Native Wrightsville Beach skimboarder Will Buchanan traveled back to his hometown with some hardware after winning the Zap World Amateur Championships of Skimboarding Senior Men’s Division.
Held Aug. 9-10 in Dewey Beach, Del., the contest drew more than 200 skimboarders from around the world and as far away as Portugal and Brazil.
The 23-year-old Buchanan said he has dedicated more time to perfecting his skimboarding during the past year, which resulted in the win in Delaware and a third-place finish at the Oktoberfest skimboarding contest in Newport Beach, Calif., in 2013.
“The past years I did the [Delaware] contest I didn’t finish as well as I would have liked, but this past year I knew I wanted to do good and started working harder,” Buchanan said. “I would really love to go somewhere with skimboarding.”
Buchanan said he started skimboarding about 10 years ago after seeing a professional skimboarder in Kure Beach.
“I started with my friends on small wooden boards sliding across the sand and saw a professional skimboarder at Kure Beach named Kyle Holt when I was about 14. I just knew I wanted to do that,” he said. “It is a really unique sport because it has the tricks like skateboarding and wave riding but with the feel of snowboarding.”
Traveling to skimboard in places where skimboarding has a much larger following led Buchanan to the realization of how few people participate in the sport in Wrightsville Beach.
“I lived out in California about two years ago for school and to experience the lifestyle because skimboarding is so much bigger out there and it was cool being around that coming from a place like Wrightsville Beach where skimboarding is nonexistent,” he said.
With no skimboard instructors around, Buchanan recently launched NC Skim School with the help of his brother and fellow skimboarder, Matt Buchanan.
“I just do not think skimboarding is very big here because people don’t know how and it is pretty hard to learn,” he said. “It is a lot easier to learn if you have someone showing you so that is why I always wanted to do the skimboarding camp.”
With a first-place finish under his belt, Buchanan said he hopes to travel out to the Oktoberfest contest again this year to try for another and continue to help advance skimboarding in North Carolina.
“This past year I have seen the most people skimboarding that I do not recognize, which is good,” Buchanan said. “It is always good seeing more new people out there.”
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