About Midwest Water Sports

Midwest Water Sports is an authorized MasterCraft, Monterey, Supra, and Moomba boat dealership serving Minneapolis, St. Paul, central and southern Minnesota as well as western Wisconsin. We are proud to carry a large selection of new and pre-owned boat inventory. When you are ready to invest in a new boat, our friendly and knowledgeable sales, financing, service, parts, and accessoy departments are prepared to make sure your experience is outstanding, from assisting while you're making your choice to ongoing maintenance and customization. At Midwest Water Sports, we value the opportunity to create a long-term relationship with our customers, and we do that by giving you the best customer service available.

Over the past 50+ years Midwest has gone thru a lot of changes...

Midwestern Water Ski Center was founded in 1971 by Jim Petersen who was also the founder of the Prior Lake Water Ski Team now know as the Shockwaves. Jim, Nancy, and the rest of the Petersen family grew the business selling MasterCraft, Correct Craft, and Hydrodyne boats as well as water skis and accessories, even hosting a MasterCraft Pro Water Ski Tour event.  As a MasterCraft Boat Dealer since 1971 we are tied with the Detroit location of Action Water Sports as the longest continually operating MasterCraft dealers in the world.

In 1987, employee Dave Ingalls purchased the business and changed the name to Midwest Water Sports. The store was moved from the Petersen's residence on Overlook Drive in Bloomington to a retail location at 8600 Excelsior Boulevard in Hopkins MN. Over the next several years Midwest parted ways with Correct Craft, added Malibu Boats, parted with Malibu, and added Polaris Snowmobiles and then Polaris Personal Watercraft.

In 1995 our resident tech guy Ted Martin registered www.waterskis.com for the business.  We are the original registrant.  Ted said it would be the next big thing. As it turns out Ted was also a wakeboarder but never registered wakeboards.com nor did anyone for that matter until 2000! We had a mail order catalog during this time and even had one of the first e-commerce sites in the niche on www.waterskis.com. As it turns out we were a little early.

In the mid 1990's we sold more than 200 new Polaris snowmobiles a year. During the winter, all of the MasterCraft's and water skis were out of the showroom to make way for snowmobiles. We hardly sold anything summer related except at the Minneapolis Boat show (in January) from October thru March.

In 1996, we were out of room so a second location in Burnsville MN was purchased. This store started out only selling MasterCraft Boats and water sports accessories but Polaris Snowmobiles and ATV's were soon added. A few years after that, Honda Motorcycles and ATV's were added and all of the boats and marine products were moved back to Hopkins because of space constrictions. The name of the Burnsville location was changed to Ride Sports.

In 1997 we bought our first MasterCraft X-Star after seeing it at a MasterCraft dealer meeting in Knoxville Tennessee. X-Star's were only available as a solid color polo green or navy blue ProStar 205 direct drive with not very flattering X-Star decals, a Fly High Extended Pylon and one Fat Sac. That was state of the art wakeboarding technology for the day. In 1998, we received our first X-Star that came from the factory with a wakeboard tower on it. In 1998, the MasterCraft X-Star was still a direct drive and still lacked a ballast system or standard cruise control. Some of the water ski focused members of the staff said, "nobody will ever buy that thing." It was gone in less than a week!

In 2000 we sold over 40 closed bow direct drive ski boats. That is amazing since by the early 2000's we only sold a couple closed bow direct drives per season.  The switch to open bow direct drives and v-drives was on.

In July of 2002, Andy Larson, who had worked in the sales department since December 1994, purchased the marine portion of the business. The new company was renamed Midwest MasterCraft to signify the focus on MasterCraft Boats and water sports accessories. The Polaris portion of the business was moved to the Burnsville location and stayed with the previous owner.

Because of the increase in boat sizes and the proliferation of wakeboard towers, we needed to look for a different facility. It was growing increasingly difficult to sell and service boats at our Hopkins location. In 2004, the company purchased a 25,000 square foot building in Crystal, MN. The new building had onsite parking for 125 boats outside and could fit as many as 40 boats inside. Our showroom was larger than our entire Hopkins building. The best thing for us was that the ceilings and doors were high enough that we never had to fold wakeboard towers. Our service team has gotten more than a little spoiled. :)

In 2007, we decided it was time to start to use www.waterskis.com for e-commerce again. In 2011, we purchased the URL www.wakeboards.com and developed an e-commerce store there as well. We were one of the larger water sports dealers before we added e-commerce and are now one of the top water ski, wakeboard, and wake surf retailers in the world.

When we moved to Crystal, we really wanted to be somewhere closer to our previous location in Hopkins but could not find a suitable location that fit all of our needs for boat sales AND service. We had been looking longingly at a return to the southwest suburbs of Minneapolis for years. In 2012 the Supra and Moomba dealer in the area changed hands. When that happened, we put a sales pitch in to Skier's Choice and got the lines. We purchased a second location on Hwy 5 on the Chanhassen/Victoria boarder. This location was called Midwest Water Sports and was located at 1400 Steiger Lake Drive in Victoria. We could not call a Supra and Moomba dealer Midwest MasterCraft after all.  Supra, Moomba, and later MasterCraft boats were sold and serviced at the Victoria location. That store also had a Pro Shop for water sports gear. In the 1970's and early 1980's the building had been the factory for Lake Region Water Skis. Andy Larson the current onwer, learned to water ski on Lake Region skis and had visited Lake Region to buy trick skis with his parents. Small world indeed.

After living with the added customer confusion and additional work of two business names (Midwest MasterCraft in Crystal and Midwest Water Sports in Victoria, we reverted back to the Midwest Water Sports name for both locations in 2017 without a change of ownership. Maintaining two web sites & multiple social media profiles was too much for us to handle.

After a few years of strong sales and the growing number and size of boat models offered by Supra, Moomba, and MasterCraft cramped our style at the Victoria location. We were limited by space and that created challenges to properly display enough boats in the building. In November 2017 we purchased a building at 17717 Hwy 7 in Minnetonka where we built a new 13,232 square foot dealership to better serve Lake Minnetonka and the other lakes in the southwest Minneapolis /St. Paul suburbs. The new location opened in the fall of 2018. The Victoria location was moved to Minnetonka and the building was sold.

In the summer of 2021, we built a 33,000 square foot addition for boat storage at the Crystal location. This new heated space is 60' tall and features 4 high racks that can hold 164 boats on trailers. We are also added 4 more technician stalls in our existing warehouse to further expand our service capacity.

In early January 2022 we acquired BuyWake.com and RedshiftWaterSports.com which allowed us to combine two of the largest eCommerce organizations in water sports retail under one corporate umbrella. Moving forward, we will continue online sales at WaterSkis.com, WakeBoards.com, and BuyWake.com, as well as on Amazon and eBay.

In Novermber of 2022 Midwest Water Sports was recognized by Boating Industry Magazine for the 14th time as one of the top 100 Boat Dealers in America.

For the 2023 model year, Midwest Water Sports partnered with Monterey boats to branch into a category of the industry we had not previously serviced since the 1980's when we were a Sierra dealer.  Monterey offers stern drive and outboard powered boats from 20' to 38' and has a strong following in Minnesota, espicially on Lake Minnetonka.

We have enjoyed sharing our passion for the water and look forward memories yet to be made.

Contact Us

Call us at (763) 533-9666 or come by today and experience our superior service and selection! We look forward to serving you!