By Brooke Bates   bbates@dnronline.com

Aaron Dean found his niche as a flowboarder and even has a custom edition board named after him — “Bulletproof.” Courtesy Photo

With his feet planted on a board, Aaron Dean carves across the face of a wave, spraying a sheet of white water as he slices across the surface.

He looks like a surfer pulling skateboard tricks on a liquid ramp. But he’s not a skateboarder and he’s never been on a surfboard. He doesn’t even have to leave the landlocked Valley to catch his waves.

Dean, 21, is one of a handful of competing flowboarders who make their home at Massanutten WaterPark’s FlowRider. The artificial wave attraction — which shoots water over a wave-shaped mat — and a growing number like it around the globe have spurred what may be the world’s youngest sport.

And Dean is at the crest of it.

Test run turned obsession
Dean of Elkton was working at the recreation desk at Massanutten’s Woodstone Meadows Golf Course in 2005. When he didn’t get the supervisor position he applied for, he tried his luck across the resort at the soon-to-be WaterPark.

He was hired, and he began training and testing equipment before the park opened. He was guarding an attraction called the FlowRider, the first and largest like it in Virginia, while the management team tried it out.

The Pipeline, as Massanutten Resort dubbed it, pumps 50,000 gallons of water up an inclined trampoline mat to simulate a perfect wave, says Sarah Elson, business relations and marketing director for the resort.

As the testers tried to stay on their bodyboards without wiping out, Dean remembers, one of them offered him a turn.

“That was a rush. It was unlike any sport I’ve ever done,” says Dean, who played basketball at Spotswood High School and snowboarded a few times at Massanutten.
Dean estimates that the FlowRider, a product from California, has been around for a dozen years. But without any experience or instructors, the Massanutten team had to conquer the artificial wave by trial and error.

“I couldn’t do it to save my life at first,” Dean says. “I stuck with it a month or two, and it took that long to stand up and not worry about falling.”

Flowboarding is often compared to surfing because of how the boarder carves across the inside barrel of the wave, but it’s more like a combination of board sports.

“It’s similar to skateboarding, surfing, wakeboarding and snowboarding,” says Thomas Benns, the former head aquatics supervisor at Massanutten WaterPark. “But it’s not entirely like any one of those.”

Beginning to flow
In addition to his supervising duties, Dean often teaches FlowRider lessons before the park opens.

“The first thing I ask [students] is if they have any board sport experience,” he says, explaining that those techniques can often be adjusted for flowboarding.

The self-taught instructors pared down their weeks-long learning processes to an hour, helping most students successfully stand up on the board after one lesson.

The board, Benns says, is partly to thank.

Professional surfers and skateboarders developed the first flowboards, he says, so they were designed for athletes who already had excellent stance and balance, not for beginners.

Operating as Arcane Boards, Benns and Merrick Morlan started making “over-stable, user-friendly” fiberglass flowboards — which Dean says are similar to wakeboards.

One of their models includes “a custom Aaron Dean edition flowboard, shaped for his ride style,” Benns says. They named the product ‘Bulletproof’ for its slick rounded edges and, literally, for its carbon fiber properties.

The next big thing?
From May through September, the Flow Crew travels to competitions at some of the 50 FlowRider attractions across the country, like those at Kalahari in Wisconsin Dells, Wis., and Camelbeach in Tannersville, Penn.

After taking first place at a Camelbeach men’s standup competition  — there are also bodyboard and drop-knee categories — Dean won tickets to the Flow Tour National Championships last fall at San Diego’s Wave House. He placed fifth in the Traveler’s Final there, according to this summer’s issue of the two-issue-old Flowboarding Magazine.

“He has gone from teaching himself to …. the national competition,” Benns says. “He’s absolutely fearless.”

Dean has picked up sponsors along the way. In addition to Arcane Boards and Massanutten Resort, Monster Energy and Steel MX Optics have signed Dean.

Flowboarding is already a collegiate sport in southern California, and there have been speculations about the X Games eventually picking it up.

Flowboarding’s escalation into a professional sport would top Dean’s dreams. He’s studying computer electronics part-time at Blue Ridge Community College, but he doesn’t plan to abandon his Bulletproof anytime soon.

He sits in the lobby at Massanutten WaterPark, glancing over his shoulder at the FlowRider below.

“If I could make a living off of it,” he says wistfully, sipping a Monster Energy drink to match his sponsor jersey, “I would.”