"Ski Miss in a Hurry!"
When Liz Allen made the decision to retire from active water ski
competition in 1975, the world's finest women skiers heaved a collective
sigh of relief.
They could hardly be blamed. From the time she won two event
victories in her fist national championships at the age of 11 in 1962,
Liz had amassed a competitive record that probably will never be matched
by another skier, male or female.
In 13 seasons, she won 42 national titles and never failed to win at
least two in any year. Three times Liz make a clean sweep of all three
events in the Nationals, once a Junior Girl, once in Women's Division
competition and a third time after creation of the Open Divisions.
In 1969, Liz won all three events in the Nationals, the World
Championships and the Masters, a feat almost without parallel in any
sport.
Those first Nationals victories were scored on Robin Lake at Callaway
Gardens, a course she was destined to claim as her very own. After
warm-up tries in her first two Masters in 1964 and 1965, Liz then
proceeded to win the overall title every time she entered this most
prestigious of water skiing's invitational events, nine times in all.
When Callaway Gardens inaugurated the Masters Cup for women-- to match
the Masters Trophy for men-- the intent was to permit retention of
either prize by a skier who won a Masters overall crown three times in a
row, considered virtually an impossible accomplishment. When Liz
retired the Cup in 1968, the Gardens management changed the new Masters
Cup and the Masters Trophy to "perpetual" status the following year.
"Ski Miss in a Hurry," an article on Liz published in the April-May,
1965, issue of the Water Skier, proved to be prophetic. The 14-year-old
not only breezed through the U.S. Team Trials but hurried off to
Australia and the World Championships, returning with the women's
overall crown and jumping title as well.
It was the fist of her three world overall championships, and launched
her remarkable international career that included an unmatched eight
world event titles.
Liz began skiing at the age of five when her family moved to Winter
Park, Fla., in 1955 from West Germany where her father, Colonel William
D. Allan, was stationed prior to his retirement from the Army Corps of
Engineers. Not long after the Allan's' joined a water ski club,
Liz became interested in competition. She entered her first
tournament in 1961, finishing second in slalom and fourth in tricks.
Tournament officials wouldn't permit her to enter jumping because she
was too small.
A year later, she met a Junior Girls Division national record of 66
feet.
Jumping quickly became her favorite event, and she demonstrated her
enthusiasm by setting one record after another. Liz broke her own
junior record twice in 1963, first at 70 feet, then 79 feet. The
following year, she established a new Girls Division standard at 100
feet, to become the third female skier in history to join the Century
Club. She raised this record to 106 feet at the 1966 Masters.
Her string of record-breakers in Women's competition included cracking
the 110-foot "barrier" in the '68 Masters and yet another "impossible"
mark for women at 125 feet in the 1974 Nationals.
Little less impressive were her consistent victories and records in
slalom and tricks. For example, she won slalom six times and tricks on
three occasions in the Masters. From the time she entered Women's
competition in the Nationals in 1968, she won five slalom titles and
seven trick titles prior to her retirement in '75.
Bowing out of competition opened up a whole new area of contribution to
water skiing for Liz Allan. For several years prior to her
retirement, she and her husband, William B. (George) Shetter, had
operated a ski school near Groveland, Fla., but the training center
really didn't take off until Liz was able to give it full attention.
Even so, the magic name of Liz Allen from the very first attracted
ambitious skiers from all over the world. Her training methods and
her one-on-one instruction techniques are credited with the steady
improvement in performances of many skiers outside the U.S. as well as
within. She also has shared her expertise by writing a regular
column for Spray's Water Ski Magazine.
