Snowboarding: The Story of The Snurfer

On April sixteenth, nineteen ninety eight, the patent for the snurffer was issued, which started out as a winter toy to surf down snowy hills, leading to the global sport of snowboarding, which if not for one decision, snurfing would been the sport we all know today in the Olympics. Here's the story behind how snowboarding got started today on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide to a rapid deep dive into sports history every day. Types of sluds have been around forever and people have stood up on them, which was the basics of snowboarding. But it wasn't until nineteen sixty five when Sherman Poppin, an engineer from Muskegon, Michigan, took this site to a new level. On Christmas of nineteen sixty five, he had the idea to take two skis and attached them together with metal brackets and put a rope at the front to have a little bit of control so they could glide down the hills. When his daughters were playing outside and his wife, Nancy said it was like they were surfing down the snow. Called it the snurfer, combining snow and surfer, and the more that their family played with it, his daughter's friends also wanted to join in the fun. This is when Poppin realized maybe he had a good idea here, and he showed a friend who worked for a company that made billiards and bowling Brunswick and the company actually was starting a new division for products, and he met with the executives and showed him video of how his daughters were enjoying it, and just within two months they had a license agreement. But the problem was Burnswick wanted to market it as a toy, basically making it the hula hoop of winter time, which for a short time was actually really good. They sold over a million snurfers over the next decade, and sold half a million in nineteen sixty six alone, but by nineteen seventy two Burnswick their licensing. Now another company came in. Jem Corporation came in to continue to make the snurfer and wanted to actually promote it as a sport rather than just a toy. As up in Michigan, near where Popin lived, they actually started to hold a tournament for teens and adults to compete for cash prize doing races and freestyle events with the snurfer, and they established the National Surfers Association and these events back in nineteen sixty eight would get over two hundred spectators. One man that actually competed at these events was Jake Burton Carpenter, who actually saw the snurfer and thought this could be made better for sport, and he actually connected straps to the bottom of the board so that his feet wouldn't move going down the hill. And when he showed up with this at the snurfing competition, they decided this was a great idea that actually created a whole new category for him, and they decided to call it the open division, where any kind of board could be used, and Carpenter won, mainly because he was the only entry. But this would start the change from the snurfer to the snowboard. But the problem with all this is the snurfer was still viewed as just a toy to the general public. There was a small group that really used snurfing as a sport and wanted to see the sport grow into something more like skiing that was very popular at the time, and Carpenter was one of those, and he didn't just continue with the straps. He continued to tinker with his snurfer and made his own company called Burton's Snurf Boards, continually upgrading what he had made, and this started in Vermont and opened itself up for more of the sporting world. In nineteen eighty two, Burton's Boards started the National snow Snurfing Championships at Suicide six Ski Resort in Vermont, with Burton Snurfboards as the sponsor and competitors there were able to reach over fifty miles an hour with these new snurf boards and they had attracted over one hundred and twenty five athletes from across the US and got mentioned on the on the Today Show in the Good Morning America Show, growing its audience. But Poppin' still had the trademark for the snow in all different kinds of snurfing trademarks, and he decided to hire an attorney to get Burfin's Snurfboards in this snurfing competition to cease and desist. Now, looking back, Poppin thought this was a bad idea. Because of this one decision, the word snurfer or snurf we're now going to be forever gone. And as they changed everything as Burton snurfboards changed it to snowboards in the rest is history, as snurfing went away and snowboards took over. In nineteen eighty three, they changed the championship to be called the US Snowboarding Championships, which is still around to this day. And in nineteen eighty five was the last year of the National Snurfing Championship up in Michigan and due to everyone gravitating to snowboarding and snurfing fizzled out as they didn't have enough competitors for the competition. Despite challenges with snowboarding, Burton's boards created great innovations. They took away the string, They added a more ski like clip system for the snowboarders where they wore snowboarding boots similar to ski boots that connected into the board rather than just a strap. And they faced challenges along the way as during the nineteen eighties in early nineteen nineties, I mean these ski resorts did not want snowboarding. A part of it say that the people that snowboarded were not the kind of people they wanted at their ski resorts. But when the Olympics included snowboarding in nineteen ninety eight. This changed everything. Snowboarding went mainstream and ski resorts opened up to everybody. And now there are over eight million snowboarding athletes and it's estimated by the year two thousand and thirty that the snowboarding industry will be worth over three hundred billion dollars. It's a sport that continues to grow, not only in the US but world wide, and if not for one decision, it'd be called snurfering. Thank you for joining us on Daily Sports History. If you like this, please hit that little share button wherever you're listening and send it to someone else that you know that is a huge sports history fan just like you. It helps us grow and put together even better sports history for you. And come back tomorrow for more Daily Sports History.