By Sara Anne Donnelly
Photos by Michael D. Wilson
From our July 2025 issue
It was a few minutes before showtime on Number One Pond, in Sanford, last summer. The evening sun, thinly veiled by clouds, cast a silvery glow on the choppy water and 500 or so spectators nestled on picnic blankets and lawn chairs on the pond’s grassy western shore. Nearby, women in sapphire bodysuits and blue-and-white sailor caps painted their lips a deep red, while men in neon-orange swim shirts practiced hoisting some of the women onto their shoulders. “The biggest thing is your showmanship,” Darian LeBlanc, a lead skier with the Maine Attraction water-ski show, reminded them. “If you see the crowd, they see you!”
Minutes later, Eric Paslay’s bouncy country song “High Class” erupted from giant speakers and a platoon of speedboats roared to life, pulling throngs of blue-suited “yacht clubbers,” who grinned from three-tiered pyramids, flipped off a floating ramp, and glided past the crowd trailing blasts of arching spray. The audience burst into boisterous cheers that were quickly drowned out by Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train,” heralding the arrival of the show’s foils. “Oh no, not again! These hooligan hicks are out of control!” an announcer exclaimed as two orange-shirted men proceeded to “menace” the yacht clubbers by zig-zagging around the boats on single skis, stirring up waves.
Mark and Lori Hegarty (top left) started out performing stunts with a small team between events at local water-ski contests. “People liked watching us better,” Lori says. Today, their Maine Attraction water-ski show encompasses more than 60 skiers, speedboat drivers, and other specialists.
“There’s no feeling like being part of a successful act, seeing everybody clapping and waving,” says director Katie Gray. Her parents, Mark and Lori Hegarty, founded Maine Attraction in 1989, and she’s been skiing with the program since she was five. The Hegartys were professional show skiers at SeaWorld before moving to Sanford. At the time, there was a water-ski club on Number One Pond whose mostly teenage members competed in slalom, trick, and jumping events, but nothing with the razzle-dazzle of the show scene. “We started showing off because that’s what we like to do,” Lori says. “And the kids were like, oh my gosh, how do you guys learn how to do this stuff? Teach us how to do it.” The Hegartys assembled a team with a dozen or so local high schoolers and performed short, no-frills sets between events at area water-ski tournaments, wowing the crowds. “They kept coming back for more and asking when we were going to do it again,” Lori says. “So we were like, okay, we’ll see if we can put a real show together.”
Described as an “aquatic Broadway musical” by the National Show Ski Association, which hosts competitions, water-ski shows have been around since the late ’20s. Clubs dedicated to the sport exist around the country, but Maine Attraction is the only one here. Today, it consists of about 40 volunteer skiers and another two dozen boat captains, spotters, announcers, designers, and rigging technicians. The skiers range in age from Gray’s three-year-old son, Gunther, to 64-year-old Lori, who was briefly sidelined after having hip-replacement surgery a few years back. Mark no longer performs because of a heart condition, but drives one of the speedboats. Show skiing involves obvious inherent risks. A teenager in last summer’s Yacht Club Battle performance scraped and bruised her thigh on a float. And the Hegartys’ son, Peter, was hospitalized with a brain injury and broken back and collarbone after a crash during last year’s Indmar Division 1 Show Ski National Championships. (After months of rehab, he is competing again and plans to ski with Maine Attraction this summer.)
Mostly, though, the shows, which are free, go off without a hitch. During the performance we caught, skiers flipped, swiveled, “skied” without skis (a technique known as “barefooting”), and executed choreographed dances on a pair of large floats. In the spirit of ’80s movies like The Breakfast Club that Gray says inspired the theme, the rivals became friends in the end, changing into matching blue-and-orange-striped shirts to reflect their newfound unity, and nailing a four-tier pyramid. As the evening waned, the cast waved goodbye to the retreating crowd. “Thanks for coming together, it sure was a pleasure,” boomed the announcer. “Until next time, remember folks, it’s always sunny at Maine Attraction bay!”
Maine Attraction performs Thursdays from July 3–31, on Sat. July 12., and on Mon. Sept. 1. Number One Pond, William Oscar Emery Dr., Sanford.
