Dana Hills Senior a Quick Study on Jet Ski : Racing: Bill Pointer holds state and national titles and hopes to add the world championship this weekend at Lake Havasu.

Bill Pointer, a senior at Dana Hills High School, is rarely at a loss for subject matter in his speech and debate class.

Pointer spends his weekends competing on a jet ski in races across the country, skimming lakes and oceans at speeds up to 47 m.p.h. on his Kawasaki 650SX and performing radical turns in slalom and closed-course events.

Pointer, 17, spent last summer traveling 9,000 miles with his father, Bill Sr., to compete in eight amateur circuit races in the International Jet Ski Boating Assn. The Pointers drove a van, pulling a homemade trailer loaded with two jet skis and spare parts.

Pointer won the expert state and national titles and hopes to add the world championship this weekend in the ninth Skat-Trak World Jet Ski Finals at Lake Havasu City, Ariz. Jet skiing’s premier event will feature 47 international riders from the United States, England, France, Italy, Australia, Japan and New Zealand.

Pointer clinched the expert national title in Chicago in August and earned him the nickname “Wild Bill” along with the No. 1 rider’s plate.

The nickname hardly fits Pointer, a reserved, soft-spoken teen-ager who wears horn-rimmed glasses under his racing goggles, gets good grades and plans to attend Saddleback College next fall.

Pointer looks more like a lab assistant than a racer, but don’t let that fool you. He plans to take the next step to the professional class after graduating from Dana Hills High in the spring.

“I never thought I’d be racing someday,” Pointer said. “We used to water ski at the Colorado River, and then we started riding jet skis for fun.”

The Pointers own a home 20 miles north of Blythe near the Colorado River, and their only child convinced his grandmother that the family needed a jet ski.

“He couldn’t talk his mother into buying a jet ski, so he worked on his grandmother until she finally gave in,” Bill Sr. said. “It was obvious that he was getting pretty good at riding when he started beating everybody in the family by the time he was 15 years old.”

Pointer entered his first novice class race at 15 and won the winter novice series when he was 16. He began the national expert circuit having raced in only three expert events.

Pointer won the state championship at Santa Nella near Los Banos, then the national title in Chicago. He earned it by consistently placing high in slalom and closed-course events.

Slalom racing is conducted on a course 283 feet long with nine turn buoys. Riders are electronically timed as they maneuver through the course.

Closed-course racing is staged on a twisting, roughly circular half-mile course consisting of 10 to 20 turn buoys and three log jumps two feet high. Eleven riders typically compete in 15-lap finals.

“Bill’s strength has always been his ability to turn on the slalom course,” said his father, who operates a real estate management company in Laguna Hills. “He mastered the art of switching his feet to make his right turns . . . that gives him a big advantage.”

Pointer’s mother, father, aunt and grandmother get in on the action on race day.

“My aunt handles the tool kit, my dad is my mechanic, my mother operates the video camera, and my grandmother is the pit boss,” Pointer said.

Pointer spends his weekends practicing at Oceanside or Mission Bay when he isn’t racing on the Colorado River. He’s not sure what to expect at Lake Havasu.

“Havasu can be rough or smooth depending upon the weather,” Pointer said. “Long Beach (Marine) is my favorite place to race. It’s always pretty glassy.

“Ocean racing is a big challenge. Just getting out can be difficult. It’s tough judging the face of a wave. Turning consistently in the white water also takes lots of practice.”