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It’s hard enough to water ski using one ski and holding on with one hand. But to do it and catch an expensive object in mid-air? That just takes luck.

Right?

“Yes, it takes a lot of luck,” said Kyle Lagasse, 20, of Biddeford, who posted a video of the stunt, performed on Bunganut Pond in Lyman July 16, on Twitter.

But the video wasn’t of the action from afar. The expensive object thrown from boat to water skier was a GoPro video camera, and it captured all the action in dizzying detail.

Luck played a role in the making of the video. But so did timing. Boat driver Nate Crepeau had to alter the speed of the boat depending on Lagasse’s toss out to their friend Connor Pothier, on the water ski.

If it was going to be too short, Crepeau had to speed up. If it was going to be too long, he had to slow down. On the sixth try, with Lagasse throwing and Pothier catching, they nailed it.

Lagasse credited Matt Cote, who’s sitting in the boat in the video, with coming up with the idea. “We just tried something, and it ended up working out,” he said. (All the friends have known each other since they were about 5.)

Little did they know it would make them semi-famous. CBS Sports picked up the video, and it made it to Yahoo News. Today, it drew the attention of ESPN. It should be playing on SportsCenter tomorrow (Thursday, July 30), starting at 9 a.m.

“We were just going nuts. We didn’t expect any of that. I just posted it for my friends. I threw the ‘#GoPro’ in it, and that’s how it got picked up,” Lagasse said.

Lagasse and his friends have made a few videos of themselves throwing a GoPro while out on the lake. Here’s another from YouTube:

[youtube=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JdlCbhHqsc&feature=youtu.be”]

Erin Rhoda is the editor of Maine Focus, a team that conducts journalism investigations and projects at the Bangor Daily News. She also writes for the newspaper, often centering her work on domestic and...

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