POMPANO BEACH — Raimi Merritt is impressing her coach as she practices her new wakeboarding trick, the Air Raley, Wednesday morning at Crystal Lake.
With the power boat tugging her at 17 miles per hour, Raimi starts out wide, shoots toward the 10-foot wake, jumps 6 or 7 feet in the air, kicks her feet and her board behind her back, clears the wake and lands safely on the other side.
She learned the trick five days earlier and now is practicing it over and over until she gets it right.
"There's probably maybe been a dozen girls ever in the whole history of the sport that have done Raleys," said Dean Lavelle, her coach and a former world champion wakeboarder who has competed professionally since the sport became popular in the early 1990s
"I've got big aspirations for this girl. No one her age is doing Raleys."
Raimi, 13, a home-schooled eighth-grader from Lantana, is a three-time wakeboarding national champion. She also is the daughter of Steve Merritt, a former barefoot water-skiing world champion.
Raimi became a world champion herself last month when she finished first among 16 girls, ages 8 to 13, at the No Fear WWA Wakeboard World Championships held in Forth Worth, Texas.
Her score of 60.56 easily beat the second-place finisher, fellow U.S. competitor Ashlan Pegden of Indiana, who finished with a score of 47.56.
Moments after Raimi won, she sent a text message to her mom, Gina, who was in Utah on a business trip.
"My mom was in the middle of a huge conference, and she went on stage and told everybody," Raimi said. "My dad called her, and you could hear everybody in the auditorium was screaming."
Raimi's world championship capped off a successful year, her third in competitive wakeboarding.
She won the other three tournaments that she entered, including the WWA Wakeboard National Championships in Wisconsin and the Malibu USA Wakeboard Nationals in Polk City.
Merritt also has won events in Spain and Russia, on the Florida Gravel Tour, at the 2005 Pan American Wakeboard Championships and the 2005 U.S. Pro Am Wakeboard Championships.
"She hasn't gotten her hair wet once this year," said Steve Merritt, pointing out that his daughter did not fall in any of her competitions.
Although she's only been wakeboarding for about three years, she executes flips (or backrolls) - 180-, 360- and even 540-degree spins - with the fearlessness of a 13-year-old and expertise of an adult.
Raimi will compete in the girls 13-and-under division at competitions in 2007, with her first event scheduled to be the PanAm Wakeboard Championship in March in Miami.
She already has several sponsors, including a wakeboard manufacturer and an energy drink company, and dreams of turning pro in 2008.
"She picked it up real quick once she put her heart and soul into it," Lavelle said.
"Give her a little more time and training, and she'll be one of the best."
