photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Bryan Adriance flies into the air during a trick run on June 19, 2025, at Crown Ski Lake east of Lawrence.

If you’re heading east out of Lawrence on Kansas Highway 10, you might have noticed a little patch of water just off the highway with a ramp sticking out of it and a sign that says “Crown Lake.” If you blink, you’ll miss it.

But the lake and its resident, MoKan Ski Club, have been a fixture for 44 years, said club president Todd Bays. The lake, really a large pond, was born out of the construction of the original K-10 Highway as a borrow pit for dirt during the project.

The land’s owners, John and Karen Pendleton, leased it to the ski club in the club’s infancy in 1981, and they have been “the best landlords ever since,” Bays said. The lake, named for Crown Toyota, a club supporter, sits at 1848 North 1325 Road.

Unlike other nearby lakes, Crown Lake has a single purpose: preparing waterskiers to compete. Specifically, it’s focused on training for three events: the trick event, where skiers perform different stunts on the water; the slalom, where skiers navigate around buoys that get closer together as the course progresses; and the jump event, where skiers jump off a ramp, with points being awarded for distance and style.

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Bryan Adriance skis backwards with one foot on the rope during a trick run on June 19, 2025, at Crown Ski Lake east of Lawrence.

The lake also hosts tournaments, where the prizes are mainly bragging rights. Tournament participants are ranked in trick, slalom and jump, and they will use those rankings when entering larger competitions.

Bays says he still runs the slalom event, and the club’s vice president, Bryan Adriance, loves practicing tricks. But, as both men have retired, they leave the jump event, on the ramp in the center of the lake, to the younger kids.

“It’s waxed and it’s wet,” Bays said. “You run water down it, and when you hit that thing, ooh.

The first time I tried it, I had fallen before I got to the top of the ramp. Yeah, I was on my side,” he laughed.

Adriance said he was among the first members of the MoKan Ski Club back in 1981, when he was a student at University of Kansas. He said the Pendletons have always asked the club to support the university in any way they can, which has often meant making sure a separate club at KU, the KU Ski Club, had a place to practice.

“It wasn’t hard, because myself and several other people were going to KU that first year, and KU has had a team practicing out here ever since,” Adriance said.

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Bryan Adriance skis backwards during a trick run on June 19, 2025, at Crown Ski Lake east of Lawrence.

Bays said each year the KU club gets a new batch of participants — some are new to the sport, while others have been doing it since they were young. He said many of them, after graduating from KU, still crave the thrill of competition and join the MoKan Ski Club.

“I’ve been here since 1993 or (1994) and some people that I saw that were little kids then now are members in the club, and they have their little kids out here,” Bays said.

The club, like the lake, is relatively small, with only about 30 paying members and their families. Bays said the club isn’t necessarily only for elite competitors, but that it is aimed at people who are invested in the sport and in developing their skills, especially since members are required to pay dues.

“I think it’s always good to go to the public lake and enjoy skiing before you pay the initiation fee and join a club,” Bays said. “Make sure you enjoy doing it.”

The big hurdle that stops a lot of people from getting into the sport, Adriance said, may not be the lack of skills, but the lack of a boat. Only about half of the club’s members actually own boats, Adriance said, and not just any boat will do.

“We have to use inboard tournament-type ski boats, because they have to be able to turn sharply at the ends of the lake,” Adriance said. “They have to have the right kind of wake; they have to have the powerful pull. You have to be able to hold a straight line driving through the slalom course, not run and chop them up. So, you know, you can’t really do that with just a regular runabout outboard.”

Not only do you need a competition-style boat to drive on the lake, it must also be a clean boat, meaning it can’t have been in most public fishing lakes or streamways. That’s necessary to prevent the lake from being contaminated with invasive zebra mussels, which are present in many publicly accessible bodies of water in Kansas.

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Todd Bays looks back to see a skier who has fallen in the water on June 19, 2025, at Crown Ski Lake, east of Lawrence.

Bays said that boat owners can go through a lengthy process of cleaning their boat by running bleach and hot water through the engines and letting the trailer and boat dry for several weeks, but people usually don’t want the hassle.

Adriance said that his boat was about 30 years old and still running strong, while Bays said he does promotional work for the boat company Skeena, and this enables him to lease a new modern, high-tech boat every few years. Bays said his boat has more horsepower and is fitted with more technology than any car he has ever owned. The GPS in the boat allows it to drive a straight line for the slalom event that remains with 10 centimeters of the course line.

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

The heads up display on Todd Bays boat on June 19, 2025, at Crown Ski Lake, east of Lawrence.

“I have to go to most of the tournaments during the year, and I have to pay kind of like a lease fee for it, but I don’t ever have to buy it. So as long as I’m fine and my wife’s fine with me hitting tournaments every weekend, it works out,” Bays said.

Both Bays and Adriance said that they get plenty of interest from club members looking for a ride on the lake.

“We’re both retired now, so we tend to be a little bit popular when we’re out here. There’s people coming out the woodwork. We kind of say we’ve got a lot of children that we have to manage out here. We gladly pull ’em,” Bays said.

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Bryan Adriance falls into the Crown Ski Lake on June 19, 2025, east of Lawrence.

MoKan Ski Club is also home to ski clinics each year, such as one they hosted in June for people with disabilities.

“We had a group of people come ski in wheelchairs, paraplegics. Skiers that’ll ski beside them with one hand holding the rope and the other hand holding the skier’s ski straight so they can get up and get going, and then, if they can handle it, they let go and move out of the way,” Adriance said.

Adriance said MoKan has been doing these types of events for decades, as well as clinics for the blind and visually impaired.

“We do that every year, and those guys just love it. I don’t know; I think we have more fun than they do. It’s so much fun to share that with people — the experience of skiing,” Adriance said.

photo by: Contributed

Two skiers assist a third with a physical disability during a MoKan Ski Club adaptive ski clinic at Crown Ski Lake east of Lawrence.