability in the slalom and tricks
disciplines paled in comparison to her spectacular jumping.
She set a Girls' jumping record of 110 feet in 1967, then when she
entered Women and later Open Women Competition she began steadily
rewriting the record book. Her 119-footer in 1973 broke the old record
held by Barbara Cooper Clack, another Hall of Famer, by eight feet; then
came a lea of 128 feet in the '76 Nationals, another 131 feet in the '81
Masters and a 136-footer in the '82 Masters.
Her 1976 record gained her an opportunity to compete in another
world tournament this time in Milan, Italy, where she won the jumping
gold medal in 1977.
Her Masters leaps, along with another of 126 feet in 1981, were recorded
as new standards in the Women II Division.
She finished he r record-breaking with a jump of 119 feet in 1987
in Women III competition for those 35 and older.
In all, Linda won 10 National jumping titles, five in Open Women.
She also took jumping honors five times in the Masters at
Callaway Gardens, the scene of her wedding to Leonard Giddens in 1973,
the year when she graduated at Georgia Southern College.
At the time Linda was already a fixture in the Masters
Invitational.
Her string at the Masters began in 1966 and, with only one break, ended
in 1983 for a total of 17 appearances, more than any other skier, male
and female, in the history of the tournament.
Her only miss was in 1978 and she was there then as a spectator
with her new born son Lance.
Linda has shared her expertise with countless youngsters who have
trained at the 45-acre Giddens Lake near Eastman, Georgia.
She and Leonard also have organized nearly 100 tournaments
through the years, including the Southern Regionals as well as a number
of intercollegiate meets.
