Extreme Gulfshore Athletes- Wakeboarders Kristin Cartwright and Erik "Gator" Lutgert

When Kristin Cartwright, 29, started wakeboarding in college in 1996, her brother Erik "Gator" Lutgert, 27, had already won the world championship three years earlier. In its extreme form-the kind that Cartwright and Lutgert practice-the sport has more in common with skateboarding than water-skiing. Boat wakes act as ramps for aerial tricks and flips. Several of those stunts were invented by Lutgert, one of the first professional wakeboarders and now the owner of Naples-based Gator Boards, which sponsors several riders nationally. Cartwright, known to boarders by her childhood nickname Buster, was the first woman to do a Whirlybird, a 360-degree back-flip. "I did gymnastics for 10 years, so once I was aware of the water and what I was doing, it wasn't hard at all," she says. "It's different from any other sport. It's total freedom." The birth of her first child last spring has kept Cartwright, who placed sixth in the 2002 X-Games in Philadelphia, out of recent competition. But she's on the water on weekends with her husband Dayle Cartwright, and is eager to compete again.