Look, Mom, I'm The Champ!

They were barely out of rompers and had no right to do any more than get up on maybe their sixth try and wobble around the lake once or twice behind a slow boat. Yet there they were: spraying silicone on the bottoms of their skis to reduce friction and then careening around the bright red buoys with their bodies almost parallel to the water. They are sun-tanned kids from places like Winter Park, Fla. and McQueeney, Texas, who have grown up with beaches in their backyards or with canals just down the road, and they are all too precocious. Cindy Hutcherson, a skinny little 14-year-old who looks like she should still be playing hopscotch, is a Super Master of water skiing. So is Wayne Grimditch, 15, who goes off the jumping ramp wearing a Captain America helmet, and so is Lisa St. John, 15, whose mother was a national champion. And they all were in Callaway Gardens, Pine Mountain, Ga. last weekend for the 12th annual Masters Tournament and Water Babies Circus.

At one point in the affair a passenger in a pickup boat asked the bronzed young driver who the next skier was. "It must be that old guy," the driver said. He was talking about DuWayne Boudin, who is 29.

Naturally, the kids beat the old folks splashily. Two veteran water babies, Liz Allan, 19, and Ricky Joe McCormick, 18, won the overall titles. Both have been skiing since they were 5. Liz had her usual easy time of it, winning the women's trick events and jumping titles all three days of competition. It was her fifth Masters championship in a row. Ho-hum.

McCormick, known as Tricky Ricky, a nickname he will grow to hate as he gets older, beat out world overall champion and jumping record holder Mike Suyderhoud by 70 points, largely on a spectacular 159-foot jump in the finals. Mike, called the Flying Dutchman, couldn't match it. Poor guy, he's 20 and probably getting senile.

Among the juveniles, 17-year-old Christy Lynn Weir of Texas won the women's slalom, Lisa St. John was second in women's overall and 17-year-old Kris LaPoint won the men's slalom.

The water babies are young and undeniably attractive, but they are not pure—at least not in the fusty, Avery Brundage sense of the word. The American Water Ski Association, with only vague ties to the AAU, does not bother with the weird classifications and hypocrisies dreamed up for other sports. In fact, the AWSA doesn't differentiate between pros and amateurs at all. A skier is a skier, and if Ricky wants to put his name on a trick-riding toe bar, that's just fine. All the better if the company buys an ad in the AWSA's official magazine. Such as "world champion Liz Allan wears a such-and-such tunic in America's colors" or "Kris LaPoint breaks world records on his such-and-such ski."

Suyderhoud seems to be cashing in the heaviest. He endorses a West Coast ski, a jump jacket, a whole line of Australian goods and a breakfast cereal. For the latter he appeared in a much-used TV commercial that has caused him some embarrassment. It shows him doing something world champions aren't supposed to do—taking a spill. Presumably, the cereal will cure all that.

"I'm a pro," he says. "I make good money skiing, more than $10,000 last year. Maybe $15,000 this year."

There is some talk now that water skiing will be included in the 1972 Olympics as a demonstration sport, then perhaps win approval to become a regular Olympic event in 1976. If so, the World Water Ski Union and the liberal AWSA will have to make some new rules.

But right now the important goal for U.S. skiers—other than perhaps a lucrative life-jacket endorsement—is to make the national team that goes to the world tournament, to be staged later this summer in Ba�olas, Spain. Team members not only get the trip, they also get to wear those jazzy red, white and blue, star-spangled swimsuits. On the girls they look like Wonder Woman costumes.