It was so hot at the Zap Amateur World Championship of Skimboarding Saturday, the coolest people on the beach were the competitors. At least their sport plunged them into the cooling ocean for eight minutes at a time.
The skimboarding competition, in its 35th year in Dewey, was crowded despite the soft-serve-melting heat, or maybe because of it, given the breeze coming in off the sea.
What jumped out at you was the youthfulness of the event, which brought amateur but skilled skimboarders from around the world to coastal Delaware’s mild but reliable waves. On Saturday, some of the competitors were boys and girls in first and second grade.
The sport skews young because it’s not hard to get a handle on, and the equipment is cheap, compared to surfing. A board good enough to compete with can be had for $100 or less.
And all the action takes place right at the shoreline, where waves break. Skimboarders don’t go into the deep, like surfers, but use their flat-bottomed boards to coast along the shoreline, spinning and flipping the boards in competition to earn points. Even small breaks are like clay they can shape into what they wish.
“You just want to have a steady base. You don’t want shaky feet,” said Zach Johnson, 13, of Newark, a competitor in the two-day event. “You don’t even want big waves because that wastes time. So today’s a really nice day for skimming.”
Dean Coleman, 17, from Wilmington, spent the summer in Lewes, and skimboarding has been a daily routine for him. “I don’t work. I just do this,” he said, resting his arm on a board and watching younger competitors’ heats.
When he, his board and a wave are in sync, he said, “It feels like you’re really on top of the waves. It feels like you’re floating.”
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The event brought hundreds of onlookers, vendors and parents of children who signed up for heats. Jason Wilson, 34, who owns the Alley-Oop Skim store and who organized the event, said it’s been a defining event of Dewey’s summer for years.
“This is the skim capital of the East Coast,” Wilson said. “It really highlights our beach culture… A lot of the kids you’ll see here are the future of the sport. They’re the next professionals.”
As heat after heat went on with four skimboarders at a time trying their luck, two laid-back announcers narrated their exploits over a PA system. They had a good word for everyone: “His whole family is just shredding, man,” one said about a young competitor.
Joe Bonk, a longtime announcer at the event who hung up his mic a couple years ago, took over announcing duties for a quick but spirited shout-out to the parents who made their children’s dreams happen.
“Without families, this doesn’t go on for 35 years!” Bonk yelled.
David Lafond, 41, of New Jersey, said his three sons, ages 10, 8 and 6, had learned skimboarding from free Saturday lessons put on by Alley-Oop. For the first time, he said, all three were competing.
Skimboarding can cause injuries – bonked heads, stubbed toes, sprained ankles. But Lafond said that risk was no reason at all to deter his kids from trying it out.
“They’ve been at this three or four weeks, and they can already ride a wave. As a parent, would you rather have your kid sitting around doing nothing?” Lafond said. “People have such a fear if kids step outside, they’ll get hurt.”
He continued, slyly: “Isn’t that what the ER is for?”
The event continues Sunday on the beach at Bellevue Street; competition starts at 9 a.m. and runs all day.
Contact James Fisher at (302) 983-6772, on Twitter@JamesFisherTNJorjfisher@delawareonline.com.
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