Boredom, ingenuity led to snowboarding at Marble 20 years ago CORNER BROOK CHRIS QUIGLEY The Western Star

Old-school snowboarder Kevin Vincent, left, and new school Liam Noseworthy are shown with their boards. — Star photo by Geraldine Brophy

It’s common practice these days to laugh at how those growing up in the 1980s looked and dressed.

Imagine then, how hilarious the first snowboarders on Marble Mountain appeared back in 1988 as they attempted to glide down the beginner’s slope on their skateboards after removing its wheels and trucks, and turning it around backwards, since the deck of the board was only kicked up on the tail at the time.

“We didn’t even know snowboarding existed back then, but we just decided we wanted to skateboard all year round,” said Kevin Vincent of Steady Brook, an executive member and coach with the newly formed Snowboard-NL provincial association. “We bungee-corded our feet onto the board and came down over the slope and thought, ‘this is cool.’”

That eventually led to Vincent’s friend Jennifer Lundrigan coming across a two-page flyer featuring two contraptions called snowboards — a Burton Backhill and a Burton Cruise.

“We looked at it and it was like $500 for a snowboard, and we couldn’t afford it,” Vincent said. “So, like most Newfoundlanders when they see something they can’t get or that costs too much, they say, ‘well, I can build that,’ and we did.”

Vincent and four friends of his went to work with a piece of plywood shaped out to resemble what the snowboards looked like in the picture they had seen. They found some metal edges off an old pair of skis and put those on the wooden board, before steaming the nose with a kettle and using an iron to wax the board. Taking a pair of Size 13 ski boots, they cut them up and fashioned them into bindings to finish the job. That is, until the board cracked and they had to construct a thicker one.

“I think at the end of it we ended up with some kind of countertop ... It was funny.”

A year later, in 1989, the group first approached Marble Mountain’s Tony Abbott, armed with a plastic board available for purchase at a local store and a request to let them use it on the hill.

“He gave it a try,” said Vincent. “He went up the tee-bar and came down ... He told us we were allowed on the hill, but only on days when there was nobody on it and days when it was raining.”

Because of all this tenacity — and carpentry — in 1990 snowboarding at Marble officially began.

Vincent had skied for 15 years before that and admitted snowboarding took him a little getting used to at first. Now the 37-year-old Steady Brook native is essentially a pioneer of the sport locally and, of course, he’s seen a lot of changes over the last two decades.

“I started out on a Kemper Screamer 167 with a one-piece Sun Ice fluorescent suit,” he said with a laugh. “It’s changed dramatically ... I’ve gone through the whole progression of snowboard bindings and boots. When we started you couldn’t get boots, you had to put a pair of ski boot liners inside our winter logans. And the bindings were really soft, you’d land off a jump and your knees would just collapse.”

Vincent still skis occasionally, but said that’s only because the ski industry woke up before snowboarding eradicated it completely. He has taught his two kids how to ski, although his four-year-old daughter has already requested a snowboard this winter.

“The ski industry realized if they want to get skiers back they’d have to look at the snowboard technology, so they took the shape from the snowboard and made a ski that looked kind’ve like that, wide on the tip and wide on the tail, to give a quicker turning radius,” he said. “They realized these snowboarders are having too much fun and they were losing all their skiers.”

One of those skiers drawn to the other side is 17-year-old Liam Noseworthy of Corner Brook.

If Vincent is old school, Noseworthy is decidedly new school when it comes to the sport.

He picked it up when he was about nine years old after skiing with his parents, Jeff and Yvonne, for a few years beforehand.

“I don’t know why, I just switched one year,” he said. “...I haven’t skied since. I just find it’s a lot more free and a lot more fun. And you just have more control over what you’re doing.”

Noseworthy acknowledges the renovations Marble Mountain has made to its slopes, specifically the snowboarder-friendly Terrain Park, along with the formation of the provincial association, will only add to the sport’s appeal.

“Over the last two years me and my friends have improved so much because of the way they’ve set stuff up,” he said. “If they keep going at the rate they’re going, the riders there are going to get wicked.

“Maybe Marble will start taking us more seriously too,” he added. “They started to last year and made jumps and stuff bigger, but now there’s a provincial association in place that will get even better.”

Vincent, for one, is impressed with the talent level of kids these days, doing things he wouldn’t dare dream up back in 1989 on his board that more closely resembled a shop project. He also notices kids are still displaying their share of ingenuity in order to get their snowboarding fix.

“They pick it up so quickly and now they’re even out there snowboarding in June,” he said. “As soon as they scrape the snow off the hockey rink in Corner Brook, there are guys there scraping it up behind them and putting it down on a slope somewhere.”

Noseworthy, meanwhile, found the idea of Vincent and his friends constructing their own snowboard out of plywood to be nothing short of comedy gold.

“Man, that was ages ago,” he said. “I wasn’t even born then.”

To prepare for the season, Snowboard-NL is hosting a snowboard gear swap today at Corner Brook High, 10a.m.-3 p.m.